Individual and Team Creativity: An Interactionist Examination of Creativity in Different Contexts

Abstract

Research on individual and team creativity in organizations puts a premium on understanding the factors influencing creativity at work. There is growing evidence showing that a better understanding of creativity can be achieved by simultaneously considering the influence of both individual differences and the context in which the individual is embedded. To advance this body of literature, this symposium consists of four papers that use the interactionist perspective to investigate personal and team characteristics and context as antecedents to a variety of creativity-related outcomes (e.g., individual creativity, team creativity, incremental creativity, and radical creativity. These studies are conducted using different research methods in a number of diverse settings, including a multi-wave field study in the food manufacturing industry, teams of University employees engaged in a gingerbread house building competition, lab studies evaluating lone and collaborative creator narratives, and qualitative fiel...