Overview
We are investigating the impact of new technologies and workplace changes on employee creativity and innovation.
Our focus is on how to utilise these transformations to encourage rather than inhibit creativity and innovation.
For instance, in one of our studies we examine how the interplay of employee and leader temporal orientations with technology affects employee creativity.
Publications
- Luan, Y and Kim Y.J. (2022) “An integrative model of new product evaluation: a systematic investigation of perceived novelty and product evaluation in the movie industry.” PLoS ONE, 17(3): e0265193 (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0265193)
- Kim, Y.J. and Meeker, A. (2020) “A subordinate’s criticism makes you more creative.” Harvard Business Review, Mar-Apr
- Kim, Y.J. and Kim, J. (2020) “Does negative feedback benefit (or harm) recipient creativity? The role of the direction of feedback flow.” Academy of Management Journal, 63(2): 584–612 (DOI: 10.5465/amj.2016.1196)
- Kim, Y.J. and Toh, S.M. (2019) “Stuck in the past? The influence of a leader’s past cultural experience on group culture and positive and negative group deviance.” Academy of Management Journal, 62(3): 944–969 (DOI: 10.5465/amj.2016.1322)
- Kim, Y.J. and Zhong, C.B. (2017) “Ideas rise from chaos: information structure and creativity.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 138: 15-27 (DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2016.10.001)
- Wilhelm, H., Richter, A.W.* and Semrau, T.* (2019) “Employee learning from failure: a team-as-resource perspective.” Organization Science, 30(4): 694-714.
- González-Gómez, H.V. and Richter, A.W. (2015) “Turning shame into creativity: the importance of exposure to creative team environments.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 126: 142-161
- Richter, A.W., Hirst, G., van Knippenberg, D. and Baer, M. (2012) “Creative self-efficacy and individual creativity in team contexts: cross-level interactions with team informational resources.” Journal of Applied Psychology, 97(6): 1282-1290
Media coverage
The Economist | 14 May 2022
The woolliest words in business
Fire-fighting foam starves the flames of oxygen. A handful of overused words have the same deadening effect on people’s ability to think. These are words like “innovation”, “collaboration”, “flexibility”, “purpose” and “sustainability”. They coat consultants’ websites, blanket candidates’ CVs and spray from managers’ mouths. They are anodyne to the point of being useless.
Harvard Business Review | 1 March 2020
A Subordinate’s Criticism Makes You More Creative
Yeun Joon Kim of the University of Cambridge and Junha Kim of the Ohio State University conducted a field experiment at a Korean health-food company in which they assessed the top-down, bottom-up, and lateral feedback that product developers received during quarterly performance evaluations.
Forbes | 1 March 2019
Four New Ideas For Giving Feedback That Gets Positive Results
Clear, direct, critical feedback can be important because if people don’t know what they’re doing wrong, how can they fix it? At the same time, this kind of feedback can backfire, making it hard for the feedback to be heard without defensiveness. Fail to give feedback and the problem will continue. Give it the wrong way, and you’ll have a new problem – strained relationships and disgruntled employees – on your hands. This is one of the many paradoxes of great leadership.
The Globe and Mail | 6 April 2017
How Lego can get employees thinking outside the blocks
Some scholars believe that playing with Lego bricks helps kids, and even adults, train creativity skills. Our research suggests that is probably right, PhD candidate Yeun Joon Kim of Rotman says.