The Interactive Effects of Employees' Idea Enactment and ...

r Academy of Management Journal2019, Vol. 62, No. 2, 579–606.https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2016.0942

PITCHING NOVEL IDEAS TO THE BOSS: THE INTERACTIVEEFFECTS OF EMPLOYEES’ IDEA ENACTMENT AND

INFLUENCE TACTICS ON CREATIVITY ASSESSMENTAND IMPLEMENTATION

SHUYE LUKATHRYN M. BARTOL

VIJAYA VENKATARAMANIUniversity of Maryland

XIAOMING ZHENGTsinghua University

XIN LIURenmin University of China

Employees’ creative ideas often do not receive positive assessments from managers and,therefore, lose the opportunity to be implemented.We draw onDutton andAshford’s (1993)issue-selling framework to test a dual-approach model predicting that employees’ use ofboth high levels of idea enactment behaviors (characterized by use of demos, prototypes, orother physical objects when presenting ideas) and high levels of upward influence tacticswill have an interactive effect on the extent to which their creative ideas are positivelyassessed by their supervisors and, in turn, implemented. We found support for this inter-active effect of idea enactment and influence tactics in two studies: a field study of 192employees and 54 supervisors in a video game and animation company and an experi-mental study with 264 participants. In the experimental study, we also demonstrated thatthe benefits of using this dual approach aremore likely to accrue when selling amore novelidea rather than a less novel, more mundane one. Both studies highlight the mediating roleof supervisors’ creativity assessment in implementing employees’ creative ideas.

Innovation—the generation of novel, yet useful ideas(i.e., creativity; Amabile, 1996; Oldham & Cummings,1996) and their implementation (Anderson, Potocnik,& Zhou, 2014; Baer, 2012)—is widely considered toserveas thedriving force fororganizational growthandcompetitiveness (Barsh, Capozzi, & Davidson, 2008;Tellis, Prabhu, & Chandy, 2009). Given that creativityis a necessary condition for innovation, considerableresearch has focused on the development of creativeideas by employees, with the expectation that theseideaswill beultimately implemented (Zhou&Hoever,2014). Yet academicians and practitioners alike

continue to lament the slow pace of innovation andseek remedies to accelerate it (Hess, 2014).

In a surprising twist, the less-than-hoped-for pace ofinnovation may stem from the fact that employees’creative ideas often do not readily receive a positiveassessment by managers. When those ideas are notidentified or appreciated for their value (Berg, 2016;Mueller, Melwani, Loewenstein, & Deal, 2018;Mumford, Lonergan, & Scott, 2002), the opportunityfor innovation may pass by. For instance, althoughKodak’s research lab invented the firstdigital camera, itsmanagers’ failure to appreciate this new product ideapermitted Sony to eventually overtake Kodak as themarket leader in the digital photography space (Burkus,2013). Similarly, while Xerox developed a blueprintfor the first personal computer, insufficient investmentby itsmanagers allowedSteve JobsandApple tosnatchthe opportunity away and exploit it (Burkus, 2013).

In trying to understand such events, recent workby Mueller and colleagues (Mueller, Melwani, &Goncalo, 2012; Mueller et al., 2018; Mueller, Wakslak,

We thank associate editor Markus Baer and threeanonymous reviewers for their tremendously helpful andconstructive comments. This research was partly sup-ported by the National Natural Science Foundation ofChina (71771133, 71728005). Correspondence concerningthis article should be addressed to Xiaoming Zheng, Schoolof Economics and Management, Tsinghua University, China:[email protected].

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& Krishnan, 2014) has suggested that, despite es-pousing creativity as a desired goal, individuals indecision-making roles often fail to recognize—andeven reject—creative ideas, in part due to their in-tolerance for uncertainty, which is an inherent as-pect of novel ideas (Huang & Pearce, 2015). Otherrecent research has pointed to a variety of conditionsthat may bias individuals in managerial positionstoward judging creative ideas negatively (Berg, 2016;Mueller et al., 2018; Zhou,Wang, Song, &Wu, 2017).An added complication is that managers notoriouslyhave busy schedules, with time and attention beingscarce resources (Pfeffer, 1992). As novel ideas, bydefinition, involve notions that are not previously fa-miliar andcanbedifficult to categorize, assessing themrequires a considerable investment of already con-strained managerial cognitive resources (Criscuolo,Dahlander, Grohsjean, & Salter, 2017; Sweller, 1988,1994; Van de Ven, 1986). Moreover, individuals mayhave implicit notions about creativity (Loewenstein& Mueller, 2016) that make them reluctant to acceptcreative ideas. Tohelp organizations overcome thesebarriers, Mueller et al. (2012) call for research thatmight help diminish bias against, and aid recogni-tion and acceptance of, creativity.

As Zhou and Woodman (2003) and others (Ford,1996; Zuckerman, 2012) have noted, the extent towhich an individual judges an idea as novel or cre-ative “has a subjective component, beyond objectiveor normative standards” (Zhou et al., 2017: 182). Inaddition, creativity theorists have argued that creativ-ity assessments arise from communication betweenidea creators and gatekeepers (Csikszentmihalyi,1999; Elsbach & Kramer, 2003; Kasof, 1995a), rais-ing the possibility that employee idea creators may beable to take actions that help their managers more ad-equately assess themerits and implications of creativeidea offerings. Unfortunately, scant research hasaddressed this possibility or provided any guidanceon what employees could do to foster more positivesupervisory assessments of their creative ideas.

In considering employee options, we adopt andextend Dutton and Ashford’s (1993) dual-processissue-selling model as a framework to elucidate howemployees’ proactive actions with supervisors canhelp those employees gain supervisory recognitionfor their novel ideas. This framework, which has beenmainly used in the change literature (rather than in thecreativity literature), highlights issue packaging and theselling process as dual mechanisms underlying suc-cessful issue selling. “Issue packaging” concerns howan issue is framed and presented. In building on andextending this idea of packaging to the creativity

domain, we explore the concept of “idea enactment”—that is, the illustration of abstract ideas in more tangibleforms using demos, PowerPoint presentations, or otherphysical objects suchasprototypes, animatingboards,drawings, mock-ups, and simulations. Althoughcreativity-related theoretical work by Harvey (2014)and Hargadon (2002) has alluded to the notion ofidea enactment in different contexts, its efficacy asan employee-wielded tool to facilitate managers’creativity assessment has not been examined as yet.

Issue-selling success in Dutton and Ashford’s(1993) dual approach is dependent not only on is-sue packaging, but also on a “selling process,” withthe use of such approaches as upward influencetactics that emphasize the social persuasion aspect ofselling. The notion that idea originators might beable to exert influence on how their ideas fare withleaders has been mentioned in the creativity litera-ture (Kasof, 1995b;Mumford, 2000), but has not beenactivelypursued. “Upward influence tactics” refer tovarious attempts by an employee to elicit a desiredresponse from the supervisor (Deluga & Perry, 1991;Kipnis & Schmidt, 1988). Building on these insights,we propose and evaluate the premise that employees’proactive use of idea enactment will interact with theirinfluence tactics to significantly enhance managerialassessments of those employees’ creative contributions.

Although creativity involves novelty and usefulness(Amabile, 1988), researchers have pointed to the noveltyinherent in creativity as a particularly challenging obsta-cle to making appropriate creativity assessments (Berg,2016; Licuanan, Dailey, & Mumford, 2007; Zhou et al.,2017).Novelty, by itself, is difficult to graspanddecipher(Criscuoloetal., 2017;Uzzi,Mukherjee,Stringer,& Jones,2013; Zhou et al., 2017; Zuckerman, 2012), which thenalsomakes the usefulness and feasibility of an ideamorearduous to discern. We propose that idea enactment in-teracts with employees’ application of influence tacticsto facilitate positive assessment of more novel ideas,as compared to less novel ideas, by better highlightingthe former’s uniqueness and usefulness and, therefore,theiroverall creativity. Incontrast, ideaenactmentand itsinteractive effects with influence tactics are not ex-pected to lead to a more favorable assessment of lessnovel ideas, as these ideas are relatively easy to com-municate, comprehend, and categorize as less creative.

Finally, answering calls for greater research atten-tion to the connection between gaining acknowledg-mentof an issue and “the generationof effective issueaction” (Dutton & Ashford, 1993: 421), we directlyexamine the strength of the linkage between supervi-sors’ creativity assessments and idea implementation.Figure 1 illustrates our overall conceptual model.

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In studying these issues, our paper makes severalcontributions. First, at a broad level, we extend recentresearch examining why decision-makers tend toreject or downgrade creative ideas by shifting atten-tion to the critical, but relatively rarely addressed,question of what employees might be able to do toensure positive assessment of their creative ideas bysupervisors (Mueller et al., 2012; Mueller et al.,2014). Second, building on and extending theDuttonand Ashford (1993) framework, we highlight the in-teractive value of idea enactment and influence tacticsin enhancing supervisors’ appreciation of employeecreativity. In the process, we extend the issue-sellingmodel to thecreativitydomain.Third,weverify that thedual strategy of idea enactment and influence tactics,while effective with a novel idea, may not be a viableapproach of promoting amundane one. In doing so,wecontribute directly to the issue-selling literature, whichhas mainly considered the nature of the issue to be oflesser relevance.Finally,weanswercalls for linking thecreativity process with implementation (Andersonet al., 2014; Baer, 2012) by examining the extent towhich the interplay among idea enactment, influ-ence tactics, and idea novelty impacts implementationvia supervisors’ assessments of employee creativity.

THEORY AND HYPOTHESES

Creativity Assessment

“Creativity” herein refers to the generation ofnovel, yet useful ideas related to new organizationalproducts and services (Amabile, 1988; Oldham &Cummings, 1996). Given the importance of creativeideas to organizational prosperity, considerable re-search and effort in organizations have focused onways to encourage employees’ development of cre-ative ideas (see Anderson et al., 2014; Hennessey &Amabile, 2010; see also Shalley, Zhou, & Oldham,2004, for reviews). Yet, despite the profusion of ideasand knowledge about how to generate them (De

Stobbeleir, Ashford, & Buyens, 2011; Grant & Berry,2011; Liu, Chen, & Yao, 2011; Zhang & Bartol, 2010),there is increasing recognition that the introductionof creative ideas does not necessarily mean they willbe subsequently implemented (Baer, 2012).

In seeking answers to this implementation conun-drum, researchers have tracked some of the difficultyin implementing creative ideas back to creativity as-sessmentsmade at the level of the directmanager. Forpurposesof thecurrent research,wedefine“creativityassessment” as the extent to which a manager iden-tifies and appreciates the value of creative ideas(i.e., the novelty andusefulness of the ideas) that havebeen generated by employees. The extant researchpoints to considerable negative bias toward creativeideas and products on the part of individuals inmanagerial or decision-making roles. For instance,Berg (2016) found that occupying “manager” roles ascompared to “innovator” roles constrained individ-uals’divergent thinking and, in turn, their evaluationsof creativity.Relatedevidencesuggests thatmanagerstend to apply their existing frames and experiencesin assessing new ideas, thereby hindering their abilityto appropriately value creative ideas (Boudreau,Guinan, Lakhani, & Riedl, 2016; Rindova & Petkova,2007). Further, research by Mueller and colleaguesindicates that managers are averse to the uncertaintyinherent in novel ideas and that decision-makerroles seem to trigger an economic perspective that dis-favors the recognition of creative ideas (Mueller et al.,2012; Mueller et al., 2018).

Collateral evidence also supports the possiblecomplicity of managers in impeding the flow ofcreative ideas toward implementation. Although notfocused directly on issues of creativity assessment,research on employee voice has indicated that man-agers are often averse to recognizing ideas for im-provement due to ego defensiveness and other biasesassociatedwith carryingoutmanagerial functions (Fast,Burris, & Bartel, 2014; Howell, Harrison, Burris, &

FIGURE 1Conceptual Model

Employee’sInfluence Tactics

Employee’sIdea Enactment

H1

H2

H3

IdeaNovelty

CreativityAssessment

Implementation

2019 581Lu, Bartol, Venkataramani, Zheng, and Liu

Detert, 2015; see alsoAshford, Sutcliffe, &Christianson,2009; Burris, 2012). Their notoriously busy schedules,multiple functions, and frequent interruptions alsocombine todiminish the timeandattentionavailable formanagers to scrutinize creative ideas. Evaluating highlycreative ideas, however, requires the allocation of con-siderable cognitive capacity by managers (Criscuoloet al., 2017), and such ideas can be difficult to unpack,due to their relative unfamiliarity, the lack of readilyavailable reference points for them, and the consider-able ambiguity regarding their implications (Barsalou,1991; Cohen & Basu, 1987).

Accordingly, much of the onus in ensuring thattheir creative ideas come to light may ultimately reston the employees who propose those ideas; theymust find ways to induce their supervisors to rec-ognize their creative efforts. Employees, as ideacreators, are in a unique position to effectivelyhighlight the originality or novelty and usefulness oftheir ideas, thereby positively impacting managers’creativity assessments at a crucial early stage in theinnovation cycle. Guided by arguments that per-ceptions of creativity are to some extent sociallyconstructed (Elsbach & Kramer, 2003; Ford, 1996;Kasof, 1995b), we argue that employees may be ableto affect managers’ judgments of their creative ideasby adapting the dual process suggested by Duttonand Ashford’s (1993) issue-selling framework. Thatframework mainly focuses on employees’ behaviorsgeared toward influencing managers’ attention to,understanding of, and willingness to address spe-cific work-related issues. Dutton and Jackson (1987)noted that, within the framework, “issues” refer tonot only problems but also opportunities and newideas that have the potential to enhance organiza-tional performance.

Within the dual-process framework, issue pack-aging refers to how an issue is framed and presented,while selling processes concern such things as thetypes of influence tactics sellers use in persuadingothers to adopt their point of view.1 In consideringpackaging, Dutton and Ashford (1993) offered

several options for advancing ideas, including issueframing (which aspects to highlight, the onus of re-sponsibility), how the issue is presented (using ex-emplars or vivid stories), the nature of the issueappeal (one sided or two sided), and issue bundling(linking to other relevant issues). Given that our re-search addresses employees’ attempts to gain theirsupervisors’ initial positive assessment for their newideas, we focus on presentation, and particularly theuse of exemplars—labeled broadly here as ideaenactment—as thepackagingoptionmost relevant toour query.

In contrast to issue packaging, the selling processin the Dutton and Ashford model includes such op-tions as the choice of channel to use (public vs. pri-vate), whether to involve others in the selling effort,and which types of influence tactics (formal vs. in-formal) are employed. Given our interest in thepossibility of employees selling their creative ideasto their immediate supervisors in a more formalizedone-on-one setting, we focus specifically on the ex-tent of use of upward influence tactics by employees.Asdiscussed indetail in thenext section,weproposethat the idea enactment and influence tactics used byemployees will interact to positively sway supervi-sors’ perceptions of their ideas’ novelty or unique-ness and usefulness.

Idea Enactment, Influence Tactics, andCreativity Assessment

Based on Harvey’s (2014) theoretical notion of“enacting ideas,”we define “idea enactment” as theillustration or demonstration of abstract ideas inmore tangible forms using animated, visual (e.g.,demos, PowerPoint presentations), or physical objects(e.g., prototypes, posters, animating boards, sketches,drawings, mock-ups, or simulations).Within the dual-process framework, idea enactment may facilitatesupervisors’ creativity assessments in several ways.

First, it conveys new thinking in a relatively con-crete way. For instance, Harvey (2014: 332–333)has noted that using animating storyboards or “pro-ducing a few minutes of film illustrates how mem-bers of aPixar teamvisualize the story and illuminateaspects of the story that the team has not yet broughtto life.” Similarly, Harrison and Rouse’s (2015) in-ductive qualitative study revealed that the pro-totypes presented by creative workers provide richinformation about the idea for feedback providers.Other work on prototyping (Hargadon, 2002;Schrage, 2000), demos (Rosental, 2005, 2013), rapidprototyping (Kelley, 2001), and drawings (Carlile,

1 Although the Dutton and Ashford (1993) frameworkhas not been previously applied to the creativity domain,considerable research has examined it in terms of theprocesses proposed by the model and the model’s effec-tiveness in highlighting a variety of change-related orga-nizational issues (see, e.g., Ashford, Rothbard, Piderit,& Dutton, 1998; Dutton, Ashford, Lawrence, & Miner-Rubino, 2002; Dutton, Ashford, O’Neill, Hayes, & Wierba,1997; Dutton, Ashford, O’Neill, & Lawrence, 2001; Howard-Grenville, 2007; Sonenshein, 2006).


2002) also suggests that using physical objects is anefficient and effective way to highlight informationabout products or ideas vis-a-vis other familiarnotions, reduce uncertainty about the nature of theseideas, and achieve greater mutual understandingand recognition.

Second, idea enactment can readily incorporatesalient andvivid cues.According toFiske andTaylor(2013), “salience” refers to the extent to which astimulus stands out relative to other stimuli in thesamecontext. “Vividness” refers to the extent towhichthe stimulus is “emotionally interesting, concrete, andimagery-provoking, and proximate in a sensory, tem-poral, or spatial way” (Fiske & Taylor, 2013: 70–71).Enacting ideas (e.g., through exemplars and pro-totypes) can make them more salient because theycan be made more prominent and notable than ispossible with traditional verbal communication of ab-stract ideas. Idea enactment can also make new ideasvivid in the sense of being concrete, proximate, andlucid (Kiesler & Sproull, 1982), thereby highlightingcharacteristics and features that are unique and dif-ferent from familiar ideas, as well as indicating howthe new ideas might be useful.

Finally, research on knowledge transfer andorganizational learning (Carlile, 2002, 2004;Levina & Vaast, 2005) suggests that the visual andphysical object support provided by idea enact-ment can depict the idea’s current or possi-ble “form, fit, and function” (Carlile, 2002: 451),thereby facilitating knowledge transfer regardingthe nature of the idea. Thus, by providing concreteforms and vivid representations of a novel, yetabstract idea, employees’ idea enactment mayprovide supervisors with more easily accessibleinformation about the idea’s usefulness and theextent to which it differs from more mundane, fa-miliar notions.

Despite its potential helpfulness as a packagingtool, idea enactment as a presentation approachmaynot be nearly as potent as its combination with aninfluence-orientednarrative. Indeed, theuniquenessand implications of creative ideas may not be suffi-ciently clear unless their enactment is supported bypersuasive narratives aimed at convincing decision-makers of those ideas’ relevant features andpotentialbenefits. According to Dutton and Ashford (1993:417), “issue-selling success is dependent not only onissue packaging, but also on the choices that sellersimplicitly or explicitlymake regarding how to sell anissue”—namely, the “selling process.” One suchchoice is the use of upward influence tactics to fa-cilitate that process. Across multiple managerial

studies, Yukl and colleagues (Yukl, 2010; Yukl &Michel, 2006; Yukl, Seifert, & Chavez, 2008; Yukl &Tracey, 1992) have identified four “core” types ofinfluence tactics that tend to be consistently effec-tive: (1) rational persuasion—using rational argu-ments and relevant facts to demonstrate that arequest or proposal is feasible and germane to keyobjectives; (2) consultation—asking the target personto offer suggestions or aid plans for the proposedendeavor or change for which support is sought; (3)inspirational appeals—implicitly or explicitly ref-erencing the target’s values and ideals or striving tostir the person’s emotions to gain concurrence for arequest or proposal; and (4) collaboration—offeringto furnish assistance or required resources if thetarget will comply with a request or sanction a pro-posed change. Research with critical incidents hasshown that these tactics are often used together inattempts to exert influence (Falbe & Yukl, 1992;Yukl, Falbe, & Youn, 1993). Notably, some upwardinfluence tactics have been examined in prior qual-itative research on issue selling (Piderit & Ashford,2003), albeit not in conjunctionwith packaging toolssuch as idea enactment.

In building on Dutton and Ashford’s (1993)framework, which calls for sellers to effectively or-chestrate the dual aspects of idea packaging and ideaselling,we argue that the effectiveness of employees’idea enactment behaviors on supervisors’ assess-ment of those employees’ creative ideas may welldepend on the extent to which employees also useupward influence tactics. For instance, employees’verbal arguments in conjunctionwith enactment canwork interdependently to help supervisors morereadily understand the rationale behind, and meritsof, thenew idea (Woodman, Sawyer, &Griffin, 1993).Using inspirational appeals synergistically with thevisual enactment of ideas can also engage supervi-sors’ values or in other ways stir emotions that en-gender appreciation of the uniqueness and value ofthe new idea (Barsade & Gibson, 2007; Falbe & Yukl,1992;Kanter, 1988).Along these lines, prior researchhints that issue claims that both attract attentionthrough the use of novel information (Wyer, 1970)and offer a compelling rationale (McCroskey, 1972)may attract greater recognition. When ideas areenacted, influence tactics such as consultation andcollaboration (i.e., soliciting the target’s views, in-viting input, and negotiating changes to the enactedidea; Baer & Brown, 2012; Mumford, Scott, Gaddis,& Strange, 2002) can facilitate greater engagementfrom supervisors. De Stobbeleir et al. (2011) foundthat such requests for feedback were associated


with higher ratings of creative performance fromsupervisors.

In contrast, when creative idea enactment is ac-companied by only minor use of influence tactics,the enactment’s impact is likely lower. In this sce-nario, although enactment may clarify the nature ofsuch new ideas, their benefits and implications maynot be readily evident to decision-makers withoutthe interactive effect generated by combining theenactment of creative ideas with influence tactics.Accordingly, we posit:

Hypothesis 1. Employees’ idea enactment and use ofupward influence tactics interact to predict supervi-sors’ assessment of employee creativity, such thatenactment results in more favorable creativity as-sessments when paired with the use of influencetactics.

The Role of Idea Novelty

An implicit assumption underlying our theo-rizing is that the ideas being put forth by employeesare truly creative and, therefore, warrant positiveassessment by supervisors. In such a case, by en-gaging in idea enactment and influence tactics,employees should be able to garner the more pos-itive assessments that their creative ideas deserve(as expressed in Hypothesis 1). Nevertheless, thedual approach of idea enactment and influencetactics may not necessarily be effective in winningpositive assessments of all ideas, creative or not.That is, such dual actions, while effective in facil-itating positive assessment of more creative ideas,might not be as effective in pushing ideas that arerelatively low in novelty and show little overallcreativity.

In explicitly evaluating this premise, we focusparticularly on thenovelty aspect of otherwiseusefulcreative ideas. High novelty indicates a “break-through” new idea, something that challengesexisting ways of looking at a product or service,whereas low novelty indicates minor or incrementalchanges to an already familiar product or service(Mumford &Gustafson, 1988; Shalley &Zhou, 2008).Although creativity involves both novelty and use-fulness, the novelty characteristic creates uncer-tainty about the potential utility and feasibility of anidea (Mueller et al., 2012). In fact, recent researchsuggests that perceiving novelty first can facilitateexplorations of usefulness (Bunzeck & Duzel, 2006;Li, Maggitti, Smith, Tesluk, & Katila, 2013; Rindova& Petkova, 2007). Along similar lines, Zhou et al.(2017) have argued that, despite the objective

usefulness of a new idea, the novelty perceptiontakes “center stage” in perceiving the level of crea-tivity, with explorations of usefulness trailing be-hind it. Others have noted that, assuming usefulnessis present, the concept of novelty is most crucial inmaking the case for creativity (Mueller et al., 2012),yet is the most difficult aspect to grasp, decipher,and categorize (Rindova & Petkova, 2007).

By addressing the uncertainty inherent in novelty,the interactive effects of idea enactment and influ-ence tactics can especially benefit more novel ideas.Employees proactively engaging in idea enactmentin conjunction with influence tactics can help dem-onstrate the value of highly novel ideas by position-ing themasmore concrete, encouraging expansionofexisting schemas, and inviting more direct analysisof their potential uniqueness and utility (Rindova &Petkova, 2007). In doing so, employees can signifi-cantly alleviate supervisors’ cognitive burden inassessing highly novel ideas. For example, rationalpersuasion, coupled with idea enactment, may helpmanagers more readily envision useful and novelaspects of products, while simultaneously support-ing and clarifying their merits and functioning.Demonstration of the concreteness of the ideas viaenactment, when combined with consultation tac-tics, can engage supervisors by offering ready op-portunities for them to seek elaboration and providesuggestions, thereby positively affecting their per-ceptions about an idea’s breakthrough nature andpotential. Along with an exemplar of a highly novelproduct, inspirational appealsmay bemore effectivein communicating how the enacted idea might helpachieve organizational goals—an important area ofuncertainty for supervisors (Mueller et al., 2012).Offering collaboration through help or provision ofrequired resources when enacting a novel idea mayalso reassure supervisors about the viability of theidea’s development and about the support andshared responsibility in taking the idea forward,thereby increasing their openness to it.

Thedynamic is likely to be quite differentwith lownovelty ideas (Mueller et al., 2014). Given the lowerlevel of “newness” associated with such ideas, andthe ease in categorizing them as such (Reber &Schwarz, 1999; Schwarz, Sanna, Skurnik, & Yoon,2007; Tellis, 2004; Zajonc, 2001), enacting low nov-elty ideas may not be necessary or may only in-crementally improve the outcome of the creativityassessment. Such ideasmay see few benefits from anemployee’s rational persuasion attempts, especiallyif the idea has been enacted. In fact, such efforts maybeviewed as awaste ofmanagers’ time, given that the


idea and its implications are fairly obvious owing tothe idea’s relative familiarity. Inviting consultationand suggestions may still be helpful, but may be lesseffective when creativity is low and relevant aspectsare relatively easy to discern. Given that a low nov-elty product is unlikely to generate much excite-ment, tactics such as inspirational appeals for itsdevelopment may seem hollow or manipulative.Moreover, while an offer to help turn the idea intoreality may be welcomed by the supervisor, this as-sistance may be less important with less creative,relatively mundane ideas the implementation pathfor which may already be clear. Accordingly, wehypothesize:

Hypothesis 2. Idea enactment, influence tactics, andidea novelty jointly interact to predict supervisors’assessment of employee creativity, such that the jointeffect of enactment and influence tactics is morelikely to result in favorable creativity assessmentswhen ideas are high as opposed to low in novelty.

Creativity Assessment and Implementation

As a direct reaction to employees’ idea presenta-tion and selling, supervisors’ creativity assessmentcan play an important mediating role in movingemployees’ ideas forward toward implementation.“Implementation” generally involves realizing newideas (Janssen, 2000) or converting ideas into newand improved products and services (Baer, 2012;Kanter, 1988; West, 2002; Woodman et al., 1993). Inthis regard, supervisors’ assessments of employees’creativity serve as idea selection mechanisms un-derlying an organization’s search for innovation(Mollick, 2012; Sawyer, 2011). Hence, supervisorsplay an important role in assessing the creative ideaspresented by employees via idea enactment and in-fluence tactics, and then connecting sold ideas withthe implementation processes of the organization(see Mollick, 2012).

The implementation stage has been primarilyconsidered a social–political process (Frost & Egri,1991; Van de Ven, 1986), whereby mobilizing re-sources and seeking social and political supportfrom others are key to successful implementation(Baer, 2012; Howard-Grenville, 2007). After assess-ing employees’ creative ideas, supervisors usuallyhave the ability to directly provide resources andsupport to incubate and further propel these ideastoward implementation (Floyd & Lane, 2000).Moreover, ideas assessed as creative by supervisorsmay be considered more legitimate, potentially mo-tivating the focal employee and other idea supporters

to exert more effort in executing those ideas. Basedon these arguments, we propose:

Hypothesis 3. Supervisors’ assessment of employees’creativity is positively related to the implementationof focal employees’ ideas.

OVERVIEW OF STUDIES

To test our hypotheses, we first conducted a fieldstudy in a video game and animation company;Study1’s goalwas to establish the external validity ofthe phenomena of interest. Due to the company’sconcerns about the confidentiality of its intellectualproperty, we were not able to collect data on thecontent of employees’ specific ideas (i.e., noveltyand usefulness). Thus, Study 1 tested Hypothesis 1and Hypothesis 3, which, while not specific to par-ticular ideas, were assessed in a highly creativecontext inwhich ideas are likely to be relatively highin novelty. Subsequently, we conducted a lab ex-periment (Study 2) in which we manipulated ideanovelty (assuming comparable usefulness) to di-rectly test our full model and facilitate causalinferences.

STUDY 1: METHOD

Sample and Procedures

In Study 1, we collected data from employees andtheir supervisors in a video game and animationcompany located in southern China. Employeeswere nested in groups working on specific projects,each headed by a group manager (“supervisor”).These groups, in turn, were nested within 16 di-visions that were involved in various types of crea-tive work, including screenwriting, scriptwriting,animation and visual art design, software develop-ment and programming, digital music composingandblending, andR&D.A fewdivisions (e.g., financeand administration) were involved in different typesof work as compared to typically creative divisionssuch as art design, but employees in all divisions hadsufficient scope for creative work in terms of de-signing novel work processes, services, or solutionsunique to their role. Supervisors had reasonableautonomy in managing their projects and allocatingresources for developing and implementing em-ployees’ creative ideas.

To mitigate concerns regarding common sourcebias (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee, & Podsakoff,2003), we collected data at two different time points(T1, T2) and from different data sources. Our two


independent variables related to Hypothesis 1 andHypothesis 3 (idea enactment and influence tactics),control variables, and the mediator (creativity as-sessment) were measured at T1; the dependent var-iable (implementation) was measured at T2, onemonth later. At T1, 279 employees and 66 supervi-sors participated in our survey; at T2, 280 employeesand 64 supervisors participated in our survey. Acrossthe two time points, we were able to match data from192 employees and 54 supervisors across 16 divi-sions.2 In the final sample of 192 employees, 35.9%were female. The average organizational tenure of theemployees was 3.18 years (SD 5 4.03), and their av-erage agewas 28.53 years (SD5 7.31). Similarly, of the54 supervisors in the final sample, 30.2%were female.The average organizational tenure of the supervisorswas 5.05 years (SD5 4.46), and their average agewas32.24 years (SD 5 7.38).

Before the surveys were conducted, the CEO in-troduced the research team to all employees andsupervisors via email, encouraged them to partici-pate in the study, and assured them that all responseswould be kept confidential. We distributed paper-based surveys to the employees and supervisors andasked them to return the completed surveys to theresearch team in sealed envelopes. The surveyswereadministered in Chinese. Before conducting thesurveys, we translated the English items into Chi-nese by following the translation back-translationprocedures recommended by Brislin (1970).

Measures

Idea enactment. This variable was reported byemployees at T1 (Cronbach’sa5 .85).We developed

three items to measure this construct based onHarvey’s (2014) theoretical notion of “enactingideas,” Carlile’s (2002) work on “drawings,” andHarrison and Rouse’s (2015) work on “prototypes.”The stem question asked participants, “When youattempt to offer or suggest a new idea to your super-visor, how frequently do you engage in each of thefollowing behaviors?” (Likert-type scale rangingfrom 1 5 never to 7 5 always). Our three items in-cluded (1) “Illustrate the idea through suchmeans aswritten descriptions, PowerPoint presentations,drawings, or storyboards”; (2) “Conduct a pilot orsimulation to show how the idea could work”; and(3) “Develop a prototype or other sample to demon-strate the value of the idea.”3

Upward influence tactics. Employees provideddata on influence tactics at T1 (overall Cronbach’sa 5 .92). We used 15 items from the Influence Be-havior Questionnaire (Yukl et al., 2008) to measurethe four “core” influence tactics that have beenshown to be consistently effective across multiplestudies (Yukl, 2010; Yukl &Michel, 2006; Yukl et al.,2008; Yukl & Tracey, 1992). We slightly adapted theitems by changing the wording from “proposal” or“proposed activity” to “proposed ideas” to fit thecreative context better. Thus, we asked employees

2 Therewere a total of 381 employees and85 supervisorsin the company. This yielded a response rate of 73.2% forthe T1 employee survey, 77.6% for the T1 supervisor sur-vey, 73.5% for the T2 employee survey, and 75.3% for theT2 supervisor survey.We also examinedwhether our finalmatched sample (employee n 5 192, supervisor n 5 54)across two time points was representative of the totalpopulation in the company in terms of demographiccomposition. A comparison based on the company’s rosterrevealed that our final matched sample and the total pop-ulation in the company did not differ significantly in termsof employee gender (x2 5 0.04, p. .05), age (t5 0.13, p..05), education (t5 0.32, p. .05), tenure (t5 0.07,p. .05),or supervisor gender (x2 5 0.03, p . .05), age (t 5 20.39,p . .05), education (t 5 20.01, p . .05), or tenure(t 5 20.70, p . .05). These results indicate that our finalsample was fairly representative of the company’s totalpopulation.

3 A pilot study using a separate MTurk sample (N 5195) showed that this three-item scale possessed appro-priate psychometric properties. In this pilot study, wetested whether this enactment scale (Cronbach’s a 5 .87in our pilot study sample) was related to, yet distinctfrom, the following five measures in a nomological net-work: (1) a four-item creativity measure fromTierney et al.(1999), (2) a three-item implementation measure (Baer,2012), (3) an 11-item creative process engagementmeasure(i.e., problem identification, information searching andencoding, and idea generation; Zhang & Bartol, 2010), (4) anine-item innovative behavior scale (Janssen, 2001; Scott &Bruce, 1994), and (5) a six-item voicemeasure (VanDyne&LePine, 1998). The idea enactment measure was signifi-cantly associated with these other theoretically relatedmeasures: the correlations between idea enactment andthe five measures were renact, creativity 5 0.64 (p , .01),renact, implement5 0.62 (p, .01), renact, engage50.61 (p, .01),renact, inno 5 0.69 (p, .01), and renact, voice 5 0.56 (p, .01),respectively. Further, confirmatory factor analysisshowed that the hypothesized six-factor model fit thedata well, x2 (137) 5 322.19, p , .01; CFI 5 0.95;RMSEA50.08; SRMR50.04). This six-factormodel alsohad a significantly better fit than any other five-factormodel, where the idea enactment itemswere loaded ontoother shared factors (the smallest D x2 (5)5 64.93, p, .01),thus providing initial support for the discriminant validityof our idea enactment measure.


to what extent they used each of the following ap-proaches when they had creative ideas that theywould like their supervisors to help approve, sup-port, or develop: (1) rational persuasion (four items,a50.86; a sample itemwas “Use facts and logic to tryto make a persuasive case for your proposed idea”);(2) inspirational appeal (four items, a 5 0.84; asample item was “Say your proposed idea is an op-portunity to do something really exciting andworthwhile”); (3) consultation (three items,a50.80;a sample itemwas“Askyoursupervisor to suggesthowyou could make your idea more helpful to him or herwith a task or problem”); and (4) collaboration (fouritems, a 5 0.86; a sample item was “Offer to provideany assistance the supervisor would need to make theideahappen”). Respondents used a5-point Likert-typescale ranging from1 (never) to 5 (very often). A second-orderconfirmatory factoranalysis, inwhicheachof thefour dimensions loaded significantly onto the higher-order factor, fit the datawell, x2 (86)5 174.25, p, .01;CFI5 0.95; RMSEA5 0.07; SRMR5 0.05.

Supervisors’ assessment of employee creativity.This measure was reported by supervisors at T1 us-ing four items (Cronbach’s a 5 .95) from Tierney,Farmer, and Graen (1999). We asked the supervisorsto rate how they perceived their direct subordinates’creativity with the following stem question: “In thepast one year, how characteristic were the followingbehaviors of this employee?” (Likert-type scale rangingfrom15 extremelyuncharacteristic to 75 extremelycharacteristic). A sample item was “This employeegenerates novel but operable work-related ideas.”

Implementation. This measure was reported bysupervisors at T2 (Cronbach’s a 5 .92), one monthafter T1. To measure implementation, we used athree-item scale from Baer (2012). We asked supervi-sors to “rate the frequency with which, in the past,4

[this employee’s] ideas . . . (1) have been approved forfurther development, (2) have been transformed intousableproducts, processes, orprocedures, and (3)havebeen successfully brought to market or have beensuccessfully implemented at [the focal company].”Supervisors used a 5-point Likert-type scale rangingfrom 1 (never) to 5 (always) to answer these questions.

Control variables. First, we controlled for leader–member exchange (LMX), as LMX has been shown

to be related to supervisors’ ratings of their sub-ordinates’ performance (Gerstner & Day, 1997) andcreativity (Tierneyet al., 1999). LMXwas reported byemployees at T1. We used an eight-item adaptationof the LMX7measure (Scandura & Graen, 1984) withminor wording changes suggested by Bauer andGreen (1996). A sample item was “I would view myworking relationship with mymanager as extremelyeffective” (Cronbach’s a5 .89). Second, consideringthat supervisors may respond to employees’ generaleffort rather than to specific behaviors,we controlledfor employees’ perseverance of effort (Duckworth,Peterson, Matthews, & Kelly, 2007). A sample itemwas “I am a hard worker” (Cronbach’s a 5 .77).Lastly, we controlled for some employee individualdifferences that have been shown to be related to ideageneration and creativity: organizational tenure(Amabile, 1996), employee gender (Proudfoot,Kay, & Koval, 2015), level of education (Farmer,Tierney, & Kung-McIntyre, 2003; 05 high school orless, 1 5 vocational school, 2 5 bachelor’s degree,3 5 master’s degree or greater), and creative self-efficacy (Richter, Hirst, van Knippenberg, & Baer,2012) (Cronbach’s a 5 .87).

Analytical Strategy

Because of the hierarchical structure of these data,wherein the 192 employees were nested within 54supervisors, who in turn were nested within 16 di-visions, we first calculated the intraclass correlationcoefficients (ICCs) for our mediator “creativity as-sessment” and dependent variable “implementa-tion”: group-level ICC(1)creativity assessment5 .52,F(53,138) 5 4.88, p , .01; division-level ICC(1)creativityassessment5 .23,F(15, 176)54.59,p, .01; group-levelICC(1)implementation5 .75, F(53, 138)5 11.77, p, .01;division-level ICC(1)implementation 5 .27, F(15, 176)55.62, p , .01. These results suggest that these vari-ables contained significant between-supervisor aswell as between-division variances. Accordingly,weused multilevel modeling in Stata 13.0 (Rabe-Hesketh & Skrondal, 2008) to test Hypothesis 1 andHypothesis 3, specifying a three-level model to ac-count for both between-division and between-groupeffects. To test our entiremediationmodel,weused aregression-based method (Hayes, 2013) with theMonte Carlo simulation approach recommendedby Bauer, Preacher, and Gil (2006) and Preacher,Zyphur, and Zhang (2010) to estimate confidenceintervals for the conditional indirect effects. To fa-cilitate the interpretations of the coefficients, wegrand mean-centered all of the predictors.

4 Due to an administrative error, the implementationquestiondidnot specify the “1year” time framementionedin the creativity assessment question. Given the timing ofour survey around the annual appraisals that have a one-year time frame, we believe this mismatch might be lessproblematic. Nonetheless, it is a limitation.


STUDY 1: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Table 1 shows the descriptive statistics and Pear-son’s correlations among all the study variables.Table 2 shows the regression results of our three-level hierarchical analyses.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis

Since our data were nested across three levels, wefirst performed a multilevel confirmatory factoranalysis to examine the extent to which employees’self-reported measures (i.e., idea enactment at T1,influence tactics at T1) and the supervisor-reportedmeasures (i.e., creativity at T1, implementation atT2) captured distinct constructs. Given that ourtheoretical focuswas at the individual level (level 1),we specified indicators of the four variables to loadonto their respective latent variables at level 1. Atlevels 2 and 3, we aimed for a simple structure andspecified for all the group or department mean vari-ables (i.e., random intercepts) to load onto one ag-gregated latent variable at each higher level. Simplerfactor structures are often found at the higher level(Dedrick & Greenbaum, 2011; Dyer, Hanges, & Hall,2005), and they help alleviate estimation prob-lems such as lack of convergence in multilevel

confirmatory factor analysis (Muthen, 1994). Theresults showed that the four-factor model fit the datawell, x2 (253) 5 275.22, p . .05; CFI 5 0.99;RMSEA 5 0.02; SRMRlevel 1 5 0.05. Chi-square differ-ence tests indicated that this model was a better fitthan the alternativemodels where some factors werecombined at level 1.

Hypothesis Testing

Hypothesis 1 predicted that employees’ idea en-actment and use of upward influence tactics wouldinteract such that the effects of idea enactment oncreativity assessment would be strongest when theuse of influence tactics was also high. As Model 3(Table 2) indicates, the interaction between influ-ence tactics and idea enactment was significant, B50.17,p, .01. This interaction is plotted inFigure2.Asimple slope test (Cohen, Cohen, West, & Aiken,2003) indicated that the relationship between em-ployees’ idea enactment and their supervisors’ as-sessment of creativitywas significantwhenemployeesused a higher level of influence tactics (mean 1 1 SD;estimate5 0.19),p, .05,whereas itwasnot significantwhen employees used a lower level of influence tac-tics (mean2 1 SD; estimate 5 20.05), p . .05. Thus,Hypothesis 1 was supported.

TABLE 1Descriptive Statistics and Correlation Matrix (Study 1)

Variable Mean SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

1 Idea enactment 3.93 1.25 (.85)2 Influence tactics 3.49 0.71 .46** (.92)3 Enactment3

influence14.11 6.12 .91** .75**

4 Supervisor’sassessment ofemployeecreativity

4.37 1.18 .05 .16* .12 (.95)

5 Implementation 2.30 1.00 .14* .13† .17* .40** (.92)6 LMX 4.91 0.98 .24** .15* .22** .10 .17* (.89)7 Perseverance of

effort5.30 0.74 .33** .34** .37** .07 2.01 .19** (.77)

8 Creative self-efficacy

4.90 1.02 .47** .47** .54** 2.01 .12 .28** .61** (.87)

9 Gender 0.36 0.48 2.17* 2.01 2.11 2.11 2.09 2.15* .02 2.12†

10 Education 1.57 0.71 .17* .24** .22** 2.06 .10 .15* .06 .12† .0511 Organizational

tenure3.18 4.03 .11 .01 .08 .03 2.12 2.01 .11 .10 2.09 2.25**

Notes: Individual n 5 192; group n 5 54; division n 5 16. The reliability of each measure is displayed on the diagonal of the matrix (inparentheses). Gender: 05male, 15 female. Education: 05high school or less, 15vocational school, 25bachelor’s degree, 35master’s degreeor greater. Caution must be exercised in interpreting some of these relationships because the study analyses were conducted taking into theaccount that individuals are nested within three levels.

† p , .10 (two-tailed)* p, .05 (two-tailed)

** p , .01 (two-tailed)


Hypothesis 3 predicted that creativity assessmentwill be positively related to implementation. Asshown in Model 7 (Table 2), creativity assessment(T1) was significantly related to implementation(T2),B5 0.22, p, .01, even after controlling for ideaenactment, influence tactics, and their interaction.Thus, Hypothesis 3 was supported.

To test our model as a whole, we adopted thesimulation-basedprocedures recommendedbyBaueret al. (2006) and Preacher et al. (2010). The resultsshowed that, while the indirect effect of idea enact-ment on implementation via creativity assessmentwas significant at higher levels of influence tactics(estimate 5 0.04, 95% CI [0.01, 0.08]), it was notsignificant at lower levels of influence tactics (esti-mate 5 20.01, 95% CI [20.05, 0.02]; D estimate 50.05, 95% CI [0.01, 0.11]). Thus, this integrativeanalysis provided support for Hypothesis 3 and alarge part of our overall model (see Figure 1).

Discussion

Study 1 offered initial empirical support for Hy-potheses 1 and 3. Specifically, the effect of employees’idea enactment behavior on their supervisors’ crea-tivity assessment was positive and significant onlywhen enactment was accompanied by the use ofinfluence tactics. Further, supervisors’ assessmentsof employee creativity were significantly related toimplementation.

Despite certain strengths, our field study wasplagued by several limitations. First, we were notable to make causal inferences due to the cross-sectional design. Second, our theorizing implicitlyassumes that the ideas being put forth by employeesare truly creative (e.g., novel). However, because weexamined only the effects of employees’ general useof idea enactment and influence tactics on supervi-sors’ overall creativity ratings of employees’ ideas,

TABLE 2Hierarchical Linear Modeling Results: Interactive Effects of Idea Enactment and Influence Tactics (Study 1)

Creativity Assessment (Time 1) Implementation (Time 2)

Predictors Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5 Model 6 Model 7

Intercept 4.07** 4.19** 4.12** 2.05** 2.11** 2.08** 2.16**(0.26) (0.26) (0.26) (0.19) (0.19) (0.19) (0.17)

Control variablesGender 20.09 20.10 20.15 0.08 0.07 0.04 0.06

(0.15) (0.15) (0.15) (0.10) (0.10) (0.09) (0.09)Education 0.15 0.09 0.09 0.10 0.07 0.08 0.05

(0.11) (0.11) (0.11) (0.07) (0.07) (0.07) (0.07)Organizational tenure 0.01 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 20.00 20.00

(0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.01) (0.01) (0.01) (0.01)Creative self-efficacy 20.03 20.13 20.14 0.16** 0.11* 0.11* 0.13*

(0.08) (0.09) (0.09) (0.05) (0.05) (0.05) (0.05)Perseverance of effort 0.22* 0.19† 0.21† 20.05 20.07 20.06 20.11†

(0.11) (0.11) (0.11) (0.07) (0.07) (0.07) (0.06)LMX 20.02 20.02 20.01 0.00 20.00 0.01 0.01

(0.07) (0.07) (0.07) (0.04) (0.04) (0.04) (0.04)Independent variablesIdea enactment 0.08 0.07 0.06 0.05 0.03

(0.06) (0.06) (0.04) (0.04) (0.04)Influence tactics 0.22* 0.28** 0.09 0.13† 0.08

(0.11) (0.11) (0.07) (0.07) (0.07)Enactment3 influence 0.17** 0.10** 0.06†

(0.06) (0.04) (0.04)Creativity assessment 0.22**

(0.05)Log restricted-likelihood 2276.91 2275.93 2273.92 2206.30 2207.47 2206.14 2197.41R2 0.02 0.04 0.09 0.06 0.08 0.12 0.20

Notes: Individual n5 192, group n5 54, division n5 16. All numerical predictors have been grand-mean centered. Standard errors are inparentheses. R-square values indicate percentage of variance in the dependent variables accounted by each of the models (Snijders & Bosker,1999).

† p , .10 (two-tailed)* p , .05 (two-tailed)

** p , .01 (two-tailed)


the question remains whether enactment and influ-ence would work interactively for all or any ideasor if these effects arise only when ideas are high innovelty. To address these concerns directly, weconducted Study 2, a lab experiment.

STUDY 2: METHOD

Sample and Procedures

Study 2 involved a lab experiment conducted at amid-Atlantic university in the United States. A totalof 294 undergraduate studentswithwork experience(full time or part time) participated in our study inexchange for partial course credit. Of these 294participants, we excluded 30 participants due tocareless responding on pre-designed questionswith clear correct answers (Meade & Craig, 2012).Of the final 264 participants, 55.7% were maleand 44.3% were female. The majority of partici-pants were Caucasian (55.9%), the average agewas 21 years (SD 5 1.67), and the average total(part-time or full-time) work experience was 4 years(SD 5 3.02).

To build on Study 1 and further test whether ideaenactment and influence tactics would affect crea-tivity assessment differentially based on the noveltyof specific product ideas, we employed a 2 (ideaenactment: enactment vs. no enactment) 3 2 (influ-ence: high vs. low) 3 2 (idea novelty: high vs. low)between-subjects design. Participants were randomlyassigned to one of the eight conditions. They wereinstructed to read a short business scenario, watch avideo titled “New Product Meeting,” and answer afew questions.

The scenario and video setup. At the beginningof the study, all participants were instructed to readthe following scenario:

Imagine that you have taken a job as a productmanagerin charge of several product lines in the EnergizingBattery Company, a national manufacturer of batteriesheadquartered in themid-AtlanticUnitedStates. In oneof your tasks as product manager, you are responsiblefor developing and marketing new products or signifi-cant extensions of current products. You will bewatching a short video (about threeminutes long) abouta business scenario in which one of your subordinates,an employee named Taylor Smith, has come to youroffice to discuss a new product idea. You are asked totake the point of view of the manager in this situation.

After reading the scenario, participants in eachcondition watched a short video. All videos acrossthe eight conditions showed the same situation,wherein an employee named Taylor Smith (playedby a hired actor) pitched a new battery product ideato the participant (i.e., the boss in this setting). Thevideos varied in terms of the levels of product ideanovelty, idea enactment, and influence tactics thatTaylor Smith used. We carefully developed theprops used by the actor in the high enactment con-ditions (e.g., the battery design posters, the actualprototypes of the battery products, the battery labels)using professional artists and engineers employing3D-printing technology. Sample screenshots of thesevideos and prototypes are available in Appendix A.

Idea novelty manipulation. The idea noveltymanipulation was achieved by using two batteryproduct ideas. In the high novelty idea conditions(n 5 134), the employee was selling a novel idea

FIGURE 2The Interactive Effect of Idea Enactment and Influence Tactics on Creativity Assessment (Study 1)

Low Idea Enactment High Idea Enactment

Low InfluenceTactics

High InfluenceTactics

Cre

ativ

ity

Ass

essm

ent

7

6.5

6

5.5

5

4.5

4

3.5

3

2.5

2


about a rechargeable AA batterywith anUSB port onthe side of the battery body, which allowed the bat-tery to be charged by a computer, and then used as anormal AA battery or to charge devices with a USBport. In the lownovelty idea conditions (n5130), theemployee was selling a relatively familiar (albeitincrementally enhanced) four-bay electrical plug-inbattery charger with LED indicators, which couldcharge AA batteries for use in typical devices.

To determine the appropriateness of the two ideaswe chose to represent high versus low noveltyproduct ideas, we first conducted a pilot study usinga separate sample of 182 respondents recruitedthrough Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Theseparticipants evaluated five battery product ideas orsolutions on their novelty andusefulness. A 40-wordsummary for each product idea, along with a visual,was presented, as shown in Appendix B (Table B1).The order inwhich the five ideaswere presentedwasrandomized. Participants were asked to rate eachidea on its novelty and usefulness using a 7-pointLikert-type scale (1 5 strongly disagree to 7 5strongly agree). Idea novelty was rated using threeitems: (1) “This product is original,” (2) “This prod-uct is a new way to solve problems,” and (3) “Thisproduct is a breakthrough” (Cronbach’s a rangedfrom .87 to .94 across the products). Usefulness wasrated using two items: (1) “This product is useful”and (2) “This product can be useful in solving cus-tomer problems” (Cronbach’s a ranged from .72 to.87 across the products). A one-sample t test based onthe average of the three novelty items for eachproduct revealed that the USB battery product(Product A1 in Table B1) was rated as themost novelproduct (Meannovelty 5 5.51), whereas the four-baybattery charger with LED indicators (Product A5 inTable B1) was rated as the least novel product(Meannovelty 5 2.91), Dnovelty 5 2.60, t(181)5 19.90,p , .01. The usefulness rating for the most novelproduct (the USB battery; Meanusefulness 5 5.79) didnot significantly differ from that of the least novelproduct (four-bay battery charger; Meanusefulness 55.77), Dusefulness5 0.02, t(181)5 0.24, p. .05. Basedon thesepretest findings and tomaximize the noveltycontrast betweenproducts,we chose theUSBbattery(Product A1) as our most novel product idea and thefour-bay battery charger (Product A5) as the lownovelty or familiar product idea in the main study.

Idea enactment manipulation. In the high ideaenactment conditions (n5 133), the actor illustratedthe proposed newbattery product by using a productdesign poster and a prototype designed and outputvia3Dprinting.Whiledemonstrating theseprototypes,

the actor used verbal narratives to introduce and ex-plain the product idea. This script was identical in the“enactment” and “no enactment” conditions, with theonly difference being that, in the no idea enactmentconditions (n 5 131), the actor used the sameverbal narrative without any visual illustration.

Although the two products required differentversions of the product designs, visuals, and pro-totypes, we ensured that the designs, colors, andlayouts of these props were equivalent for the twoproducts. Because the enactment manipulationdepended on the product being enacted, our videosfor the enactment manipulation were created in con-junction with the idea novelty manipulation. Wedrafted two parallel scripts for the actor to use to ex-plain the two products.5 When introducing the highnovelty product, Taylor used the following script:

Hi, Boss. Thanks for setting aside time to meet withme about a new product idea for a battery chargerI’ve been working for some time now. So here it goes.

I call the new product, “Continuity.”

Although the product is in the shape of a regular re-chargeable AA battery, it uniquely has a USB inter-face at the lower end of the battery body.

5 Although we rigorously coached the actor in keepinghis voice andbehavior constant across all these conditions,there remains the possibility that the actor may havereacted more positively toward the novel ideas than thefamiliar ideas, or in the enactment conditions than thenon-enactment conditions during his acting. To ensure that ourvideos did not have this affect-based confounding effect,we pretested themusing anotherMTurk sample (N5 199).Participants were randomly assigned to each of the fourvideo groups (Enactment3Novelty), and instructed to payattention to the presenter’s facial expressions, body lan-guage, and verbal tone while watching the videos. Then,we asked the participants to rate the actor’s emotional ex-pressions using the nine-item scale created by Bartel andSaavedra (2000). This scale provides coders with a key listof behaviors indicative of emotion and mood and asksthem to rate these expressions on a scale ranging from 1(strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree); it has been shownto be valid and reliable (Barsade, 2002). Sample items in-cluded “The presenter slightly raised his eyebrows,” “Thepresenter showed a closed-lip smile (grin),” “The pre-senter’s tone involved varied inflection,” and “The pre-senter’s hands are active during speech.” The Cronbach’salpha inourpretestwas .78.Analysis of variance (ANOVA)results revealed that there were no significant differencesin theactor’s emotional expressions across these four videoconditions, F(3,195) 5 1, p . .05, thus helping to rule outthis alternative explanation in our video manipulations.


Thismeans that theContinuity battery can be chargedby computer. This is because its USB port allows thebattery to be connected by cable to the USB port on acomputer, or actually to any charging device with aUSBport. It can also be charged via awall plug using acommon USB adapter.

The charged Continuity battery can then be used tocharge devices that have USB ports. For instance, thecharged battery can be used to charge a cell phone. Itcan also be used to charge other devices that arecharged throughUSBports, such as a game console orMP3 player.

Aside from being chargeable via the USB port, an-other unique aspect of the Continuity battery is that itcan also function as a traditional battery in productsthat use regular rechargeable batteries such as a clock,a remote control, or flashlights.

Overall, the idea is that the Continuity battery can becharged by any device with a USB port such as acomputer—and even by wall plug using a commonadapter. In turn, the chargedContinuity battery canbeused to power any device that uses traditional bat-teries. It can also be used to charge more recent elec-tronic devices that have only USB ports. This makesthe Continuity battery extremely unique and excep-tionally versatile. [286 words]

When introducing the lownovelty product, Taylorused the following script:

Hi, Boss. Thanks for setting aside time to meet withme about a new product idea for a battery charger I’vebeen working for some time now. So here it goes.

I call the new product, “Continuity.”

Unlike traditionalAAbatterychargers that arecurrentlyavailable on the market, the Continuity charger canrecharge anyAA rechargeable battery in two-thirds ofthe time, making it faster than the available options.

The charger has four separate bays. This means that itcan charge up to four AA batteries at the same timewithout affecting the charging speed. Even justcharging one or two batteries at a time works well.What’s more, each charging bay has a correspondingLED indicator to show the charging process clearly.When the battery is charged fully, the red light auto-matically turns off, thereby indicating if and whenthe battery is ready for use.

The charged batteries can then be used to charge avariety of devices, many of which use multiple AAbatteries. For instance, the charger can quickly re-charge AA batteries for use in a variety of familiarbattery-rundevices, suchas a clock, flashlight, remotecontrol, computer mouse, calculator, or toy car.

We could offer the “Continuity” with 4 AA recharge-able batteries as a package.

Overall, the Continuity battery charger is also very light-weight, easy to load, and can plug easily into an electricoutlet to enable battery charging. It is compatible withworldwidevoltagerequirements, therebymakingitusableall over theworld. “Continuity” is also better looking thantheconventionalblack-coloredchargersavailable.All thisand it charges in two-thirds of the time taken by compa-rable chargers. These various features would make Con-tinuity evenmore unique and versatile. [286 words]

Influence tactics manipulation. After introduc-ing the product idea through verbal explanation(with or without visual illustration, based on theenactment condition) in the first half of the video, theactor then used (high or low) influence tactics in thesecond half. Our manipulation of influence tacticswas theoretically driven and was aimed at tappinginto and being consistent with the definitions of thefour dimensions mentioned previously. However,while both conditions had all four tactics being used(to avoid potential confounds regarding the numberof tactics employed), the arguments in the high in-fluence conditions were stronger and more persua-sive as compared to those in the low influenceconditions. In the high influence conditions (n 5131), the actor made the following remarks:

This would be a really great product to introducenow because the market for flexible battery options isestimated to be growing at the rate of 30% per year.With this Continuity product, batteries can easily berecharged multiple times, saving customers’ moneyand helping reduce environmental waste. Easier recharg-ing means more frequent use, which also means thatfewer disposable batteries get thrown away. Thus, ithelps us cater specifically to the niche customer seg-ment interested in flexible, yet environmentallyfriendly battery options. [High rational persuasion]

As you well know, constant innovation and chal-lenging product boundaries have been the corefounding ideals and values for our organization.Imagine what an exciting and awesome opportunitythis would be! The two of us and the rest of the teamget to do something really interesting and worthwhile—just like when we started! Introducing this uniqueproduct now helps our team to achieve our annualgoal of introducing a new and innovative product. Inaddition, it also helps the company gain advantageover competitors by being the first to identify and fill aunique need. This move will help us retain our posi-tion as an agile and innovative company in the eyes ofcustomers. [High inspirational appeal]


I would really appreciate your insights on how to takethis product idea further in terms of next steps. [Highconsultation]

I’m also happy to assist you in any way possible tomake this idea happen. What do you think? [Highcollaboration] [237 words]

In the low influence conditions (n 5 133), theactor made the following remarks:

This product could potentially appeal to our corecustomer market to some extent. I am guessing mostpeople will continue to have ongoing needs for easilyrechargeable batteries. In just looking around at howpeople live these days, I can visualizemany customershaving a need for a product like this. So, theymight bewilling to buy it. Convenient recharging means morefrequent use ofAAbatteries. [Low rational persuasion]

As you well know, top management has been askingfor novel products from all teams, and I think thiscould perhaps be one of the offerings from our teamthis year. The Continuity product would constitute aneeded idea and help us get something going now.This could also help us check off management’s re-quirement for our team this year. I think I have tried tobe very specific in outlining what the product wouldlook like and what it would do. So we should moveforward with making it happen. I think it could po-tentially work. [Low inspirational appeal]

The product idea just needs your approval and sig-nature. And then it will just be a question of work-ing out all the key details such as what is necessaryfor this product to be implemented and then get itto market. [Low consultation]

If I am free from other work, I might be available toassist in making this idea happen—at least if you canalso assign others from the team to help. [Low col-laboration] [237 words]

Measures

Creativity assessment.After they viewed the mani-pulations, we asked participants about their per-ceptions of the creativity of Taylor Smith’s idea. Asnoted earlier, to be deemed creative, ideas shouldbe judged as both novel and useful (e.g., Amabile,1996; Oldham & Cummings, 1996; Tierney et al.,1999; Zhou & George, 2001). To assess novelty, weasked participants to what extent they agreed with thefollowing items: (1)Taylor’s idea isoriginal, (2)Taylor’sidea is a newway to solve problems, and (3) Taylor hasdeveloped a breakthrough idea (Cronbach’s a 5 .81).To assess usefulness, we asked participants to what

extent they agreed with these items: (1) The idea pro-posed by Taylor is useful, and (2) Taylor’s idea canbe useful in solving customer problems (Cronbach’sa5 .79). All items were rated on a 7-point Likert-typescale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (stronglyagree). To ensure that our creativitymeasure capturedboth novelty and usefulness aspects of the idea, weconstructed our creativity score by multiplying thenovelty and usefulness ratings, following in the foot-steps of other researchers (Brown & Baer, 2015;Hoever, van Knippenberg, van Ginkel, & Barkema,2012; Zhou & Hoever, 2014). The resultant multipli-cative creativity score had amean value of 20.50, anda standard deviation of 10.24.

Willingness to implement. To measure partici-pants’ willingness to implement Taylor’s idea, weused the same three items from Baer (2012) used inStudy 1. These items were rated on a 7-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (extremely unlikely) to 7(extremely likely). The Cronbach’s alpha for thisscale was .96.

Amount of investment. As an alternative way tomeasure willingness to implement the idea, we di-rectly asked participants how much money theywere willing to invest in Taylor’s idea comparedto an alternative opportunity. This measure wasintended to help create a sense of opportunity costthat real-world decision-makers face. Participantsread the following scenario:

You are under considerable pressure from upper man-agement to develop and produce an innovative newproduct in your area this year. You have a surplus of$20,000 from last year’s budget that you were plan-ning to use for aiding employees’ new product de-velopment efforts this year.

In addition to Taylor’s new idea, another idea that hasbeen brought to your attention by one of your otheremployees is the “ECO Battery Recycling Service”—an environmentally friendly way to test and disposeof consumer disposable batteries. A one-year sub-scription to this safe recycling service offered by yourcompanywill include (a) onehalf-gallon bin to collectbatteries, (b) prepaid mail-back labels to ship thebatteries to your recycling facility, and (c) packingand shipping materials. Given your company’s tech-nical expertise in battery products and their disposal,this service can be offered at a competitive price andcan help in storing dead batteries safely together untilthey can be recycled in one place, promoting higherrecycling rates. If you approve either project, the projectwill need some upfront disbursal of funds for furtheridea development and testing from the $20,000 pool.


We then asked the participants: “Based on howcreative and promising you feel Taylor’s idea is, howmuch of the $20,000 are you willing to allocate to-ward development of Taylor’s proposed productas compared to the ECO bin project?”

STUDY 2: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Manipulation Checks

Before testing our hypotheses, we checked the effec-tiveness of our three manipulations. Participants’ per-ceptions of the actor’s idea enactment behaviors weremeasured using four items (Cronbach’s a 5 .94). Asample item was “Taylor illustrated the idea throughsuch means as drawings, storyboards, or other visualportrayals.” Next, we adapted four items (Cronbach’sa 5 .71) from the Influence Behavior Questionnaire(Yukl et al., 2008) to capture each dimension of influ-ence tactics. A sample item was “Taylor put forththoughtful logical arguments and facts about why youshouldapprove thisproduct” (rationalpersuasion). Ideanovelty was measured using the same three items usedin our pretest. All items were rated on a 7-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7(strongly agree). A two-sample t test revealed that therewas a significant difference in the enactment scoresbetween the idea enactment (M5 5.68,SD5 0.96) andno enactment (M 5 1.55, SD 5 0.97) conditions,t(262) 5 234.77, p , .01. Similarly, there was a sig-nificant difference in our measured overall influencescores between the high influence (M 5 5.72, SD 50.84) and low influence (M 5 4.27, SD 5 1.12) condi-tions, t(262) 5 211.89, p , .01.6 With respect to thenovelty manipulation, similar to our pretest findings,respondents rated the product with the USB port assignificantlymorenovel (M55.45,SD51.24) than thefour-bay charger with LED indicators (M5 2.93, SD51.34), t(262) 5 28.64, p , .01. These results helpedestablish the effectiveness of the three manipulations.

Hypothesis Testing

Because our lab study involved a 2 (idea enact-ment) 3 2 (influence tactics) 3 2 (idea novelty)

design, we conducted a three-way analysis of vari-ance (ANOVA) to test our hypotheses. Hypothesis 1predicted that idea enactment would interact withinfluence tactics to predict creativity assessment.However, the interaction term was only marginallysignificant, F(1, 256)5 2.80, p, .10, so Hypothesis 1was not supported. An examination of the inter-action revealed a pattern consistent with our hy-pothesis that creativity assessment would be higherwhen enactment and influence were both high.However, as will be seen in the results pertaining toHypothesis 2, the interactive effects of enactmentand influence are more likely to accrue for novel ascompared to familiar products.

Hypothesis 2 predicted that there would be a three-wayinteractiveeffectofenactment, influence, andideanovelty on creativity assessment, such that the in-teractive effects of enactment and influence tacticswould be stronger formore novel ideas as compared toless novel ideas. As expected, the ANOVA results in-dicated a significant three-way interaction, F(1, 256)54.35, p , .05, thus providing initial support for Hy-pothesis 2. To further elucidate thenature of this three-way interaction, we probed the underlying two-wayinteraction between idea enactment and influencetactics at high versus low levels of idea novelty. Theseanalyses revealed that this two-way interaction wassignificant when idea novelty was high, F(1, 130) 56.10, p, .05, but not when idea novelty was low, F(1,126)5 0.10, p. .05. In other words, influence tacticsstrengthened theeffectsof ideaenactmentoncreativityassessment only when idea novelty was high. Theseinteractions are illustrated in Figures 3 and 4. Addi-tional analyses revealed that the highest creativityratings (M 5 29.27) were obtained when idea enact-ment, influence tactics, and idea noveltywere all high.As Table 3 indicates, mean creativity ratings in thiscondition were significantly higher than the creativitymeans in the other seven conditions.7

6 Similar comparisons revealed that the two conditionsalso differed significantly on all four dimensions of influ-ence: rational persuasion (DM 5 21.23), t(262) 5 27.5,p , .01, inspirational appeal (DM 5 21.74), t(262) 5210.83, p , .01, consultation (DM 5 21.36), t(262) 526.08, p , .01, and collaboration (DM 5 21.47), t(262) 527.86, p , .01.

7 Although our theoretical and empirical focus was onthe evaluators’ overall creativity ratings, Montag, Maertz,and Baer (2012) stressed the need for researchers to ex-amine novelty and usefulness separately, since thesecharacteristics are not always aligned. In our case, noveltyand usefulness were positively related to each other, r 50.39,p, .01, aswell as to creativity, rs50.93, 0.65,p, .01.Furthermore, the general pattern of the ANOVA resultswas the same for both dimensions, suggesting that the ob-served effects reflected both novelty and usefulness. Inaddition, we created an alternative creativity score by av-eraging the novelty and usefulness scores and reran all ouranalyses with this measure. The pattern of the results andtheir significance were unchanged in this analysis.


Interestingly, the results of the three-way ANOVArevealed a significant two-way interaction betweenidea enactment and novelty on creativity assess-ment, F(1, 256) 5 15.49, p , .01. A comparison of

adjusted means (after controlling for influence)suggested that, when idea novelty was high,enacting ideas helped achieve significantly highercreativity ratings (M 5 25.28; SE 5 1.23) than notenacting ideas (M521.43;SE51.23), t(132)52.46,p , .05. Notably, idea enactment led to signifi-cantly lower creativity ratings when the idea wasless novel, t(128) 5 23.02, p , .01. It seems thatenacting a fairly familiar idea (M 5 12.52, SE 51.24) actually hurts (rather than helps) creativityevaluations as compared to not enacting them (M517.31, SE 5 1.27). This provides further evidencefor our underlying assumption that such tacticswill benefit novel ideas (as compared to familiarideas) more.

Hypothesis 3 predicted that supervisors’ creativityassessment would be positively associated withimplementation. Regression analyses revealed thatcreativity assessment was still significantly posi-tively related to willingness to implement the newidea, B 5 0.11, p , .01, after controlling for enact-ment, influence, and idea novelty. Similar resultswere obtained for our alternative dependent vari-able, amount of investment, B 5 264.35, p , .01.Thus, Hypothesis 3 was supported.

To test our integrated model as a whole, weconducted a bootstrapping analysis (with 1,000 it-erations). First, under the high idea novelty condi-tions, the bootstrapping results (Table 4) showedthat, when influence was high, the indirect effect ofidea enactment via creativity assessment on (1)willingness to implement (estimate 5 0.45; 95%CI [0.19, 0.71]) and (2) the investment amount(estimate51,020.07, 95%CI [416.95, 1671.79])wassignificant. However, when influence was low,these indirect effects were not significant for eitherwillingness to implement (estimate 5 20.01, 95%CI [20.25, 0.25]) or investment (estimate5224.11,95% CI [2610.56, 577.23]). The indirect effect dif-ference test revealed a significant difference forwillingness to implement (estimate5 0.46, 95% CI[0.10, 0.87]) and for investment (estimate 51044.18, 95% CI [224.88, 2013.81]) for differentlevels of influence, thus supporting a moderatedmediation model when the idea was novel.

Second, when examining the low novelty con-ditions, the indirect effect difference test revealedthat the difference was not significant between thelevels of influence for willingness to implement(estimate 5 20.05, 95% CI [20.37, 0.24]) and in-vestment (estimate 5 2105.74, 95% CI [2824.66,538.59]). These results provide additional support forour overall model.

FIGURE 3The Conditional Interactive Effect of Idea

Enactment and Influence Tactics on CreativityAssessment When Idea Novelty is High (Study 2)


Low Influence

High Influence

Cre

ativ

ity

Ass

essm

ent

36

31

26

21

16

11

6

1

When Idea Novelty is High

FIGURE 4The Conditional Interactive Effect of Idea

Enactment and Influence Tactics on CreativityAssessment When Idea Novelty is Low (Study 2)


Low Influence

High Influence

Cre

ativ

ity

Ass

essm

ent

36

31

26

21

16

11

6

1

When Idea Novelty is Low


Discussion

Study 2 allowed us to investigate our theoreti-cal assumption that idea enactment and influencetactics interact to benefit creativity assessment dif-ferentially for useful but novel versus familiar ideas.When the focal idea was high in novelty, the in-teraction of idea enactment and influence tacticsenhanced participants’ creativity assessment, thusreplicating the results in Study 1. In contrast, whenthe focal ideawas low innovelty, idea enactment didnot interact with influence tactics to affect creativityassessment positively. In fact, when the focal ideawas low in novelty, idea enactment had a negativeeffect on creativity assessments.

GENERAL DISCUSSION

Recent research suggests that individuals indecision-making roles may be particularly proneto prematurely dismiss creative ideas, thereby

curtailing these ideas’ prospects for subsequentimplementation. Guided by Dutton and Ashford’s(1993) issue-selling framework, the present re-search tested a dual approach for how employeescan get their creative ideas recognized by their su-pervisor and ultimately implemented. In both afield study and a laboratory experiment, we foundthat, when employees actively enacted their crea-tive ideas and used upward influence tactics, theseactions interacted to positively affect supervisors’assessment of the ideas. Results from the lab ex-periment further showed that the benefits of us-ing this dual approach were more likely to accruewhen selling an idea that, while useful, wasmore novel (i.e., creative) rather than less novel.Our findings also demonstrated that supervisors’assessments of employees’ creativity play an im-portant role in translating employees’ idea enact-ment and influence efforts into implementation,thereby helping to bring employees’ creative ideasto fruition.

TABLE 4Conditional Indirect Effects of Enactment on Dependent Variables (DV) via Creativity Assessment at Different

Levels of the Moderators (Study 2)

Level of the Moderators DV (a) Willingness to Implement DV (b) Intended Investment Amount

IdeaNovelty

InfluenceTactics

IndirectEffect

BootstrapSE 95% CI

IndirectEffect

BootstrapSE 95% CI

High High 0.45 0.13 [0.19, 0.71] 1,020.07 325.06 [416.95, 1671.79]High Low 20.01 0.13 [20.25, 0.25] 224.11 300.97 [2610.56, 577.23]

Difference 0.46 0.19 [0.10, 0.87] 1044.18 453.06 [224.88, 2013.81]Low High 20.28 0.11 [20.52,20.06] 2633.69 266.19 [21228.12,2136.48]Low Low 20.23 0.11 [20.44,20.00] 2572.95 257.79 [21046.60,226.32]

Difference 20.05 0.16 [20.37, 0.24] 2105.74 353.95 [2824.66, 538.59]

Note: Bootstrap iteration5 1,000.

TABLE 3Estimated Marginal Means across All Experimental Conditions (Study 2)

Idea Novelty Idea Enactment Influence Tactics Marginal Means SE 95% CI n

High High High 29.27a 1.58 [26.16, 32.37] 32Low 24.06b 1.51 [21.09, 27.03] 35

Low High 21.19b 1.55 [18.13, 24.25] 33Low 24.25b 1.53 [21.24, 27.26] 34

Low High High 15.79c 1.58 [12.68, 18.89] 32Low 11.93d 1.53 [8.92, 14.95] 34

Low High 20.95b 1.53 [17.94, 23.97] 34Low 16.19c 1.63 [12.99, 19.40] 30

a The value in this cell is significantly higher than the values in other cells.b The values in these cells are not significantly different from one another, but are significantly lower than those indicated with “a” and

higher than those indicated with “c” or “d.”c The values in these cells are not significantly different from each other, but are significantly lower than those indicatedwith “a” or “b” and

significantly higher than those indicated with “d.”d The value in this cell is significantly lower than the values in other cells.


Theoretical Implications

The current research makes several importantcontributions to the literature on creativity and in-novation. First, at a broader level, our study helps toshift the dominant focus in the creativity literaturefrom understanding factors that facilitate creativeidea generation to examining creativity assessment.In doing so, it acknowledges recent research doc-umenting various forces that tend to bias decision-makers against novel ideas (Berg, 2016; Muelleret al., 2012; Zhou et al., 2017).Moreover, it addresseswhat idea creators–employeesmight do to gainmoreappropriate assessments of their ideas by supervisors–decision-makers.

Second, guided by the dual issue-selling approach,we demonstrate the importance of the interactivecombination of creative idea enactment (Harvey,2014) as a “packaging” approach and influence tac-tics as a “selling” approach in identifying employees’options for proactively influencing supervisors’ as-sessment of their creative offerings. Although use ofvarious forms of enactment (e.g., prototypes,Harrison& Rouse, 2015; demos, Rosental, 2005, 2013; sketchesand drawings, Carlile, 2002; presentations, Chen,Yao, & Kotha, 2009) is frequently mentioned in theliterature in the context of other issues (e.g., feedbackseeking; Harrison & Rouse, 2015), scant research hasassessed the utility of this approach in general or forcreativity assessment in particular. Toward that end,we have assessed the role of idea enactment and val-idated its utility in the creativity assessment process.Importantly, our results suggest that the use of crea-tive idea enactment is effective only when pairedwith upward influence tactics.

Although mentions of influence tactics can befound inprior creativity studies (e.g.,Mumford, Scott,Gaddis, & Strange, 2002), the dominant approach inthe creativity literature has been to examine man-agers’ downward influence tactics in effectivelyleading employees’ creative work. This perspectivehas persisted despite the insight fromWoodman et al.(1993) that employees may be able to use upward in-fluence in shaping organizational creative outcomes.The notion of creativity as a social construction pro-cess (Ford, 1996), whereby the creators can poten-tially use persuasion (Kasof, 1995b; Mumford, 2000;Simonton, 1990), also supports the logic here.

In light of the important role of influence tacticsas advanced by Dutton and Ashford’s (1993) “issue-selling process,” our study makes an importantcontribution in pointing specifically to the advan-tages of using idea enactment and influence tactics in

concert to achieve an augmented effect. While thissynergistic effect has been perhaps implicitly sug-gested to exist, neither Dutton and Ashford’s (1993)work nor the creativity and innovation literature hastended to explicitly address this interaction possi-bility either theoretically or empirically. Hence, bydemonstrating the efficacy of using influence tacticsand idea enactment interactively to achieve a favor-able creativity assessment, we not only build theoryby extending the applicability of Dutton andAshford’s (1993) framework to the unique contextof creativity assessment, but also contribute to thecreativity and innovation literatures.

Third, through our laboratory study, we were ableto demonstrate directly our theorized assumptionthat, assuming the new idea has usefulness, the dual-selling approach benefits high novelty ideasmore sothan low novelty ideas. In fact, applying the dualapproach to the less novel product or idea appearedto work to its detriment. The combination of enact-ment and influence tactics likely made a novel ideamore concrete and salient, thereby demonstratingits uniqueness and potential viability and reducingthe uncertainty associated with it. In contrast, in thecase of a low novelty idea, this approach seemed tohighlight the idea’s relatively familiar or mundanenature, adversely affecting the ensuing creativityassessment. Thus, our results suggest that enactmentand influence are not generic tactics that can guar-antee the positive creativity assessment of any or allideas, but, rather, specific tactics that uniquely ad-vantagemore novel ideas by helping managers morereadily perceive the unique aspects of ideas (i.e.,novelty), better appreciate their usefulness, andmoreadeptly evaluate their feasibility for implementation.

Fourth, these conditional results make importantcontributions to Dutton and Ashford’s (1993) frame-work. At a broad level, they significantly extendthe applicability of this framework beyond thechange management domain to the creativity as-sessment literature. Specifically, our study resultssuggest the need to pay greater attention to the natureof the issue being considered. Much of the researchin the issue-selling realmhas tendedeither to assumethat the type of issue is unimportant or to apply theframework to a single issue (such as the environmentor treatment of women). Our results with noveltysuggest the benefit of giving greater attention to theissue under investigation and the dimensions alongwhich the applicability of the frameworkmight vary.For instance, it may be possible to apply the issue-selling framework to the implementation stage ofinnovation, in which case the complexity of the


issues and the level of resources needed may influ-ence the extent and character of the packaging andselling processes. Future research might also exam-ine how such issue characteristics as ease of use,business value, and extent of social approval or proofaffect the efficacy of the dual approach.

Finally, our research not only shows that idea en-actment as moderated by influence tactics can worksynergistically to impact supervisory idea assess-ment, but also demonstrates that the effects carryover to implementation via supervisory assessment.These results are important because scholars (e.g.,Baer, 2012) have been increasingly critical of thetendency to conduct research on factors facilitatingcreativity without verifying that the factors foundto affect creative processes also promote imple-mentation of the creative ideas.

Strengths, Limitations, and Future Directions

From a methodological perspective, the currentresearch has several strengths. First, we conductedtwo studies—a field study and an experimentalstudy—to corroborate our results. The use of a fieldstudy lends some credence to the generalizability ofour model, while the use of an experimental studyallowed us to explicitly demonstrate our underlyingassumption that thedual approachof idea enactmentand influence tactics would be effective in sellingnovel, but notmundane, ideas. Second, the lab studyallowed us to verify important causal relationships.Third, in the field study, we collected data frommultiple sources at different time points, thus re-ducing the potential for common source bias(Podsakoff et al., 2003).

Despite its strengths, though, the current researchhas some potential limitations, which also point toareas for future research. First, although we wereable to measure respondents’ willingness to imple-ment employees’ ideas in the experimental studyand to measure the supervisor’s estimate of the fea-sibility of implementing an employee’s creativeideas in the field study,wewere not able to verify theactual implementation of a particular project. Futureresearch, however, might seek to trace ideas fromtheir proposal, supported by the employee’s ideaenactment and use of influence tactics, through tothe actual implementation at the project level.

Second, due to the research design, we collecteddata on creativity assessment and intention to im-plement from the same respondents at the same timein the laboratory study, which raises the possibilityof common source bias for those results. Even in our

field study, supervisors provided data on both crea-tivity assessment and implementation, although thedata collection waves were separated by one month.Prior research (Baer, 2012) has suggested that ideaimplementation—that is, whether a specific idea hasbeen implemented or been provided resources forimplementation—is a reasonably objective determi-nation in field settings, thereby reducing the threatdue to the source of such ratings. Nonetheless, futureresearch that uses different sources for creativityassessments and intentions to implement or moreobjective measures of implementation would bevaluable.

Third, although we collected data at two differenttime points in the field study, we were unable tocapture the changing dynamics of the use of ideaenactment and influence tactics in the iterative pro-cess of innovation. Theorists on creativity and in-novation have pointed out that innovation is acyclical, recursive process of idea generation, eval-uation, and implementation that unfolds over time(Harvey & Kou, 2013; Paulus, 2002; Van de Ven,Angle, & Poole, 1989). Thus, future researchersmight take the time issue into account and studyhow employees’ idea enactment, influence tactics,and supervisors’ assessments co-evolve over time toachieve final implementation. For instance, ideaenactment in the form of prototypes and the influ-ence tactics that accompany them may undergo fur-ther development as the implementation processprogresses. Also, tactics such as idea enactment maybe useful in involving peers in the process, therebybuilding coalitions to facilitate implementation. Al-thoughcoalitionbuildinghasbeensuggested tobe animportant element of upward issue selling (Duttonet al., 2001), the use of packaging tactics such as ideaenactment in building coalitions with lateral peerscould inspire some intriguing research. In this con-text, it would also be interesting to test the “toomuchof a good thing” effect—whether too-frequent usesof enactment and influence tactics might lead todecreasing returns after some point.

Fourth, our focus in this research was on idea en-actment as the “packaging” choice within Duttonand Ashford’s (1993) model. Future research mightexplore other packaging devices, such as ways toframe creativity issues or bundle options. Similarly,other aspects of the sellingprocess, such as involvingothers and using more informal forums, might en-hance the idea’s prospects or be particularly appro-priate at later stages of idea development andimplementation. Conceptualizing selling as voicemight also open up new lines of inquiry about


encouraging employees to be more proactive in sell-ing their ideas.

Fifth, due to time constraints in survey adminis-tration, we were unable to measure the specificcognitive and behavioral processes and other microintervening mechanisms underlying our effects.Future research might wish to examine how lack ofmanagerial attention limits possibilities of idea as-sessment and how employees facing such circum-stances might gain managerial attention to pitch anidea. Overall, it would be productive for future re-search to more directly measure and examine spe-cific intervening processes.

Practical Implications

The results of the current study indicate that em-ployees’ dual use of idea enactment behaviors andinfluence tactics has an important impact on super-visors’ assessment of the focal employees’ creativity.Employees are well advised to use both of theseapproaches when introducing their creative ideas tosupervisors. By putting their ideas into tangibleforms and making persuasive arguments on theirbehalf, employees can make their ideas more in-telligible and noticeable to their supervisors, therebyincreasing the odds that their ideas will be recog-nized and ultimately implemented. However, thispractical advice comes with a caveat: those ideasmust be both novel and useful. Otherwise, the use ofthe dual strategy may backfire and expose the pe-destrian nature of ideas that are low in creativity.

Supervisors could apply these findings by bothencouraging the use of idea enactment and askingquestions that align with the focal employee’s in-fluence tactics. For instance, they might inquireabout the rationale behind the idea, ask the employeeif he or she is open to suggestions, query linkages toorganizational values, or inquire about collaborationpossibilities. In this way, supervisors may be ableto manage their own attention, be more open to em-ployee ideas (Detert & Burris, 2007), andmake betterjudgments regarding creative ideas. This strategyalso may quickly expose less creative ideas, so thatmore time can be given to more promising, morenovel options.

Given prior research indicating that implementa-tion is largely a social–political process (Van deVen,1986; Yuan & Woodman, 2010), supervisors them-selvesmay be better equipped tomove ideas forwardwhen their employees activate idea enactmentand engage in useful influence tactics that help su-pervisors better understand novel ideas and their

implications. At any rate, supervisors should be ableand willing to navigate the sociopolitical ecology oftheir organizations to support the potentially valu-able innovations of their subordinates. Although ourmodel does not directly capture organizational var-iables, it still has organization-wide implications:namely, organizations shouldprovide idea enactment-friendlyworkingenvironments (likePixar’sprovisionof animating storyboards and other resources) andengage in practices that encourage employees’ ideaenactment and upward influence.

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Shuye Lu ([email protected]) is a doctoral can-didate in the management and organization department atthe Robert H. Smith School of Business, University ofMaryland. He received his MA from Columbia Universityand his MBA from Tsinghua University. His research in-terests include creativity, innovation, and organizationalchange.

Kathryn M. Bartol ([email protected]) is theRobert H. Smith Professor of Leadership and Innovationand Department Chair in the management and organi-zation department at the Robert H. Smith School ofBusiness, University of Maryland. She received herPhD from Michigan State University. Her research

interests include leadership, teams, creativity, andinnovation.

Vijaya Venkataramani ([email protected]) is anassociate professor in the management and organizationdepartment at the Robert H. Smith School of Business,University ofMaryland. She receivedherPhD fromPurdueUniversity. Her research interests include organizationalsocial networks, employee creativity and innovation, andleadership.

Xiaoming Zheng ([email protected]) is a fullprofessor in the department of leadership and organizationmanagement at theSchool of Economics andManagement,Tsinghua University. He received his PhD from the In-stitute of Psychology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.His research focuses on work engagement, well-being,ethical leadership, and creativity.

Xin Liu ([email protected]) is an assistant professorin the organization andhuman resources department at theRenminBusiness School, RenminUniversity ofChina. Shereceived her PhD from the School of Economics andManagement, Tsinghua University. Her research interestsinclude creativity, voice, ethics, and leadership.







APPENDIX AMATERIALS FOR STUDY 2

FIGURE A1Manipulations for Idea Enactment and Idea Novelty

High Idea Enactment with High Novelty Product

High Idea Enactment with Low Novelty Product

Low Idea Enactment with High Novelty Product

Low Idea Enactment with Low Novelty Product

FIGURE A2Zoom-In Views of the Prototype

Prototype for High-Novelty Product Prototype for Low-Novelty Product


APPENDIX BMATERIALS FOR STUDY 2 PRETEST

TABLE B1The MTurk Materials Used in the Pretest to Select Ideas for Study 2

Product Visual Description

Product A1 This is a rechargeable AAA/AA battery charger with an USB port on the side. It isdesigned to power any device, whether it takes batteries or has its ownUSBport. It can berecharged by any USB power source. [40 words]

Product A2 This product can charge 2/4/6/8pcs AA/AAAbatteries. It can automatically stop chargingwhendetecting improper inputvoltageor short circuit. The eight LED indicators display ofcharging status.When the batteries are fully charged, the indication lights will turn green.[40 words]

Product A3 This product is a universal, automatic smart-charger compatible with almost all types ofrechargeable AA/AAA batteries, thus eliminating the need to own several chargers. It issmall, light, and can be easily plugged into an electrical outlet on the wall. [40 words]

Product A4 This product charges AA andAAAbatteries, with individual LCD displays of the powerlevel for each battery. It comes with 4 AA rechargeable batteries, is small, light, and canbe easily plugged into an electrical outlet on the wall. [40 words]

Product A5 This product can charge up to 4 AA/AAA batteries, and each battery can be chargedindividually. Two LEDs clearly indicate the charging process, intelligent andconvenient.Automatically cuts offwhen fully charged.Moreprotection for short circuit,input voltage detection. [40 words]


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