Time pressure and creativity in organizations

de Teresa Amabile

This study investigated the relationship between time pressure and creativity with a new method for examining daily thoughts, experiences, and events in organizations. Daily electronic questionnaires were obtained over periods of up to 30 weeks from 177 individuals in seven companies as they worked on projects requiring creativity. Narrative reports of events occurring in those projects were used to extract measures of participants' creative cognitive processing, and daily scale-rated items yielded measures of time pressure. Analyses incorporating several controls, including the number of hours worked, indicated that time pressure on a given day negatively predicted creative cognitive processing that day, one day later, two days later, and over longer time periods as well. The relationship may be a direct one; it was not mediated by intrinsic motivation in this study, and prior research suggests that time pressure may directly constrain cognitive processes related to creativity. These results have theoretical implications for understanding how creativity is affected by various aspects of the work environment, and methodological implications for looking inside the "black box" of creative thinking.

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