Abstract:

While leading organizations to engage in innovation, decision-makers constantly face fierce competition from counterparts in other organizations targeting the same markets, clients, suppliers, technologies, and/or regions. To survive and thrive amid intense competition, organizational decision-makers must identify the most promising and creative ideas and allocate limited resources for subsequent innovation stages. Existing research on decision-makers' creativity recognition has primarily focused on the interactions among creators, decision-makers, and the environment, examining how these subsystems collectively influence the ability to recognize truly creative ideas. However, studies have generally focused on a single decision-maker, overlooking the significant role of competition among decision-makers, thereby limiting the explanatory power for real-world phenomena.

It is well-established that decision-makers often perceive each other as rivals when their respective organizations are closely matched and engaged in extended competition. As competition intensifies into rivalry, decision-makers become increasingly motivated to outperform their rivals. Rivalry theory posits that such rivalry can have a double-edged sword impact on decision-makers' effectiveness to identify truly innovative ideas. On one hand, rivalry may incentivize decision-makers to engage in systematic and in-depth analysis of innovation strategies of their own, thereby improving the efficiency and accuracy of creativity recognition. On the other hand, rivalry may induce tunnel vision, leading decision-makers to disproportionately focus on the creative potential of ideas under scrutiny by their rivals, while neglecting those ideas that fall outside their rivals' consideration.

To gain a deeper understanding of the impact of rivalry on creativity recognition, the current study employs a mixed-methods design. Laboratory experiments test the causal relationship between rivalry and decision-makers' recognition efficiency, while field studies examine the external validity of experimental findings in real-world contexts. Specifically, Study 1 utilizes a laboratory experiment to manipulate competition forms and measure the cognitive processing depth and breadth of decision-makers in various competitive environments, investigating rivalry's impact on creativity recognition accuracy. Studies 2 and 3 explore how rivalry influences decision-makers’ creativity recognition through cognitive depth (systematic processing) and cognitive breadth (tunnel vision) pathways. Study 4 validates laboratory findings in real organizational contexts by analyzing mutual fund managers' investment decisions and examining how rivalry relationships among fund managers influence their identification and selection of corporate innovations.

By integrating rivalry theory with the cognitive processing perspective, this study proposes a dual-pathway model to illustrate how rivalry influences decision-makers' creativity recognition. The model posits that rivalry exerts a double-edged sword effect on creativity recognition by affecting the depth and breadth of decision-makers' cognitive processing. Rivalry can catalyze more in-depth systematic processing, thereby enhancing the accuracy of creativity recognition. However, an excessive focus on competition may constrict cognitive breadth, inducing tunnel vision and the potential neglect of highly creative ideas. The principal theoretical contribution of this research lies in introducing the rivalry perspective into the domain of creativity recognition research. By delineating rivalry's effect on the cognitive mechanisms underpinning creativity recognition, our study provides a novel theoretical framework for understanding and improving organizational innovation management. Furthermore, it assists decision-makers in identifying cognitive biases within the innovation decision-making process, thereby facilitating more informed and rational innovation decisions.

Key words: creativity and innovation, creativity recognition, competition, rivalry, leadership