Shaping Environment for Creativity and Innovation: A Multilevel Examination of Industry Conditions, Leadership, HRM Systems, Teams and Individuals in Established and Start-up Firms

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Researchers have examined creativity and innovation from either a micro or macro perspective. The micro perspective focuses on examining the effects of individual characteristics such as personality, goal orientation, values, thinking styles, motivation and affects, and team characteristics such as team structure and composition, team climate and process. The macro perspective focuses on examining the effects of industry conditions such as market structure and firms' characteristics such as size and network position on firm innovation. This disconnected approach has resulted in divergent or even conflicting business practices and research findings, leading to fragmented understandings of the phenomena. Some important questions that are of interest to researchers, policy makers, and business owners and managers remain unanswered. The current research project integrates literatures from multiple disciplines including strategy, psychology, human resource management (HRM) and organizational behavior, and develops a multilevel framework of creativity and innovation. Specifically, this research, using data collected from two research sites, examines the following questions: First, within and across industries, how do top managers of a firm make sense of the external environment and make decisions on creativity and innovation? Second, how can firms cultivate an innovative internal environment within the organization to facilitate creativity and innovation? Third, what factors shape the external and internal environments critical for creativity and innovation in start-up firms? This research offers a number of theoretical, methodological, and practical contributions to the field of creativity and innovation. Theoretically, the multilevel approach helps bridge the "micro-macro" divide and provides a concerted picture of how factors from different levels of analysis may jointly shape the external and internal environments supportive for creativity and innovation, and delineate the boundary conditions for such processes. Methodologically, using both qualitative and quantitative data from two important research sites obtained through three phases of data collection (interviews/ observations, surveys, and field experiments), the research design provides findings that are not only of strong external and internal validity, but also contribute to the discovery of new theories. Practically, this research bridges the "research-practice" divide, enhances "evidence-based management", and helps government policy makers and organizational management better design and implement policies and practices that are conducive to creativity and innovation.