Abstract:

As one of the major limitations in organizational creativity and innovation research, much endeavor has been focused on idea generation rather than on idea recognition. Recognizing creative ideas among many options is the most crucial stage in the long process of organizational innovation, and contributes more to its success than generating ideas does. The critical role of decision maker’s mental model—the knowledge and belief structure that individuals use to describe, interpret, predict outside world, and to make judgment and decisions—on idea recognition has yet been examined. By adopting Csikszentmihalyi’s (1988, 1999) system view of creativity, the current study aims a) to demonstrate the difference in idea recognition accuracy between decision makers holding a fixed mindset or a growth mindset; b) to reveal the mediating effect of decision makers’ uncertainty tolerance decision makers; and c) to investigate the moderating effects of idea features and the pattern of organizational innovation practice. The current study contributes to organizational creativity and innovation literature by introducing a new perspective to this field. Also, decision makers can gain insight on how to avoid costly mistakes by reflecting on and modifying mental models of their own.

Key words: organizational creativity & innovation, decision makers, idea recognition, mental models, fixed/growth mindsets