This chapter includes research background and motive, research purpose, statement of question, research delimitation and limitation, and definitions of term.
They will be illustrated as follows.
Research Background and Motive
The economist Schumpeter (1934) has ever pointed out that the core of the economic growth is innovation and the propellant of innovation is entrepreneur. This kind of saying has been valued gradually nowadays in the 21st century. The innovative ability in the enterprise has been the decisive factor of whether it can dominate over the market, and the competitiveness in the market actually is the contest of creativity performance. In this changeful generation, innovation has been the eternal topic of enterprise development; only to innovate, enterprises can operate and exist for a long time (Dess & Pickens, 2000; Tushman & O’Reilly, 1997).
Porter (1990) aimed at ten countries which succeeded with different industries to study competitiveness and finally concluded that the successful factor is to
“continuously innovate.” When he visited Taiwan in 1997, he indicated that the economic problem in Taiwan is the lack of innovation. Michael Porter approved that Taiwanese corporations are rapid followers, but it has to make great efforts if they want to create new brands or unique products. He clearly made people realized that the growth driver of Taiwan depends on innovation. If corporations pursue competitive advantages, they have to constantly improve the quality and procedures and provide new products, new services or new management mode, etc. so as to,
under the globalization, handle the great pressure from the competitors inside or outside the country (Andriopoulos & Lowe, 2000; Cummings & Oldham, 1997).
In the book “Management Challenges for the 21st Century,” Drucker (1999) considered that the most valuable assets of a 20th-century company were its production equipment. However, the most valuable asset of a 21st-century institution, whether business or non-business, will be its knowledge workers and their productivity. He also thought that to constantly innovate is the part of knowledge worker’s job, task and responsibility. Consequently, in the recent years, a plenty of big companies set “innovation” as one of their corporate values, expecting to motivate employees to engage themselves in innovation internally and form a good corporate image externally. In the academic field, the studies on creativity are increasing year by year. Our Ministry of Education also regards creativity as the education focus in the future, promulgating “White Paper on Creative Education” in 2002 and advancing the creativity cultivation works in each educational unit to increase the national competitiveness.
The importance of innovation is undoubted, and creativity is the basis of innovation (Amabile, 1988). The innovative performance comes from employee’s creativity. However, creativity is not only inherent; in addition to the innate personalities, the acquired environment also plays a decisive role (Amabile,1988;
Woodman, Sayer & Griffin, 1993). Amabile et al. (1996) considered that there are some factors in the organizations which can increase and decrease creativity, and managers should create the climate which can improve employee’s creativity. In King
& Anderson’s (1990) study, they considered that the creativity of members in the organization would be influenced by several organizational power, including leadership, group cohesiveness, group longevity, group composition and group structure. Similarly, Payne’s (1990) research revealed that leading behavior, accessible
resources, group norms, group cohesiveness, ways of communication and group composition are the key factors of influencing creativity. Sternberg & Lubart (1995) also proposed the factors which influence employee’s creativity such as working context, limitations of operation, supervision, competition, cooperation, role play, organizational structure and climate, and the social environment.
These environmental factors have certain impact on employee’s creativity.
Nevertheless, most of these influential factors are dominated by leaders; leaders shape the organizational environment where the employees are working in by directing, assisting, evaluating, providing resource or co-working with employees. (James &
James, 1989；Amabile, Schatzel, Moneta & Kramer, 2004). In the workplace, leaders are endowed with the dominant role, which make them become the principle situational factors and greatly influence the generation of follower’s creativity (Scott
& Bruce, 1994; Tierney, Farmer & Graen, 1999).
The influence of leader’s leadership styles on employee’s creativity is undoubted.
However, in the creativity studies, it usually lacks the understanding and discussion of how leader’s leadership styles or behavior have special impact on others’ creativity (Zhou & Oldham, 2001). Consequently, this has shaped my motive, and this study will clarify this important issue and discuss the related problems.
Research Purpose
Based on the research background and motive, this study takes the employees in the public museums in Taiwan as the research subjects. And because of the lack of related studies in Taiwan, this study is trying to build the tentative proposition for the future studies in terms of the influences of leadership styles on employee’s creativity.
Concretely speaking, the research purposes are to:
1. To study current supervisors’ leadership styles in the public museums in Taiwan.
2. To study the influences of supervisors’ leadership styles on employee’s creativity in the public museums in Taiwan.
(1) Influence of supervisors’ leadership styles on employees’ creativity (2) Attention supervisors pay on employees’ creativity development (3) Opportunities supervisors give for employees to deliver creative ideas (4) Supervisors’ influence on employees’ willingness to propose creative ideas (5) Innovative outcomes employees have done
Statement of Question
According to the research purposes, some critical and detailed questions were extended and wondered as follows, waiting for the exploration from the data collection and interview data.
1. What kinds of leadership styles do supervisors in the public museums in Taiwan possess?
2. According to the concluded supervisor’s leadership styles in the public museums in Taiwan, do they inspire or restrain employee’s creativity? Or their leadership styles do not influence employee’s creativity at all? Why or why not?
3. According to the concluded supervisor’s leadership styles in the public museums in Taiwan, do they value employee’s creativity development or not? Why or why not?
4. According to the concluded supervisor’s leadership styles in the public museums in Taiwan, do they give employees opportunities to deliver their creative ideas?
Why or why not?
5. According to the concluded supervisor’s leadership styles in the public museums in Taiwan, do they influence employees’ willingness to propose creative ideas?
Why or why not?
6. What innovative outcomes employees have done under the concluded supervisor’s leadership styles in the public museums?
Research Delimitation and Limitation
Research Delimitation
(1) This study regards the theories of creative place and the contingency theories of leadership as the research cores. Consequently, other theories are not discussed in this study.
(2) This study discusses the related issues of employees’ creativity through the angle of leader in the environment. In addition to the influential factor of leader, other situational factors which influence employee’s creativity are not discussed in this study.
(3) In this case study, the analysis of influential factors of creativity focus on the divisions in the industry of museum. The contexts in the other industries or organizations are not discussed in this study.
Research Limitation
(1) Because of time, it took only nine research subjects in this study in the three museums. For the following studies, research subjects and even case museums should be increased so that the research results could more firmly represent the fact in the public museums in Taiwan.
(2) For the focus of the research purposes, this study only provides the results of influencing employee’s creativity through the leadership in the case museums.
If the results could be further studied for their causes and effects, it could provide leaders solutions for promoting employees’ creativity.
Definitions of Term
Creativity
Creativity is the presentation of creating a novel, original, or important and useful idea, process or product (Oldham & Cummings, 1996).
Leadership
Leadership is the interpersonal interaction by using any kind of method to influence a person or a group under the certain context and via the communication process of affecting others’ emotion, thought and behavior to lead group actions and achieve the certain goals.
Leader
Leader is the person who can make important influences on the perception, thought, and behavior of a crowd (Gardner, 1996).
Contingency Theory of Leadership
Contingency theory of leadership considers leading behavior should be adjusted with the followers’ traits and different situations to fulfill the effective leadership.
Museum
A museum is a non-profit making, permanent institution in the service of society and of its development, and open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits, for purposes of study, education and enjoyment, material evidence of people and their environment. (International Council of Museums, 1989)