Productive Dialogue and Creativity Performance

Previous scholar uses the term productive dialogue to refer to a person's exchanging one's insights into a problem with related others. Based on arguments from the dialogical theory of new knowledge creation and the theory of creativity, we propose that a personi¦s involving into productive dialogues with colleagues can enhance one's creativity performance in a work team. Then, drawing on the literature about social psychology and cognitive psychology, we argue that the person's cognitive empathy and need for cognition can amplify the positive effect of productive dialogue with one's creativity performance in a work team. With time-lagged data surveyed from different sources in Taiwanese electronic product manufacturers, we show that productive dialogue is positively related to creativity performance and that need for cognition positively moderates the relationship between productive dialogue and creativity. The significance and limitations of our study are discussed.