Onne Janssen appointed as professor in Organizational Behaviour in Business and Economics

Onne Janssen has been appointed as professor in Organizational Behaviour in Business and Economics at the Faculty of Economics and Business. As member of the department of HRM&OB, he conducts research into leadership, motivation and performance, with a focus on creative and innovative working behaviour. Examples of questions that Janssen’s research tries to answer are: what factors in a personality and in the context of work motivate staff members to show creative working behaviour? And when staff member propose creative ideas, how do managers and colleagues react?

 

Innovation by creativity

In order to survive and flourish, companies must innovate continuously, which requires an endless stream of new and usable ideas. “Innovation depends on creativity. Without creative ideas, the innovation engine stagnates,” according to Janssen. “Creative behaviour at work in the context of the organization can be defined as the generating of ideas aimed at improving or renewing products, services, workflows or work structures. In other words: creativity is not only necessary for product development, but also for a smart organization of the workplace, for new ways of managing and working together, of for smart cost reductions. Creative gold can be mined anywhere in the organization, provided that creativity is a fixed part of the daily working practice of all employees.”

 

A matter of talent or motivation?

Is creativity a matter of talent or can it be acquired and stimulated? Research shows that there are at least three psychological elements that are crucial for creativity: (a) expertise in the form of in-depth and broad professional knowledge, (b) motivation directed at development and innovation, and (c) thinking skills to define problems from different perspectives and to find many new solutions (flexible thinking) and hard-to-reach solutions (persistent thinking).

 

“In my research I try to find out how these psychological processes that are crucial for creativity are influenced (positively or negatively) by specific factors in the context of work and in a personality. Research keeps showing that not only character traits (personality, needs, talent) but also various factors in the workplace play an important role in the motivation of creative working behaviour, for example the character and the organization of work, setting creativity targets, creativity-oriented leadership, and a creativity-enhancing atmosphere in teams and the entire organization.

Research into creativity in organizations is relatively young. Initially, creativity was thought to be mainly a matter of talent, inspiration or genius, something hardly tangible. The interesting thing is that research now starts showing that very ordinary organizational psychological processes such as expertise, motivation and thinking form the basis for creativity and that these processes can in fact be influenced and activated.”

 

The role of the manager

According to Onne, managers can either make or break creative ideas from their employees. Management is essentially influencing the motivation and working behaviour of employees in order to achieve a certain output. Many managers focus primarily on the exploitation of what already exists. They specify performance targets employees have to meet (‘target management’), check whether the targets are met (‘monitoring’) and interfere in case of deviation (‘management by exception’). Time and again, research shows that such a control-based management style is disastrous for the motivation and creativity of employees.

 

Of course, management includes setting targets, monitoring and interfering. But some managers know how to combine this exploitation-oriented leadership successfully with leadership that encourages employees to explore. These managers set inspiring and innovation-oriented targets in order to stimulate and support employees to find how to work better, smarter and more effectively. A management style based on development enhances causes employees to be much more creative when it comes to finding solutions to work problems and making the most of one’s opportunities.

Curriculum vitae

Onne Janssen studied psychology at the University of Groningen and obtained his PhD in 1994 with the thesis ‘How interdependency motivates conflict behaviour’. From 1994 to 2004 he worked as university lecturer in organizational psychology at the Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences. In 2004, he switched to the Faculty of Economics and Business, where he was appointed as associate professor and was appointed as assistant professor in 2007.