Self-Leadership and Creativity Differences in Line and Supervisory Defense Acquisition Employees

Abstract

This study investigated the relationships between self-leadership and creativity in the context of a defense acquisition organization. More specifically, the study examined differences in self-leadership, creativity, and perceived organizational support for creativity between line and supervisory defense acquisition employees. The analyses suggested that self-leadership was significantly related to creative potential and practiced creativity for both line and supervisory employees, although there were no significant differences in overall levels of self-leadership between the two groups. In addition, the study found significant differences in creative potential, practiced creativity, gap scores, and perceptions of organizational support for creativity. Specifically, line employees reported significantly lower levels of creative potential, practiced creativity, and perceptions of organizational support for creativity along with higher gap scores in comparison to supervisors. The findings imply that self-leadership is a primary tool for facilitating creativity at all organizational levels and that active organizational support for creativity may be the key for reducing the gap between creative potential and practiced creativity that represents untapped creative resources. These results suggest that this gap is much more pronounced among line employees and that line employees generally perceive less organizational support for utilizing their creative resources than supervisors. In response, the authors make some specific suggestions for organizational interventions designed to increase self-leadership capabilities at all levels and to increase perceptions of organization support for creative practices among line employees in defense acquisitions. A workforce with creative self-leaders could synergistically assist organizations in maximizing the utility of all organizational resources. The paper includes 19 briefing charts that summarize the presentation.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Apr 30, 2007
Accession Number
ADA494878

Entities

People

  • Jeffery D. Houghton
  • Trudy C. Diliello

Organizations

  • Defense Acquisition University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Human Systems
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Acquisition
  • Applied Psychology
  • Business Administration
  • Commerce
  • Department Of Defense
  • Electronic Mail
  • Leadership
  • Management Personnel
  • Military Acquisition
  • New York
  • Organizational Structure
  • Personality
  • Psychology
  • Public Administration
  • Public Policy
  • Regression Analysis
  • Social Psychology

Fields of Study

  • Psychology

Readers

  • Maritime Combat Support and Expeditionary Logistics.
  • Organizational Psychology.