The Influence of Organizational Tightness-Looseness, Self-Monitoring, and Performance Standards on Creativity

Abstract

My research study seeks to experimentally investigate the main effect of cultural tightness-looseness within organizations on employees’ creative performance in terms of the criteria of the specific creative process (idea generation versus evaluation). Specifically, I hypothesized that employees in tight (versus loose) organizational cultures will be better at generating more useful (versus original) ideas. Furthermore, employees in tight (versus loose) organizational cultures were hypothesized to be stronger at idea evaluation (marked by number, depth, specificity, and usefulness) and employees in loose (versus tight) organizational cultures are expected to be stronger at idea generation (marked by fluency, originality, and quality). Furthermore, this research examined if explicit performance standards (innovative versus operative) and employee self-monitoring (high versus low) interacted with organizational tightness-looseness to predict differences in creative performance. The study found that high self-monitoring employee generated significantly more creative ideas. No other main or interaction effects were found to be significant. Theoretical and managerial implications for this research are discussed.