Creativity-Contingent Rewards, Intrinsic Motivation, and Creativity: The Importance of Fair Reward Evaluation Procedures.

Erik Andreas Saether

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00974

Abstract

Pay for performance is a common practice used by organizations to increase employees’ motivation and performance, and creativity-contingent rewards have been shown to support creativity. But are all creativity-contingent rewards equal? Procedural justice can potentially affect the way that creativity-contingent rewards impact employees’ intrinsic motivation and creativity. To shed light on this practice-relevant issue, this study investigates how aspects of procedural justice—reward allocation clarity and reward evaluation fairness—impact changes in intrinsic motivation and creativity in the presence of creativity-contingent rewards. Using an incomplete factorial pretest–posttest between subjects design with four reward conditions and one control (no reward) condition, I analyzed changes in intrinsic motivation and creativity. Relative to the control condition, significant increases in both intrinsic motivation and creativity were found in the reward conditions with high evaluation fairness. However, reward allocation clarity did not yield any significant effects on changes in intrinsic motivation and creativity. The results highlight the importance of fair evaluation procedures for determining rewards if creativity-contingent rewards are to increase both intrinsic motivation and creativity.

Highlights

Creativity, defined as the production of novel and useful ideas (Amabile, 1996), is often desired by organizations because it contributes to organizational innovation (Amabile, 1988; Anderson et al, 2014), and intrinsic motivation—i.e., doing activities out of sheer interest, or enjoyment (Ryan and Deci, 2000)—is necessary for creativity to occur (Amabile, 1996)
This study aimed to provide a better understanding of the effects of creativity-contingent monetary rewards under conditions of procedural justice on changes in individuals’ intrinsic motivation and creativity by using a behavioral experiment
The mediation tests reveal why the conditions with high procedural fairness increased in intrinsic motivation and creativity. This was due to an indirect relationship between procedural fairness and creativity mediated by intrinsic motivation. This is one of the first studies to examine the effects of procedural justice elements in relation to the reward, intrinsic motivation, and creativity relationship

Summary

Introduction

Creativity, defined as the production of novel and useful ideas (Amabile, 1996), is often desired by organizations because it contributes to organizational innovation (Amabile, 1988; Anderson et al, 2014), and intrinsic motivation—i.e., doing activities out of sheer interest, or enjoyment (Ryan and Deci, 2000)—is necessary for creativity to occur (Amabile, 1996). Some of these studies have investigated the boundary conditions for these types of rewards (Malik et al, 2015; Yoon et al, 2015); procedural justice—fairness related to decision-making processes (Leventhal, 1980)—has been largely absent in research on rewards’ effects on intrinsic motivation and creativity This is surprising considering that procedural justice has been shown to impact affect (Weiss et al, 1999; Krehbiel and Cropanzano, 2000), intrinsic motivation (Zapata-Phelan et al, 2009; Olafsen et al, 2015), multiple performance measures including task performance (Colquitt et al, 2001), and creativity (Simmons, 2011). It is logical to assume that procedural justice could affect the relationship between rewards, intrinsic motivation, and creativity

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Methods

Conclusion