Cooperative Criticism: When Criticism Enhances Creativity in Brainstorming and Negotiation

Jared R. Curhan (), Tatiana Labuzova () and Aditi Mehta ()
Additional contact information
Jared R. Curhan: Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142
Tatiana Labuzova: Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142
Aditi Mehta: Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139

Organization Science, 2021, vol. 32, issue 5, 1256-1272

Abstract: Long-standing wisdom holds that criticism is antithetical to effective brainstorming because it incites intragroup conflict. However, a number of recent studies have challenged this assumption, suggesting that criticism might actually enhance creativity in brainstorming by fostering divergent thinking. Our paper reconciles these perspectives with new theory and a multimethod investigation to explain when and why criticism promotes creativity in brainstorming. We propose that a cooperative social context allows criticism to be construed positively, spurring creativity without inciting intragroup conflict, whereas a competitive social context makes criticism more divisive, leading to intragroup conflict and a corresponding reduction in creativity. We found support for this theory from a field experiment involving 100 group brainstorming sessions with actual stakeholders in a controversial urban planning project. In a cooperative context, instructions encouraging criticism yielded more ideas and more creative ideas, whereas in a competitive context, encouraging criticism yielded fewer ideas and less creative ideas. We replicated this finding in a laboratory study involving brainstorming in the context of a union-management negotiation scenario, which allowed us to hold constant the nature of the criticism. Taken together, our findings suggest that the optimal context for creativity in brainstorming is a cooperative one in which criticism occurs but is interpreted constructively because the brainstorming parties perceive their goals as aligned.

Keywords: innovation; brainstorming; negotiation; criticism; negative feedback; goal interdependence; cooperation; competition; conflict; creativity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2020.1420 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ororsc:v:32:y:2021:i:5:p:1256-1272

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Organization Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().