Creative workers and lonely spouses?

Creativity is most often thought of as a predominantly beneficial behavior for employees and organizations: creative workers produce new products for the organization and are generally more satisfied with their work. Recent research from the USA however explored the potential downsides of creativity. The authors found that creative work can have deleterious consequences for private relationships: creative behaviors during the work day predicted less time spent with a spouse at home. The results raise questions about the possible relational costs of creativity.

 Harrison, S., & Wagner, D. T. (2015). Spilling outside the box: The effects of individuals' creative behaviors at work on time spent with their spouses at home. Academy of Management Journal, 59(3), 841-859.

Culture influences how the social context affects creativity

Working as a team, under supervision, or on your own is differently related to creativity depending on the power-distance and individualism-collectivism cultural values of your society, as a recent study suggests. American students generated less ideas and elaborated their ideas less when working in a team compared to Chinese students working in a team. This finding may be attributed to the individualistic cultural norm that is prevalent in American culture. Chinese individuals, on the other hand, generated less original ideas when working under supervision. The high power-distance in Chinese society may have inhibited participants working under supervision, not wanting to risk a negative evaluation by their supervisor by generating novel ideas that deviate from the norm.

Journal of Organizational Behavior

Your social network can enhance your ability to innovate

The size of a social network, its diversity, and being the connector between different groups is related to being more innovative, according to meta-analytic evidence. On the other side, having a close social network where one’s contacts are also mutually interconnected is related to lower innovation, possibly because of higher overlap in the knowledge of the group members. Having a broad, open, free social network may thus make your ideas fly! 

Organizational Psychology Review