Creativity and Innovation in a Military Unit of South America: Decision Making Process, Socio-Emotional Climate, Shared Flow and Leadership

This study examined the association between creative performance, organizational climate and leadership, affectivity, shared flow, and group decision making. The sample consisted of 315 cadets of a military academic unit of South America. Satisfaction with the decision-making process during a creative task was associated with the usefulness and effectiveness of the ideas generated by the teams with a weighted average correlation of r = .18. Organizational emotional climate, positive and innovation leadership were associated with this group decision-making process r = .25, with shared flow, r = .29 and with positive affect felt during the performance of the creative task, r = .12. In a sequential mediational analysis positive organizational leadership styles were significantly associated with decision-making process and trough cohesion with utility and efficacy of the solution of a creative task. Satisfactory decision-making was related to shared flow during the creative task at collective or group level, and positive affect with flow at individual level.This study examined the association between creative performance, organizational climate and leadership, affectivity, shared flow, and group decision making. The sample consisted of 315 cadets of a military academic unit of South America. Satisfaction with the decision-making process during a creative task was associated with the usefulness and effectiveness of the ideas generated by the teams with a weighted average correlation of r = .18. Organizational emotional climate, positive and innovation leadership were associated with this group decision-making process r = .25, with shared flow, r = .29 and with positive affect felt during the performance of the creative task, r = .12. In a sequential mediational analysis positive organizational leadership styles were significantly associated with decision-making process and trough cohesion with utility and efficacy of the solution of a creative task. Satisfactory decision-making was related to shared flow during the creative task at collective or group level, and positive affect with flow at individual level.

• S. da Costa
• D. Páez
• E. Martínez
• A. Torres
• M. Beramendi
• D. Hermosilla
• M. Muratori

• Creativity
• innovation
• military
• organization
• teams.

[1] Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. A. (2016). Essentials of organizational behavior. England, UK: Pearson Education.
[2] da Costa, S. Páez, D., Sánchez, F., Gondim, S., & Rodríguez, M. (2014) Factors favoring innovation in organizations: An integration of meta-analyses, Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 30 (2), 67-74
[3] Rufi, S., Javaloy, F., Batista-Foguet, J., Solanas, A., & Páez, D. (2014). Flow Dimensions on Daily Activities with the Spanish Version of the Flow Scale (DFS). The Spanish Journal of Psychology, 17, E30. doi:10.1017/sjp.2014.34
[4] Zumeta, L., Basabe, N., Wlodarczyk, A., Bobowik, M., & Páez, D. (2016). Shared flow and positive collective gatherings. Annals of Psychology, 32(3), 717–727. doi: 10.6018/analesps.32.3.261651
[5] Schiepe-Tiska, A. & Engeser, S. (2012). Flow in non-achievement situations. In S. Engeser (Ed.), Advances in Flow Research (pp. 87–107). New York: Springer. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4614-2359-1_5
[6] Tran, V., Páez, D., & Sánchez, F. (2012). Emotions and decision-making processes in management teams: a collective level analysis. Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 28(1), 15–24. doi: 10.5093/tr2012a2
[7] Da Costa, S., Páez, D., Gondim, S., Rodríguez, M., Mazzieri, S., Torres, A…. Sanchez, F. (2016). Perception of innovation in organizations of Spain and Latin America. Universitas Psychologica, 15 (4), 1-24
[8] Fredrickson, B. L. (2013). Positive emotions broaden and build. In P. G. Devine & E. A. Plant (Eds.), Advances in experimental social psychology, Vol. 47 (pp. 1–53). Burlington, VT: Academic Press.
[9] Preacher, A. (2017). Introduction to Mediation, Moderation, and Conditional Process Analysis: A Regression-Based Approach. Second Edition. New York: Guilford Press.
[10] Pardo, A., Ruiz, M. Á., & San Martín, R. (2007). Cómo ajustar e interpretar modelos multinivel con SPSS. Psicothema, 19(2), 308–321.
[11] da Costa, S. (2018) They didn´t know it was impossible so they did it! Procesos de creatividad e innovación en sistemas sociales complejos abiertos: afectividad, motivación y cognición. Ph D. unpublished dissertation. Facultad de Psicología, UPV/EHU avalaible at http://hdl.handle.net/10810/29428
[12] Hox, J. (1998). Multilevel modeling: when and why. In I. Balderjahn, R. Mathar & M. Schader (Eds.), Classification, data analysis, and data highways (pp. 147-154). New York: Springer-Verlag.
[13] Maas, C. J., & Hox, J. (2005). Sufficient Sample Sizes for Multilevel Modeling. Methodology, 1(3), 86–92. doi: 10.1027/1614-1881.1.3.86