Time Pressure and Creativity in Organizations: A Longitudinal Field Study

This study investigated the relationship between time pressure and creativity with a new method for examining daily thoughts, experiences, and events in organizations. Daily electronic questionnaires were obtained over periods of up to 30 weeks from 177 individuals in seven companies as they worked on projects requiring creativity. Narrative reports of events occurring in those projects were used to extract measures of participants’ creative cognitive processing, and daily scale-rated items yielded measures of time pressure. Analyses incorporating several controls, including the number of hours worked, indicated that time pressure on a given day negatively predicted creative cognitive processing that day, one day later, two days later, and over longer time periods as well. The relationship may be a direct one; it was not mediated by intrinsic motivation in this study, and prior research suggests that time pressure may directly constrain cognitive processes related to creativity. These results have theoretical implications for understanding how creativity is affected by various aspects of the work environment, and methodological implications for looking inside the “black box” of creative thinking. Time Pressure and Creativity 1 Time Pressure and Creativity in Organizations: A Longitudinal Field Study Time pressure is becoming an increasingly prominent feature of work in America. Both the business press and the organizational literature have identified a “time famine,” in which people feel that there are never enough hours in the work day (Perlow, 1999). Indeed, it is likely that anyone reading this paper has a daunting “To Do” list on the current mental agenda. At the same time, with the growth of knowledge work, there is an increasingly urgent need for creative thinking in organizations. Are these two trends at odds? Might increasing time pressure be sabotaging organizational efforts to produce useful new ideas? Researchers have paid scant attention to this question, and lay wisdom includes contradictory views about the effects of time pressure. Some people hold that it spurs them on to their best work; others say that it makes high levels of performance almost impossible. In this paper, we report a study examining the relationship between time pressure and creative thinking. In addition, we introduce a new methodology for observing creative thinking as it occurs in organizations. We suggest that time pressure, although it may spur people on to do more work, may undermine precisely the kind of thinking needed to do creative work. Prior research on performance effects has demonstrated clearly that time pressure – defined as either subjectively perceived time pressure or the imposition of a deadline – increases the rate of individual and group performance (Kelly & Karau, 1993, 1999). However, results have been much less consistent on the quality of performance, with evidence of a positive relationship (Kelly & Karau, 1999), a negative relationship (Kelly & McGrath, 1985), a curvilinear relationship indicating an optimal level of moderate time pressure (Isenberg, 1981), and no relationship at all (Bassett, 1979). Importantly, most of this research has focused on the performance of relatively straightforward tasks rather than tasks requiring creativity. Indeed, there is little research directly examining the effect of time pressure on creativity, which is defined as a novel, appropriate response to an open-ended task (Amabile, 1983). We found only four previous studies, with three showing a negative effect and one showing a positive effect. An experimental study found that products generated by groups working under a 10-minute time limit were rated as less creative than those generated by groups working under a 20-minute time limit (Kelly & McGrath, 1985). A survey study of marketing professionals revealed a negative relationship between perceived time pressure and perceived overall creativity of marketing ideas (Andrews & Smith, 1996). A negative effect was also uncovered in a field study of workload pressure, defined by items concerning both perceived time pressure and perceived workload (which were highly inter-related). This study found suggestive (but weak) evidence that greater workload pressure was associated with less creative group projects in organizations (Amabile, Conti, Coon, Lazenby, & Herron, 1996). One field study, however, obtained opposite results; this study, conducted 30 years ago, found a positive relationship between scientists’ reported time pressure at a particular point in Time Pressure and Creativity 2 time and the supervisor-rated innovativeness of their work five years later (Andrews & Farris, 1972). Thus, although prior research on time pressure and creativity generally suggests a negative relationship, the body of empirical evidence is far from robust. Moreover, none of the few previous studies on time pressure and creativity has presented a strong theoretical framework for understanding how time pressure might have its effects. Most importantly, no research has directly examined the process that presumably underlies the production of creative work – creative thinking. We set out to do so in the present study. Creative Cognitive Processing The componential theory of creativity (Amabile, 1983, 1988, 1996) presents a promising framework for understanding the effects of time pressure. This theory, presented in modified form in Figure 1, can be useful in two ways. First, of the three primary theories of organizational creativity (Amabile, 1988; Ford, 1996; Woodman, Sawyer, & Griffin, 1993), it is the only one to include time pressure. Specifically, it predicts that time pressure will have a negative effect on creativity. Second, like other psychological theories of creativity (Campbell, 1960; Simonton, 1999; Sternberg & Lubart, 1991; Wallas, 1926), it outlines the elements of creative thinking, or creative cognitive processing. It suggests two ways in which time pressure might have an effect: by directly affecting creative cognitive processing, and by affecting this processing through a motivational mechanism. Creative cognitive processing is central to creativity theories, because it is this set of various cognitive processes that most immediately determines the creativity of work outcomes. As shown in Figure 1, creative cognitive processing contains four basic elements: (a) identification and understanding of the problem or task, sparked by either an external or an internal stimulus; (b) preparation, involving learning and remembering, which helps to build up, reactivate, and/or incubate relevant information for the particular problem at hand; (c) response generation, or coming up with ideas for solving the problem; and (d) response validation and communication, involving articulating, testing, and trying out the most promising response possibilities. An individual engages in these processes, often cycling repeatedly through the various elements in different sequences, until the problem is solved or the task is completed. To the extent that this process is fostered, outcomes should be more creative. As essential as creative cognitive processing is to any creativity theory, this “black box” has been virtually ignored by prior research – most likely because looking at this processing, particularly in real-world settings, presents formidable methodological challenges. It is important to develop ways to meet those challenges, in order to fully understand how creativity happens and how it might be affected by time pressure and other features of the work environment. In the present study, we developed a methodology to observe evidence of creative cognitive processes as they were occurring in organizations. We then investigated whether perceived time pressure predicts those processes. Time Pressure and Creativity 3 Time Pressure and Creative Cognitive Processing We propose that time pressure, in the moderate to high levels generally experienced in contemporary organizations, has a direct negative effect on creative cognitive processing. According to the componential theory, creativity is determined by the effects of one extra-individual (outside the person) component and three intraindividual (inside the person) components on creative cognitive processing. The extraindividual component is the external work environment, consisting of several features of the organizational climate, the work group climate, managerial behaviors, and task constraints – including time pressure for getting the work done. The theory focuses on an indirect route by which the work environment might influence creativity – through influences on the intra-individual components. However, although it is not explicitly predicted by the theory, a direct effect of time pressure is suggested by a metaphor in the most recent revision of the theory (Amabile, 1996). According to this metaphor, doing a task or solving a problem is like getting through a maze; the comparison derives from Newell, Shaw, and Simon’s (1962) notion that creativity depends on the exploration of the maze of available cognitive pathways. Although satisfactory outcomes can be attained by following a straight path (a familiar task algorithm) out of the maze, creative solutions require exploration of unfamiliar territory. One recent laboratory study designed to examine the applicability of this maze metaphor revealed that people who allocate more time to exploratory task behaviors are more likely to produce work that is rated by observers as creative (Ruscio, Whitney, & Amabile, 1998). If such cognitive exploration of the maze of possibilities is important to creativity, there must be sufficient time devoted to the cognitive processing involved in intellectually playing with ideas and possible solution paths. Indeed, Einstein once referred to creativity as “combinatorial play” (Einstein, 1949). If people are too busy, they may not allocate the time to engage i