Give Me a Goal to be Creative: Investigating Goal Setting and Creative Performance

Stefanie Ringelhan (), Jutta Stumpf-Wollersheim (), Andreas Ostermaier (), Isabell M. Welpe () and Matthias Spörrle ()
Additional contact information
Stefanie Ringelhan: Technische Universität München
Jutta Stumpf-Wollersheim: Technische Universität München
Andreas Ostermaier: Technische Universität München
Isabell M. Welpe: Technische Universität München
Matthias Spörrle: Privatuniversität Schloss Seeburg

Schmalenbach Business Review, 2016, vol. 17, issue 3, No 4, 337-359

Abstract: Abstract Taking into account the dual pathway to creativity model, we conducted an experiment (N = 101) to investigate the influence of goals on creative performance aspects (cognitive persistence, creative fluency, cognitive flexibility, originality and appropriateness). Our experiment revealed that having an assigned goal versus having no goal caused anger to outweigh happiness, which led to more cognitive persistence and creative fluency. We observed no influence on cognitive flexibility and originality. An assigned goal led to less appropriate ideas than having no goal, but this effect was not mediated by emotions. Our findings suggest that goals should be applied depending on whether open-minded in-depth ideation or appropriate ideas are desired.

Keywords: Goal setting; Creativity; Discrete emotions; Performance management; Target agreements (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D83 I23 M54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s41464-016-0022-7 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:schmbr:v:17:y:2016:i:3:d:10.1007_s41464-016-0022-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/41464

DOI: 10.1007/s41464-016-0022-7

Access Statistics for this article

Schmalenbach Business Review is currently edited by Alfred Wagenhofer

More articles in Schmalenbach Business Review from Springer, Schmalenbach-Gesellschaft
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().