stealing fire: creative deviance in the evolution … · stealing fire: creative deviance in the...

STEALING FIRE: CREATIVE DEVIANCE IN THEEVOLUTION OF NEW IDEAS

CHARALAMPOS MAINEMELISALBA Graduate Business School

What happens when an employee generates a new idea and wants to further exploreit but is instructed by a manager to stop working on it? Among the various possibil-ities, the employee could choose to violate the manager’s order and pursue the newidea illegitimately. I describe this action as creative deviance and, drawing on thecreativity literature and deviance literature, propose a theory about its organizationalconditions and implications.

We must create antibodies even for responsibility(Elytis, 2004: 338).

In recent decades organizational science haswitnessed a proliferation of research on work-place creativity and workplace deviance. Al-though both phenomena have been well stud-ied, to date their relationship has rarely beenexplored. Creativity has been theorized as aconforming behavior in a supportive work con-text (e.g., Amabile, 1988; Ford, 1996; Woodman,Sawyer, & Griffin, 1993), and deviance has beentheorized as an act that produces antisocial(e.g., Bennett & Robinson, 2000; Lehman & Simp-son, 1992) or prosocial (e.g., Brief, Buttram, &Dukerich, 2001; Near & Miceli, 1995) outcomes,but not creative outcomes. Some authors havenoted, however, that creativity is likely to belower in work contexts where sheer conformityis a cardinal value (Nemeth, 1986, 1997) andhigher in work contexts that show some toler-ance for deviance (March, 2007; Plucker & Runco,1999; Staw, 1990, 1995). Although these perspec-tives suggest that it would be instructive to ex-amine the relationship between the two phe-nomena, four recent integrative reviews of theliterature on creativity (George, 2007; Shalley &Zhou, 2008; Shalley, Zhou, & Oldham, 2004) andthe literature on deviance (Warren, 2003) high-light the fact that creativity and deviance re-searchers have rarely exchanged findings andinsights to date.

The separate examination of creativity anddeviance is understandable considering that

some of their manifestations, such as inventionand sabotage, respectively, appear to have nocommon ground. Upon closer inspection, how-ever, some manifestations of the two phenom-ena are closely and intriguingly interrelated.Consider five examples: Pontiac’s Fiero, the firstmid-engine commercial car in North America,was born after a vehicle designer violated threeorders from management to stop building a pro-totype (Pinchot, 1985); the large electrostatic dis-plays that were eventually integrated into morethan half of Hewlett-Packard’s instruments weredeveloped by an engineer who violated DavidPackard’s order to abort the project (Nemeth,1997); The Godfather, which later became aHollywood classic, introduced a new genre offilms after a filmmaker violated Paramount’s di-rectives about the film’s plot, cast, budget, andfilming location (Lewis, 2000); the tape slitter,which was later heralded by 3M (2002) as oneof the most important process innovations inits history, was invented by a 3M engineer whoignored his manager’s order to stop the re-search or lose his job; and LED bright lightingtechnology, which ushered in a multibillion-dollar industry, was invented at Nichia by ascientist who continually violated the CEO’sorders to stop his research immediately (John-stone, 2007).

The evolution of new ideas often entails adynamic transition: when first proposed, newideas are often rejected because they are per-ceived as weird, inappropriate, unworkable, ortoo risky, but these same ideas may later re-sult in an outcome that the social context ac-cepts as useful and breakthrough (Staw, 1995).The five cases I list above suggest that devi-ance—specifically, the violation of a manage-

I gratefully acknowledge the contributions of former as-sociate editor Violina Rindova and three anonymous review-ers. I also thank Sarah Harvey, Charlan Nemeth, and NigelNicholson for their comments on earlier drafts.

! Academy of Management Review2010, Vol. 35, No. 4, 558–578.

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rial order to stop working on a new idea—plays a role in that transition. In this article Irefer to this individual-level nonconformingbehavior as creative deviance, and I propose atheory about its general rate in organizationalcontexts.

In deviance research scholars have assertedthat while personal and relational characteris-tics can explain interspersed and isolated inci-dents of deviance, its rate is primarily influ-enced by the overarching social structure (Beyer& Trice, 1984; Coleman & Ramos, 1998; Staw &Boettger, 1990). Consistent with this observation,my analysis focuses on the organizational con-ditions and implications of creative deviance. Iparticularly wish to build on Merton’s (1968)strain theory, which posits that some configura-tions of social structures generate the circum-stances in which the infringement of socialnorms is a normal (i.e., expectable) response:

Some social structures exert a definitive pressureupon certain persons in the society to engage innonconforming rather than conforming conduct.If we can locate groups peculiarly subject to suchpressures, we should expect to find fairly highrates of deviant behavior in these groups, notbecause the human beings comprising them arecompounded of distinctive biological tendenciesbut because they are responding normally to thesocial situation in which they find themselves(Merton, 1968: 186).

What Merton saw as normal about deviance isthe way people adapt to the disjunction betweentwo fundamental elements of a social structure.The first element consists of culturally definedgoals that the social context holds out as legiti-mate objectives. These are goals a culture pro-motes as “worth striving for.” A second elementdefines, regulates, and controls acceptablemodes for achieving these goals. These are thenorms that define legitimate and illegitimatemeans for attaining those cultural goals. Insofaras individuals accept (i.e., internalize, becomeemotionally attached to) a cultural goal, andinsofar as they have access to legitimate meansto achieve it, they can engage in conformity bystriving for legitimate goals in legitimate ways.When people accept a cultural goal but lackaccess to legitimate means to achieve it, theymay engage in nonconformity by striving forlegitimate goals in illegitimate ways.

Merton (1968) observed that a social systemmay lack the capacity to provide all individuals

(or the same individual at different times) withaccess to the legitimate means they need topursue its culturally defined goals, a conditionhe termed structural strain. Furthermore, he sug-gested that a social system may place a rela-tively greater emphasis on the attainment ofits culturally prescribed goals than on the en-forcement of its socially structured means(norms), a fact that likely weakens its norma-tive enforcement. Merton (1968) argued that therate of deviance will be higher when a struc-tural strain is present and when the socialcontext also places a relatively greater em-phasis on the attainment of its goals than onthe enforcement of its norms.

While Merton focused on the general level ofdeviance in society at large, he insisted that histheory could shed light on specific deviant be-haviors in specific social contexts. In order todevelop a theory about creative deviance, I fur-nish the basic concepts of Merton’s theory withspecific theoretical content. I treat creativity asthe focal organizational goal, I treat conformityto managerial orders as the focal organizationalnorm, and I define structural strain as the con-dition where the resources the organization pro-vides for the elaboration of new ideas do notsuffice to support the elaboration of all proposednew ideas in the work context. Furthermore, al-though Merton argued that the imbalance be-tween goals and norms influences normativeenforcement, he did not articulate what the lat-ter entails (Cohen, 1999). To address this issue, Idraw on other strands of deviance research—namely, theories on the deterrent effects of nor-mative enforcement (e.g., Klepper & Nagin, 1989;Ward, Stafford, & Gray, 2006) and perspectiveson the role of selectivity in normative enforce-ment (e.g., Heckert & Heckert, 2002; Lehman &Ramanujam, 2009). The theory I propose alsodraws on the creativity literature, especially re-search on the organizational conditions of cre-ativity (e.g., Amabile, 1988; Woodman et al., 1993)and evolutionary models of the creative process(e.g., Campbell, 1960; Staw, 1990).

Synthesizing insights from these researchstreams, I observe that conformity, as defined byMerton, reflects the findings of creativity re-search to date: creativity flourishes when theorganization encourages it, when employees aremotivated to think and pursue new ideas, andwhen the organization provides employees withthe resources they need to play with these ideas

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in generative ways (Amabile, 1988; Ford, 1996;Mainemelis & Ronson, 2006; Woodman et al.,1993). I also observe that the organization’s en-couragement of creativity may exceed its capac-ity to support with resources the elaboration ofall new ideas proposed by its employees. I ar-gue that the organizational conditions that cre-ativity research has long portrayed as stimu-lants of creativity induce structural strain,which, in turn, increases the rate of creativedeviance. In addition, I argue that when theorganization places a relatively higher empha-sis on creativity than on conformity to orders, itis likely to employ selective, inconsistent, anddissociative normative enforcement, which reg-ulates (maintains up to a desirable degree) therate of creative deviance. I suggest that cre-ative deviance mitigates some of the tensionsof the social structure in which it occurs, fos-ters the evolution of radical new ideas, andallows the organization to respond in a flexiblemanner to the inherent uncertainty that bothcreativity and deviance entail.

In the next section I define creative deviancein greater detail. Following this, I examine theorganizational conditions that influence the rateof creative deviance. I then discuss its implica-tions for organizational creativity. I concludewith this study’s contributions to the creativityliterature and deviance literature, its limita-tions, and directions for future research.

DEFINING CREATIVE DEVIANCE

Creative deviance refers to the violation of amanagerial order to stop working on a new idea.Below I clarify the creative and deviant compo-nents of the construct.

The Creative Component

Creativity is the process that results in a novelproduct (e.g., product, service, technology) thatthe social context accepts as useful or otherwiseappropriate at some point in time (Stein, 1953).Creative process refers to the steps involved inthe creation of a novel work, whereas creativeproduct refers to a final work that the socialcontext accepts as novel and useful (Amabile,1996). I designate creative deviance as “cre-ative” not because it always results in a creativeproduct but because it encompasses the pursuitof the means that enable an employee’s creative

process to further evolve through the elabora-tion of a new idea. I use the terms elaborate,work on, explore, pursue, and experiment withan idea interchangeably to refer to the explora-tion of the idea undertaken by the employeewho violates the order.

The creative process entails five steps: (1)preparation—an individual becomes immersed,consciously or not, in a set of problematic issuesthat arouse his or her interest and curiosity; (2)incubation—the individual processes informa-tion, often below the threshold of conscious-ness; (3) insight—new ideas and insightsemerge; (4) evaluation—the person decideswhether a new idea is valuable and worthpursuing; and (5) elaboration—the individualpractically pursues the new idea by transform-ing, developing, and refining it (Csikszentmi-halyi, 1997). The creative process is less linearand more recursive; that is, individuals usu-ally move back and forth between varioussteps, often in a nonorderly way (Gardner,1993; Gruber & Davis, 1995; Russ, 1993).

Elaboration follows the generation of a newidea but precedes its implementation in thework context. Idea generation and idea imple-mentation are the traditional foci of, respec-tively, creativity and innovation research (Shal-ley & Zhou, 2008). Idea elaboration has receivedless attention in organizational science to date.A notable exception is Staw’s (1990) evolutionarytheory of creativity, which posits that creativityis a function of not only generating new ideasand then carefully selecting which ones to im-plement but also elaborating on some of thoseideas. This view is consistent with the interdis-ciplinary literature, which has long argued thatcreativity involves a great deal of elaborationon nascent ideas (e.g., Campbell, 1960; Csik-szentmihalyi, 1997; Gruber & Davis, 1995; Maine-melis, 2002; Russ, 1993; Wallas, 1926).

Elaboration involves the transfer of a newidea from an individual’s mind to its medium(Csikszentmihalyi, 1997) and validation checks,where the individual examines whether the de-veloping work is indeed proceeding as intended(Amabile, 1988). The individual also notices newproblems or insights that arise out of its inter-action with the medium (Staw, 1990; Wallas,1926) and then further develops and refines thenew idea (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997; Russ, 1993).

Employees do not need permission to observeproblems in their work, to incubate information,

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to generate new ideas, or to privately evaluatewhether some of those ideas are worth pursuing(Frese, Ting, & Wijnen, 1999; George, 2007).Sooner or later, however, they need managerialpermission to elaborate on new ideas becauseelaboration usually requires much more thancognitive resources. It requires materials, bud-gets, work time, or other scarce resources thatorganizations provide their employees to lim-ited degrees and usually under permission(Staw, 1990). Creative deviance presupposesthat an employee has already generated a newidea and has evaluated it as worth pursuing buthas been instructed by a manager to stop work-ing on it. The definition also assumes that theemployee uses some work time, materials,and/or other organizational resources to pursuethe idea illegitimately (i.e., in direct violation ofan order). Consistent with the recursive model ofthe creative process, I assume that this elabora-tion may help the violator generate fresh in-sights, reframe the problem, refine the new idea,and so forth. Furthermore, creative deviancemay entail a single or multiple violations,whether successive or not, of managerial orders;the creative deviant may violate the order of adirect manager and/or a higher-ranked man-ager; and the illegitimate pursuit of an idea maybe either covert or overt. Creative deviance mayentail any of these situational possibilities.

The creative process is uncertain and riskyand offers no guarantee that a new product willresult or that it will be accepted by the workcontext (Drazin, Glynn, & Kazanjian, 1999; Ford,1996). As a result, an act of creative deviancemay fail to produce a product, may result in anoutcome that the organization accepts or rejects,and/or may result in a product that either bene-fits or harms the organization. Regardless of itsresults, however, creative deviance encom-passes the pursuit of the means that allow anindividual to elaborate on a new idea, even for ashort period of time, when a manager has in-structed him or her to stop. An employee whopursues a new idea with managerial permissionand one who pursues another idea by violatingmanagerial orders are engaged in the samestep of the creative process—idea elaboration.The key difference is that the former engages ina conforming and the latter in a nonconformingact.

The Deviant Component

Deviance refers to the violation of the norma-tive expectations of the social context1 (Cohen,1999; Merton, 1968). Norms consist of basic be-havioral standards, such as those prescribed byformal or informal rules, policies, or other codesof conduct2 (Bennett & Robinson, 2000; Traub &Little, 1999). Conformity to managerial orders isa basic normative expectation of most work or-ganizations (Staw & Boettger, 1990; Warren,2003).

Two separate streams of organizational re-search have studied deviance (Warren, 2003).The first stream examines deviance as harmfulnonconformity or underconformity, while thesecond stream examines deviance as construc-tive “higher” conformity whereby an employeeviolates an organizational norm to conform to ahypernorm (a norm of the larger society). Despitetheir differences, these two research streamsuse a similar analytical approach: they firstidentify specific effects of deviance, identify de-viant behaviors that cause those effects, andthen develop insights that apply to those se-lected deviant behaviors (cf. Warren, 2003). Thisanalytical approach has led both researchstreams to ascribe an inherent value to the se-lected deviant behaviors a priori. For example,stealing organizational property, sabotagingwork, and using illegal drugs at work have beendescribed as inherently “destructive” deviantacts because they result in negative outcomesfor the organization (Bennett & Robinson, 2000;Lehman & Simpson, 1992). Conversely, whistle-blowing and disobeying a manager’s order tocommit an illegal or unethical corporate activityhave been described as “constructive” deviantacts because, although they violate organiza-tional-level norms, they are acts of “higher” con-

1 This is the “normative” definition of deviance that orig-inated in the functionalist school of sociology. This defini-tion posits that deviance requires an act of violation, regard-less of how the social context evaluates it. An alternativeapproach, not followed here, is the “reactivist” definition ofdeviance, which posits that deviance is a matter of socialconstruction (e.g., labeling) and, as such, does not require abehavioral component (cf. Heckert & Heckert, 2002).

2 This definition of norms is widely used in sociologicaland organizational behavior research (Traub & Little, 1999;Warren, 2003). An alternative definition, not employed here,refers to norms not as expectations but as frequent patternsof behavior (cf. Bettenhausen & Murnighan, 1985; Cialdini &Goldstein, 2004; Pillutla & Chen, 1999).

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formity to the overarching norms of the largersociety (Brief et al., 2001; Darley, 1995; Near &Miceli, 1995).

A limitation of this analytical approach is thatit excludes a class of deviant behaviors thatcannot be identified a priori as inherently posi-tive or negative. Creative deviance has not beenexplored by these two research streams to date,probably because it falls in this class of deviantbehaviors. Creative deviance is not inherentlydestructive, for it can lead to positive results(e.g., a breakthrough invention), nor is it inher-ently constructive, for it may lead to negativeresults (e.g., wasting valuable resources). It isnot an act of higher conformity either, for itdoes not involve hypernorms (the larger soci-ety’s norms). Creative deviance is neither de-structive nonconformity nor constructivehigher conformity but, rather, a potentiallypositive or negative nonconformity to an or-ganizational-level norm—namely, conformityto managerial orders.

In a seminal exception in the literature, Stawand Boettger (1990) suggested that the violationof orders can be either positive or negative, de-pending on whether the orders are correct. Theyargued that while the violation of correct in-structions can be needless deviance, the viola-tion of incorrect instructions can be immenselyvaluable and may result in a product that theorganization later recognizes as a creativebreakthrough. Staw and Boettger found, in alaboratory setting, that people tended to con-form to orders that are obviously flawed, andthey called for research on the contextual con-ditions that foster deviant behavior. My articleanswers that call specifically in the context ofcreativity. However, my analysis diverges fromStaw and Boettger’s work on a key assumption.They assumed that managerial orders are a pri-ori and inherently correct or incorrect. This maybe true for various managerial orders, but not foran order to stop pursuing a new idea. As Staw(1990) noted, no one can tell for sure whether anew idea will turn out to be successful or not,and, as a result, no one can know for surewhether a managerial order to stop pursuing anidea is correct or incorrect at the time it is given.I assume, therefore, that creative deviance is notinherently positive or negative but inherentlyuncertain.

ORGANIZATIONAL CONDITIONS OFCREATIVE DEVIANCE

In this section I discuss the organizationalconditions of creative deviance. I first focus onstructural strain: I discuss the organization’s en-couragement of creativity as an antecedent ofstructural strain, I then discuss structural strainas the main condition of creative deviance, andI follow this with a discussion of two other fac-tors that foster creativity—autonomy and avoid-ance of premature evaluation—as moderators ofthe relationship between structural strain andcreative deviance. In the second part of the sec-tion I argue that the relative emphasis placed bythe organization on creativity and on conformityto orders influences its normative enforcement,which, in turn, moderates the relationship be-tween structural strain and creative deviance,as shown in Figure 1.

Structural Strain

Encouragement of creativity as an antecedentof structural strain. Structural strain refers to thecondition where the resources the organizationmakes available for the elaboration of newideas do not suffice to support the elaboration ofall proposed new ideas in the work context. Thenumber of proposed new ideas is a function ofemployees’ both having new ideas and express-ing them (Frese et al., 1999). Merton (1968) arguedthat social contexts are more likely to attaintheir goals if they effectively encourage theirmembers to strive for these goals. Merton’s viewis in agreement with the extant creativity liter-ature, in which the organization’s encourage-ment for generating and expressing new ideasis by far the broadest and most frequently men-tioned organizational condition that facilitatescreativity (Amabile, Conti, Coon, Lazenby, &Herron, 1996).

Researchers have identified several ways thatorganizations encourage new-idea generationand expression, including formal communica-tions, such as speeches by CEOs and seniormanagers, and mission statements that explic-itly encourage creativity (Cummings, 1965; Lee,Edmonson, Thomke, & Worline, 2004). Less for-mal ways of communicating an appreciation fornew ideas are found in organizational culturesthat promote creativity through collective sto-ries (Schein, 1992), creative role models (Shalley


& Perry-Smith, 2001; Zhou, 2003), and other so-cialization practices (Gist, 1989). Organizationsalso encourage creativity by making it an inter-nal job requirement (Unsworth, Wall, & Carter,2005), by asking employees to achieve creativitygoals (Shalley 1991, 1995), or by otherwise en-couraging them to approach their work in cre-ative ways (George, 2007). In addition, althoughthe literature offers mixed findings about theimpact of intrinsic and extrinsic rewards on cre-ativity (Shalley et al., 2004), scholars generallyagree that appropriate rewards and recognitionfor creativity foster the generation and expres-sion of new ideas (Amabile, 1996; Eisenberger &Rhoades, 2001; Ford, 1996; Woodman et al., 1993).

A related factor is the organization’s climateof psychological safety. The number of proposednew ideas in the work context is likely to behigher when employees perceive that they willnot suffer negative personal consequences forproposing new ideas and/or if errors occur in thepursuit of the creative ideas (Baer & Frese, 2003;Edmondson, 1999; Shalley, 1995; Thomke, 1998).The lack of psychological safety does not neces-

sarily hinder idea generation, but it does hinderthe free expression of new ideas (Frese et al.,1999; Lee et al., 2004). Idea generation is alsofostered by sufficient resources, which includecreativity training programs (Wheatley, An-thony, & Maddox, 1991); idea generation tools(Sutton & Hargadon, 1996); idea suggestion sys-tems (Frese et al., 1999); free time to focus oncreative tasks (Baer & Oldham, 2006; Halbesle-ben, Novicevic, Harvey, & Buckley, 2003; Maine-melis, 2001); and funds, materials, or equipmentthat may assist idea generation (Staw, 1990).Amabile (1988) argued that creativity requiressufficient but not limitless resources, becausean abundance of resources decreases the posi-tive challenge on which creativity thrives andextreme resource limitations constrain the cre-ative process (see also Scott & Bruce, 1994).

The aforementioned methods that organiza-tions use to encourage creativity are not alter-native but additive factors that interact to influ-ence the number of proposed new ideas. Forexample, even if the organization formally en-courages creativity, organizational conditions

FIGURE 1Organizational Conditions and Implications of Creative Deviance

P5a

P6

P7

P8a, P8b

P5a–P5c

P4

P3

P2

P1

Creative deviance

Organizational conditions that foster creativity

Relative emphasis placed on creativity (goal)and on conformity to orders (norm)

Encouragement for generating and expressing new ideas

Resources available for idea elaboration

• Autonomy to elaborate on new ideas • Avoidance of premature evaluation

Normative enforcement that regulates deviance

Swiftness, severity, and certainty

Selectivity, inconsistency, and dissociation

Structural strain

Creative products

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such as an inappropriate reward system or alack of psychological safety can negatively af-fect the number of proposed new ideas. Agreater number of proposed new ideas are gen-erated when these contextual factors arepresent and appropriately aligned (Amabile,1988; Staw, 1990).

Once generated and presented, however, newideas require additional resources that enableemployees to develop them (Staw, 1990). Theseare not the resources the organization commitsto foster idea generation, such as training pro-grams or idea suggestion schemes, but, rather,the resources it makes available to employeesto explore their ideas and bring them to fruition,such as work time, materials, budgets, the use ofequipment or other property, and so forth. Thedegree of resources committed to idea elabora-tion reflects both the value that an organizationplaces on creativity and its overall state ofadaptation. Organizations that do not valuecreativity are unlikely to commit resources tothe elaboration of new ideas, whereas thosethat do are more likely to deliberately commitsuch resources. Because resources are scarce,however, their general availability, which islinked to the organization’s overall state ofadaptation, places an “upper limit” on the de-gree of resources it can make available foridea elaboration.

A structural strain is formed when the organi-zation’s resources for idea elaboration are insuf-ficient to support the elaboration of all newideas. With any level of resources available foridea elaboration, the likelihood of a structuralstrain is influenced by organizational factorsthat encourage the generation and expression ofnew ideas. The boundary condition is that othercontextual factors that may influence creativity,such as the structure (Hlavacek & Thompson,1973; Kanter, 1988; Paolillo & Brown, 1978) andthe aesthetics (Alencar & Bruno-Faria, 1997;Vithayathawornwong, Danco, & Torbert, 2008) ofthe organization, are equal.

Proposition 1: For any given degree ofresources the organization makesavailable for the elaboration of newideas, the higher the organization’sencouragement for generating andexpressing new ideas, the higher thestructural strain will be.

Structural strain as the main condition of cre-ative deviance. Deviance is generally morelikely when the social structure both systemati-cally opens up and systematically closes off ac-cess to the legitimate means that people need topursue its culturally prescribed goals (Cohen,1999; Merton, 1968). Employees are more likely touse illegitimate means to attain legitimategoals when they internalize the value of thosegoals, which is influenced by the social con-text’s promotion of the goals. Employees arealso more likely to use illegitimate means toattain legitimate goals when they lack access tolegitimate means for attaining them. This im-plies that creative deviance is less likely to oc-cur in organizations that do not prescribe cre-ativity as a legitimate goal. Such organizationsare less likely to select and retain employeeswho are interested in creativity and more likelyto suppress the number of proposed new ideas.Recall that before creative deviance occurs, em-ployees generate and propose new ideas. This isless likely to occur in organizations that discour-age creativity (Ford, 1996; Woodman et al., 1993);as a result, the base rate of creative deviance insuch organizations is likely to be lower as well.

Creative deviance is also less likely to occurwhen the organization formally encourages cre-ativity but actually stifles it with an inappropri-ate reward system, lack of psychological safety,and so forth (Staw, 1995). In this case the orga-nization formally encourages creativity andmakes resources available for idea elaboration,but its members are less likely to respond byproposing a large number of ideas (Frese et al.,1999). Creative deviance is less likely to occur aswell in organizations that effectively encouragecreativity and provide unlimited resources foridea elaboration. The organization, in this case,responds to an increasing number of proposednew ideas by committing more resources to ideaelaboration. This is a mere theoretical possibil-ity, however, because organizational resourcesare scarce, because they are needed to supportorganizational goals other than creativity, andbecause an unlimited investment in creativitymay result in excessive exploration (Ahuja &Lampert, 2001; March, 1991).

Given that resources for elaboration are lim-ited for the reasons discussed so far, the moreeffective the organization is at maximizing thenumber of proposed new ideas, the more likely itis to entail structural strain. This structural


strain is not to be confused with organizations’inability to implement all new ideas. Toheighten creativity, organizations must supportvariation (the generation of numerous and di-verse ideas) and then select, and later imple-ment, only a few (Benner & Tushman, 2003; Ford,1996). Higher variation allows for higher selec-tivity, but maximizing the effects of variationand selection is not only a question of increas-ing their absolute levels: the timing and se-quencing of variation and selection may deter-mine whether a creative product will begenerated or not (Staw, 1990). Premature selec-tion may extinguish ideas before their meritscan be realized. To heighten creativity, organi-zations should delay idea selection and allowemployees to elaborate on new ideas prior todeciding which ideas will be implemented. Thisrequires organizational resources that arescarce. As a result, organizations can select andsponsor the elaboration of only a subset of newideas.

In some social domains people can elaborateon new ideas until they transform them intofinal products that are only then evaluated bythe social context (Campbell, 1960). Sculptures,songs, poems, and scientific theories are someexamples. Work organizations, however, mustmake an early selection as to which ideas tosupport with resources so as to further developthem. New movies, cars, or manufacturing tech-nologies are rarely presented by employees asfinal products; rather, they are presented as nas-cent, unrefined, and hazy new ideas (Ford, 1996),and managers must decide which of these nas-cent ideas to reject and which to sponsor withresources for further development (Benner &Tushman, 2003; Hargadon, 2008).

Creative deviance is more likely when theorganization systematically opens up legitimatemeans for generating and expressing new ideasbut, because of resource limitations, also sys-tematically instructs some employees to stopworking on their ideas. The rate of instructionsto stop working on new ideas is likely to begreater when a structural strain is present. Therate of employees’ motivation to pursue ideas aswell is likely to be higher in that case owing tothe organization’s encouragement of creativity,as noted earlier. The rate of creative deviance,thus, is likely to be higher in work contexts thatfoster the generation and expression of newideas but fall short of providing the legitimate

means employees need to elaborate on all newideas. Such organizations exert a definite pres-sure on their members to engage in nonconform-ing conduct (cf. Merton, 1968): they first strengthenemployees’ motivation for generating and propos-ing new ideas, only to often tell them later thatnow they must halt further exploration.

Proposition 2: For any given degree ofresources the organization makesavailable for the elaboration of newideas, the higher the structuralstrain, the more likely creative devi-ance will be.

Autonomy and avoidance of premature eval-uation as moderators. Organizations also differin the degree to which they provide conditionsthat foster idea elaboration, especially auton-omy and avoidance of premature evaluation.Autonomy refers to the degree of freedom thatorganizations provide to employees to elaborateon their new ideas (Amabile, 1988; Oldham &Cummings, 1996; Shalley, 1991); avoidance ofpremature evaluation refers to the degree towhich organizations delay making a final deci-sion about an idea until the idea has been givena chance to develop and show its merits (Cum-mings, 1965; March, 1976; Staw, 1990). The ab-sence of these conditions does not necessarilyhinder the generation and expression of newideas (George, 2007; Unsworth et al., 2005). Forexample, Frese et al. (1999) studied a steel com-pany’s idea suggestion scheme, which over aninety-year period was effective in stimulatinga large number of proposed new ideas. The com-pany, however, did not provide employees withautonomy to elaborate on new ideas prior tosuggesting them. Rather, a management com-mittee evaluated the suggested new ideas anddecided which ones to further pursue and how.

Other organizations, however, delay the eval-uation of new ideas and allow employees toelaborate on them before presenting them. Forexample, some organizations institute “15 per-cent free time,” a legitimate work time duringwhich employees can select and explore newideas temporarily freed from structural obliga-tions, functional pressures, and managerial con-trol (Mainemelis & Ronson, 2006), or they other-wise provide employees with generous degreesof autonomy to explore new ideas before pre-senting them (Amabile, 1988; Oldham & Cum-mings, 1996). These conditions facilitate creativ-

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ity by fostering idea elaboration and also byimproving the organization’s evaluation and se-lection of new ideas (March, 1976; Staw, 1990).When a structural strain is present, however,these conditions also provide employees withpractical and psychological opportunities forengaging in creative deviance (cf. Cloward,1959).

Autonomy has the potential to render individ-uals both more creative (Amabile et al., 1966;Oldham & Cummings, 1996) and more deviant(Coleman & Ramos, 1998; Robinson & Bennett,1993). Employees who work under close monitor-ing are likely to find it more difficult to violateorders and to illegitimately elaborate on newideas. Employees with higher degrees of auton-omy, however, have more practical opportuni-ties to engage in creative deviance, in part be-cause they have greater personal discretion(George, 2007), but also because they usuallyhave easier access to organizational resources(Keltner, Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003).

Autonomy and time to elaborate on new ideasalso open up legitimate means that channel em-ployees’ creative motivation into voluntary pur-suits of ideas. These voluntary pursuits entailhigh degrees of emotional attachment to thenew idea (Mainemelis, 2001), and that emotionalattachment increases as a function of the timeand effort one invests in working on an idea(Staw, 1990). At some point, however, this legiti-mate “play time” has to end since managersmust evaluate the new ideas (Mainemelis &Ronson, 2006). When managers reject ideas, em-ployees experience frustration, sadness, and/oranger (Amabile, Barsade, Mueller, & Staw,2005)—emotions that are related to the suspen-sion of legitimate organizational channels forfurther elaborating on new ideas. The experi-ence of these emotions may be personal andidiosyncratic, but their causes are social andsystematic. These emotions are phenomenalmanifestations of the pressure the work contextexerts on its members, first by opening up andlater by closing off legitimate access to ideaelaboration. This strengthens the likelihood ofcreative deviance, because the more autonomyand time employees are given to elaborate ontheir ideas, the more likely they will becomeemotionally attached to them and the morelikely they will experience difficulty in lettinggo of them when they are later instructed to stop.This is one of the reasons that new ideas, “if

they do die, they generally go kicking andscreaming to their graves” (Staw, 1990: 303).

Moreover, faced with uncertainty and risk,employees with low degrees of autonomy tendto be more aware of potential punishments and,thus, more risk averse, whereas those withhigher degrees of autonomy tend to be moreaware of potential rewards and, thus, more will-ing to take risks (Carver & White, 1994; Keltneret al., 2003; Lee et al., 2004). Those with higherdegrees of autonomy are more likely to perceivethemselves as having control over their socialcontexts (Fiske, Morling, & Stevens, 1996) and asbeing capable of influencing their social con-texts to see things their way (Lee & Ofshe, 1981).As a result, they are more likely to engage innonconforming behavior (Staw & Boettger, 1990).Given that creative deviance involves uncer-tainty (in terms of what the illegitimate elabo-ration of a new idea will produce) and personalrisk (associated with the potential sanction ofthe violation of the managerial order), its rate islikely to be higher in work contexts that provideemployees with higher degrees of autonomy toelaborate on new ideas. The boundary conditionin that case is that organizations place an upperlimit on how much autonomy and time they pro-vide to employees for elaborating on new ideas.

Proposition 3: Autonomy and avoid-ance of premature evaluation moder-ate the relationship between struc-tural strain and creative deviance sothat for any given degree of structuralstrain, the higher the autonomy andthe higher the avoidance of prematureevaluation, the more likely creativedeviance will be.

Relative Emphasis Placed on Creativity and onConformity to Orders

While the structural characteristics discussedso far induce creative deviance, its rate also de-pends on how the organization responds to it. Thework context’s historical reactions to any givendeviant act influence its future rate (Cloward,1959; Tenbrunsel & Messick, 1999; Treviño, 1992).A norm is enforced when sanctions are imposedon those who violate it (Feldman, 1984). Merton(1968) argued that normative enforcement is in-fluenced by the relative emphasis the socialcontext places on its goals and norms. At one


polar extreme are social contexts in whichnorms, originally conceived as instrumental, be-come self-contained and lack further objectives.Norms are enforced in a rigid way, sheer confor-mity becomes a central value, and a climate ofneophobia ensues, ensuring social stability inthe short term but jeopardizing adaptive flexi-bility in the long term (Nemeth, 1986; Staw &Boettger, 1990). At the other polar extreme Mer-ton placed extreme anomie: social contexts thatdevelop a virtually exclusive stress on the at-tainment of their goals, with comparatively littleconcern about their socially structured meansfor striving for these goals. Heightened flexibil-ity in the short term is often followed in thatcase by lack of social stability and disintegra-tion in the long term (Durkheim, 1938). Betweenthese two extremes, Merton placed the rela-tively stable and integrated social systemsthat maintain a rough balance between goalsand norms while at the same time changingand evolving. He argued that while deviancegenerally disturbs that equilibrium, some (un-known) degree of deviance plays a positiverole in the maintenance and evolution of thesocial system.

Merton’s theory does not explain what norma-tive enforcement consists of and how it mayhelp social contexts achieve a rough balancebetween goals and norms. More recent perspec-tives portray normative enforcement as a func-tion of the swiftness, severity, and certainty ofsanctions and suggest that the extent to whichdeviance is desirable is not only a question ofdegree but also of kind. Drawing on these views,I discuss two types of normative enforcementthat moderate the relationship between struc-tural strain and creative deviance. The first con-sists of swift, severe, and certain sanctioning,while the second consists of selective, inconsis-tent, and dissociative sanctioning. I argue thatthe former reduces the rate of creative deviance,and the latter regulates it up to some desirabledegree. I also argue that the latter is more likelyto occur than the former when the organizationplaces a relatively higher emphasis on creativ-ity than on conformity.

Swiftness, severity, and certainty as modera-tors. Social contexts can deter any given deviantbehavior by sanctioning its incidents in a swift,severe, and certain way (Becarria, 1986; Klepper& Nagin, 1989; Ward et al., 2006). Swiftness refersto the prompt action taken to stop and sanction

the deviant act, severity refers to the negativeconsequences imposed on deviants, and cer-tainty refers to the historically invariant sanc-tioning of deviant acts. Taken together, swift-ness, severity, and certainty ensure prompt andconsistent normative enforcement; signal con-textual intolerance toward creative deviance;and influence the “mental calculus” (Klepper &Nagin, 1989; Ward et al., 2006) people employ indetermining whether or not to engage in cre-ative deviance, decreasing in that way its futurelikelihood in the work context.

Proposition 4: Normative enforcementmoderates the relationship betweenstructural strain and creative devi-ance so that for any given degree ofstructural strain, the swifter, the moresevere, and the more historically in-variant (certain) the sanctioning ofcreative deviance, the less likely cre-ative deviance will be in the future.

Selectivity, inconsistency, and dissociation asmoderators. Merton’s (1968) theory implies thatthe only social contexts that respond in an in-variable way to all deviance, regardless of itscontent and results, are those at the two polarextremes. Less extreme social contexts maintainhierarchies of various goals and norms and dis-criminate among different forms of deviance(Plucker & Runco, 1999). Placing a relativelygreater emphasis on a specific goal over a spe-cific norm does not mean that all goals are val-ued more than all norms or that norms are notenforced. Rather, the social system is character-ized by a selective, flexible, and variable atti-tude: sometimes it enforces its norms, some-times it tolerates their violation, and sometimesit suspends or transforms them to enhance itsprospects of survival and prosperity (Feldman,1984).

Organizations that place relatively greateremphasis on conformity than on creativity aremore likely to sanction creative deviance in aswift, severe, and certain way. Organizationsthat place a relatively higher value on creativitythan on conformity, however, are faced with atough challenge. On the one hand, they are notlikely to abstain from sanctioning creative devi-ance because it entails potentially negativeconsequences: it may fail to produce a creativeproduct, it may waste scarce resources, and/or itmay harm the organization. Abstaining from

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sanctioning creative deviance would also ren-der the norm of complying with orders function-ally irrelevant, thus undermining accountabil-ity, responsibility, and control (Staw, 1990). Evenorganizations that are considered supportive ofcreativity provide generous but not complete au-tonomy and freedom from managerial controlfor some (e.g., 15 percent) but not most (e.g., 85percent) of the work time (Mainemelis & Ronson,2006). The same organizations are unlikely toconsistently abstain from sanctioning creativedeviance.

On the other hand, sanctioning creative devi-ance in a swift, severe, and certain way may beperceived by employees as a punishment im-posed on the pursuit of creativity itself, which islikely to decrease the number of proposed newideas in the work context (Baer & Frese, 2003). Inaddition, creative deviance may produce a cre-ative product, and with a lower expenditure ofresources; it allows the organization to make abetter evaluation of the new idea, given that theidea evolves, and it also displaces the risk of thepotential failure of the new idea to the creativedeviant. In order to extract these potential ben-efits, organizations placing a relative higheremphasis on creativity than on conformity toorders are less likely to sanction creative devi-ance in a swift, severe, and certain way.

This implies that the organization must find away to formally preserve its norm while at thesame time informally tolerating its transgres-sion, but only up to a point that does not lead toa state of anarchy and does not compromise itsattempt to heighten creativity either. I suggestthat organizations tackle this challenge by mak-ing their normative enforcement selective (toler-ating some creative deviance but not otherforms of deviance), inconsistent (some timespunishing creative deviance and other times ig-noring, forgiving, or rewarding it), and dissocia-tive (punishing creative deviance for its deviantcomponent while ignoring, forgiving, or reward-ing it for its creative component).

Relatively stable organizations tend to selec-tively impose swifter and more severe sanctionson deviant acts that seek to harm them and/or tobenefit the deviant without benefiting the orga-nization (Vardi & Wiener, 1996). High-severitysanctions are more likely when an organizationidentifies specific deviant acts that pose a sig-nificant threat to it and develops explicit poli-cies that promptly sanction those acts (Beyer &

Trice, 1984). Organizations also tend to selec-tively tolerate violations that entail potentialbenefits for them (Lehman & Ramanujam, 2009).When an organization places a relatively higheremphasis on creativity than on conformity, it ismore likely to impose more swift and severesanctions on such deviant acts as sabotagingwork, leaking information to competitors, and soforth and less severe sanctions on creative de-viance, because the latter seeks to attain a le-gitimate organizational goal.

Furthermore, swiftness implies that the ille-gitimate pursuit of the new idea is terminatedearly on, without producing a result that couldbenefit the organization. Although illegitimate,the development of the idea resulting from cre-ative deviance has the potential to produce acreative product. Even though the creative devi-ant illegitimately uses some resources, theseare likely to be fewer than the resources theorganization would have had to commit by for-mally sponsoring the idea. In addition, while itis relatively easy to reject an idea when anemployee first proposes it (cf. Amabile et al.,2005), it becomes increasingly difficult to haltthe evolution of an idea that has become aformal project because of the organization’sescalating commitment to it (Staw, 1990). Therisk of failure of the idea is diffused in thiscase as it becomes shared by the employeewho proposes the new idea, his or her man-ager, and the larger organization.

By tolerating the illegitimate pursuit of thenew idea, organizations can extract a potentialbenefit with comparatively fewer resources andby displacing the risk to the creative deviant.Temporarily tolerating an employee’s illegiti-mate pursuit of a new idea enables organiza-tions to intervene at some later point and stopits pursuit—for example, when it becomes evi-dent that the idea is unlikely to work. Alterna-tively, management can intervene at some pointand legitimize the idea by turning it into a for-mal project when it becomes evident that thenew idea is likely to evolve into a beneficialproduct. In both cases the organization makes amore informed decision using the evidence thatthe illegitimate elaboration has produced, witha lower investment of resources and with no exante formal commitment to the idea. Becausethis set of versatile and flexible organizationalresponses cannot occur when acts of creativedeviance are halted and sanctioned swiftly, or-


ganizations placing a relatively higher empha-sis on creativity than on conformity to orders aremore likely to abstain from enforcing the normin a swift manner.

Furthermore, certainty requires the invariablesanctioning of creative deviance, which impliesthat conformity is considered relatively moreimportant than creativity. The organization hasa norm and it enforces it consistently regardlessof the nature, content, and results of the deviantbehavior. When the emphasis on creativity ishigher than the emphasis on conformity, how-ever, organizations are more likely to occasion-ally ignore, forgive, or reward acts of creativedeviance, especially those that result in a cre-ative product. In other words, they are morelikely to make some “exceptions” to their norma-tive enforcement in order to extract the benefitsassociated with the deviant behavior (cf. Feld-man, 1984). Such organizations are likely to pun-ish some acts of creative deviance, especiallythose that cause damage, but their historicalrecord is likely to also involve a number of non-sanctioned creative deviance acts.

This set of inconsistent responses to creativedeviance (punishing, ignoring, forgiving, and re-warding), in conjunction with the selective tol-erance the organization shows for it (but not forother forms of deviance), allows the organiza-tion to maintain a desirable degree of creativedeviance while also maintaining the norm ofconforming to orders. A third factor that contrib-utes to such an outcome is the dissociation ofthe two components of creative deviance.

Organizations are more likely to punish cre-ative deviance not as an attempt to produce acreative product but as a violation of an order.This formal justification preserves the norm andsignals to employees that creative deviancemay be sanctioned without also signaling thatthe organization sanctions the pursuit of creativ-ity itself. Conversely, organizations can ignore,forgive, or reward creative deviance not be-cause an employee has violated an order butbecause he or she has produced a creative prod-uct or has tried to do so. When forgiving creativedeviance, organizations are likely to justify it forits well-intentioned motives (cf. Vardi & Wiener,1996). They are likely to deflate the role of theviolation and inflate the violator’s superb com-mitment to striving for a legitimate organization-al goal—creativity. While this signals tolerancefor creative deviance, forgiving something im-

plies that something bad has happened—a vio-lation of a managerial order. This serves as areminder to employees that the norm is activeand in place and that while its transgressionmight be forgiven insofar as it constitutes anattempt to produce a creative product, the orga-nization offers no formal guarantees that futureacts of creative deviance will be forgiven. Sim-ilarly, ignoring (intentionally overlooking) cre-ative deviance offers no formal guarantees thatfuture acts of creative deviance will be ignored,as long as at least some acts of creative devi-ance are punished.

Rewarding creative deviance is most likely tobe associated with a creative deviance act thatproduces a positive outcome. The organizationmust then find a formal justification for reward-ing an act that transgressed its norms but ulti-mately served its interests. One possible strat-egy is to celebrate the success and reward theemployee but formally understate the role thatcreative deviance played in producing the suc-cessful outcome. Consider how Hewlett-Packardretrospectively honored the engineer who devel-oped large screen electrostatic displays:

MEDAL OF DEFIANCEIn total defiance of adverse market studies andsurveys concluding the existence of a worldwidemarket of no more than 50 total large screen elec-trostatic displays, Charles H. House, using allmeans available—principally pen, tongue, andairplane to extol an unrecognized technical con-tribution, planted the seeds for a new marketresulting in the shipment of 17,769 large screendisplays to date (Hewlett-Packard, appearing inPinchot, 1985: 30).

While this formal account underscores the valuethe company placed on creativity, it does notmention that the engineer violated an order tostop pursuing the project (after a market studyshowed negative results) and that he later againviolated the company founder’s order to abortthe project (Nemeth, 1997; Pinchot, 1985).

The fact that an organization formally under-plays the role of creative deviance does notmean that its members are not aware of it. Theymay observe or learn about such an act from theviolator or his or her managers. Hence, by formallyunderplaying creative deviance while informallytolerating it, organizations cast uncertainty overwhen and if they will enforce penalties for cre-ative deviance. Consider also how 3M formallydignified the invention of a tape slitter by an en-

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gineer who continually violated his manager’sorders:

Despite being told by his boss to turn his energiesto other, more promising assignments or “lose myjob,” he persevered in classic 3M style. . . . [A]retired vice president [said that] Vytlacil had ad-mirable staying power. “The development of thattape slitter didn’t go like clockwork,” he said. “Itwas a very difficult project.” Ultimately, Vytlacil’smanufacturing innovation was heralded as oneof the most significant in the company’s manu-facturing history (3M, 2002: 37).

This account retrospectively dignifies an actof creative deviance as exemplifying a core 3Mvalue—the staying power of new ideas. Thisaccount is from a 3M corporate report entitled “ACentury of Innovation.” In no part of the reportdoes 3M suggest that managers should sponsorall ideas, that employees should violate theirmanagers’ orders to pursue a new idea, or thatemployees will not be punished if they do so.These issues are not clearly explained, whichcreates ambiguity, which in turn makes creativedeviance a generally expected rather than rarebehavior, but also a risky behavior that couldbring negative repercussions.

Formally maintaining the normative obliga-tion to conform to managerial orders while in-formally tolerating its transgression does notexile creative deviance from the organization,but it also does not allow it to be taken out ofproportion and trigger anarchy and irresponsi-bility in the work context. Rather, it regulatescreative deviance in a way that places ex anteresponsibility and risk on the nonconformingindividual, while at the same time giving theorganization some flexibility in responding expost to the nonconforming behavior.

Proposition 5: Organizations thatplace a relatively greater emphasis oncreativity than on conformity to ordersare (a) less likely to punish creativedeviance (but not other forms of devi-ance) in a swift, severe, and histori-cally invariant way; (b) more likely toignore, forgive, or reward some (butnot all) acts of creative deviance; and(c) more likely to punish, ignore, for-give, or reward creative deviance bydissociating its creative and deviantcomponents.

Proposition 6: Selective, inconsistent,and dissociative normative enforce-ment moderates the relationship be-tween structural strain and creativedeviance so that for any given degreeof structural strain, selective, inconsis-tent, and dissociative normative en-forcement will allow the organizationto regulate the rate of creative devi-ance up to a desirable degree.

Propositions 5 and 6 do not refer to the re-sponses that can produce the highest rate of cre-ative deviance but, rather, to the responses that Iconsider most likely in a work context that is notextremely anomic, places a relatively higher em-phasis on creativity, but also values and pre-serves to some degree its norm (conformity to or-ders) so as not to become extremely anomic.

IMPLICATIONS FORORGANIZATIONAL CREATIVITY

Creativity researchers have argued that thegreater the number of new ideas, the higher thelikelihood creative products will be generated(Campbell, 1960; Simonton, 1999; Staw, 1990).Creative products depend on the quality ofideas, which is a direct function of the quantityof ideas. Diehl and Stroebe (1987) reported acorrelation of .82 between quantity and qualityof ideas, and Frese et al. (1999) concluded that acompany that wants to have good ideas shoulddo everything to promote an increase in the num-ber of proposed new ideas. Therefore, the higherthe structural strain (i.e., the higher the number ofproposed new ideas for any given amount of re-sources available for elaboration), the more likelycreative products will be produced. This does notoverlook the fact that the transformation of newideas into creative products is influenced by otherfactors, such as conditions that foster idea elabo-ration or the accuracy of the organizations’ evalu-ation and selection process (Ford, 1996; Staw,1990). Rather, all other factors being equal, morecreative products are likely to be generated whena structural strain is present.

Proposition 7: For any given degree ofresources the organization makesavailable for the elaboration of newideas, the higher the structural strain,the higher the number of creativeproducts will be.


Creative deviance partially mediates that re-lationship. When a new idea has been formallyrejected by a manager, creative deviance canonly increase the likelihood that the idea willlater result in a product the organization acceptsas novel and useful. Without further increasingthe organization’s structural strain, creative de-viance allows it to informally pursue a greaternumber of new ideas than the number passingthrough its formal evaluation and selection pro-cess. By fostering the elaboration of new ideas,creative deviance allows at least some addi-tional creative products to be generated througha secondary, illegitimate channel. This does notimply that creative deviance is likely to result ina creative product but, rather, that with severalacts of creative deviance, at least a few mayresult in creative products.

Proposition 8a: Creative deviance par-tially mediates the relationship be-tween structural strain and creativeproducts so that for any given level ofstructural strain, creative deviancewill further increase the number ofcreative products.

Compared to ideas that employees pursuewith managerial permission, creative devianceis less likely to result in creative products butmore likely to result in radical ones. Researchhas shown that the more radical an idea is, themore risky it is likely to be and the more likely itis managers will reject it (Ahuja & Lampert, 2001;Baer, 2007; Dewett, 2006; March, 1991). This im-plies that, in terms of its base rate, creativedeviance is more likely to entail radical andrisky ideas and, thus, is less likely to result increative products but also more likely to resultin radical creative products (Benner & Tushman,1993; Smith & Tushman, 2005).

Furthermore, while the creative deviant ille-gitimately uses some organizational resources,these are likely to be fewer than the resourcesthe organization would commit by formallysponsoring the new idea. Research on the ef-fects of resources on creativity has shown thatresource limitations place practical constraintson idea elaboration, thus decreasing the likeli-hood that a creative product will be generated(Amabile et al., 1996; Staw, 1990). In the samestream of research, however, scholars have ar-gued that resource limitations motivate peopleto turn constraints into positive challenges (Am-

abile, 1996) and to search for solutions in lessthan obvious directions (Campbell, 1960), thusincreasing the likelihood of producing a radicalcreative product.

Moreover, when creative deviance is covertand the employee works secretly on a new idea,he or she is unlikely to receive much feedbackon it; when creative deviance is overt, it is likelyto generate less and more limited feedback thanideas that evolve legitimately in the work con-text. Research on the effects of feedback on cre-ativity has shown that a creative product ismore likely to be generated when employeesreceive constructive feedback from a broadrange of people during idea elaboration (Csik-szentmihalyi, 1997; Zhou, 1998, 2003). However,because even constructive feedback can leadindividuals to think along more conventionalpaths (Smith, 2003), radical creative products aremore likely to be generated with little or nofeedback (George, 2007). Taken together, theseresearch findings on the effects of risk, re-sources, and feedback on creativity suggest thatcreative deviance is less likely to result in acreative product but more likely to result in aradical creative product.

It may also be argued that insofar as organi-zations tolerate creative deviance, creative de-viance actually functions as an informal ideaselection mechanism. The extant literature con-sists of fragmented and dispersed views sug-gesting that an organization’s formal selectionprocess may filter ideas in terms of their degreeof risk (Ahuja & Lampert, 2001), clarity (Ford,1996), framing and fit with organizational habitsof thought and action (Dougherty & Heller, 1994),the political support they generate (Staw, 1990),and/or their effective use of impression manage-ment techniques (Elsbach & Kramer, 2003). Sum-marizing these factors, Dutton, Ashford, O’Neil,and Lawrence (2001) portrayed the organizationas a “pluralistic marketplace of ideas” that are“sold” and “bought” depending on individuals’ability to frame, package, bundle, present, andpolitically support them. I suggest that whatdistinguishes creative deviance as an alterna-tive, informal selection mechanism is that it fil-ters new ideas for none of the above factors butfor the faith that employees practically demon-strate in them, particularly by taking personalrisks to pursue them.

Creative deviance offers a second chance—anillegitimate path of evolution—for ideas that the

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formal selection process kills for political andcommunication reasons or because of the idea’slack of fit with the status quo. In addition, thepersonal risk that managers take by sponsoringa new idea that may later fail plays a major rolein their tendency to reject radical ideas (Ahuja &Lampert, 2001; March, 1991). Creative devianceis less subject to the bias against radical ideasbecause it enables a manager (who initially re-jects the idea) to displace the risk to the em-ployee who pursues the idea illegitimately. Theirony is that employees may feel let down bytheir manager’s rejection (Amabile et al., 2005)without realizing that, intentionally or not, thatrejection puts them (for a while) in charge of theselection process, albeit in an informal way. Thefate of new ideas at that moment is not deter-mined by persuasive “trading” in the “market-place of ideas” but by bold acts of rule breakingand by more subtle and understated organiza-tional conditions that induce and tolerate suchnonconforming acts. From this point of view,creative deviance may actually filter what thehistory of creativity often rewards—individualswho demonstrate their faith in an uncertain newidea by taking a risk to keep it alive and evolv-ing (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997; Gardner, 1993; Gru-ber & Davis, 1995).

Clearly, an employee’s faith in an idea is nota reliable indicator of its value. Note, however,that the clever way in which a new idea isframed, the attractiveness and clarity withwhich it is presented, and the political or socialconnections or/and the impression managementskills of the person who proposes it are notcleaner or more reliable indicators of the valueof a new idea either. Creative deviance is not abetter selection mechanism, but it is less subjectto the bias against radical new ideas, and it alsoprotects new ideas to some extent from conven-tional feedback and from other social pressuresfor conformity and consistency. This increasesthe likelihood that a radical creative productwill be generated, albeit less frequently.

Proposition 8b: Creative deviance isless likely to result in a creative prod-uct, but when it results in one, theproduct is more likely to be radical.

Let me illustrate these arguments with an ex-ample. When a scientist at Nichia asked hisboss if he could conduct research on producingbright white light from LEDs, he was asking,

essentially, to purchase expensive equipmentand an expensive raw material, silicon, whichLED research required at the time. These re-sources had to be committed to a highly riskypursuit: an invention the industry had tried butfailed to produce in thirty years. When his bossordered him to stop, the scientist spent much ofhis time learning how to build the equipment; hebuilt it with his hands and then he experi-mented using the only material that was avail-able at Nichia—phosphor. For several monthshe continued to violate his boss’s written ordersto stop; his experiments also caused several ex-plosions in his lab. Eventually, his hands-onmastery of the equipment and the use of phos-phor (a material no LED researcher had everused before) led to a breakthrough invention, theLED bright lighting technology (Johnstone, 2007).

This case illustrates the unpredictable natureof creativity (Staw, 1990); the role “blind-alleyentrances” and idea elaboration play in the cre-ative process (Campbell, 1960); the managerialbias against risky, radical new ideas (March,1991); and how motivation can turn constraintsinto positive challenges (Amabile, 1996). Myanalysis adds that such cases also illustratethat creative deviance is born out of the organi-zation’s structural strain and fosters the evolu-tion of new ideas, especially radical ones, with-out further increasing structural strain.

DISCUSSION

I have examined creative deviance as the vi-olation of managerial orders to stop pursuing anew idea. I have argued that creative devianceis more likely to occur when structural strain ispresent and when an organization places a rel-atively greater emphasis on creativity than onconformity. By inviting creativity, organizationsalso invite a great deal of uncertainty. The cre-ative process is uncertain because no one canpredict whether the pursuit of a new idea willresult in a positive outcome. A manager’s orderto an employee to stop pursuing a new idea isuncertain, for no one can judge whether the or-der is the best decision at the time. The violationof that order is structurally similar. By toleratingcreative deviance, organizations may actuallybe structurally matching the inherent uncer-tainty that both creativity and deviance entail.

To heighten creativity, organizations heightenemployees’ motivation for it (Amabile, 1988), but


because of structural strain, they cannot openup legitimate means to all employees who aremotivated to pursue new ideas. Reducing themotivation for creativity in an organization islikely to compromise its attempt to heighten cre-ativity. Rigidly enforcing its norms can lead to aclimate of neophobia (Nemeth, 1986; Staw, 1990)and ritualism (Merton, 1968)—that is, employeeslearn to strictly abide by norms but graduallylower their aspirations for creativity. Toleratingcreative deviance up to a certain degree (onethat does not trigger extreme anomie) allows theorganization to maintain motivation for creativ-ity at high levels and to channel a portion of itinto illegitimate pursuits of new ideas that donot increase its structural strain.

Deviant behavior can generally transform thesocial context’s normative boundaries by over-throwing the norm that it violates (Erickson,1966). Creative deviance, however, is unlikely tooverthrow the norm that it violates because itdoes not offer a better alternative—abolishingthe norm of conforming to managerial orderscannot increase the scarce resources at the or-ganization’s disposal for idea elaboration. Cre-ative deviance cannot resolve that structuralstrain, but it mitigates some of its inherent ten-sions: it allows motivated employees who lacklegitimate means to pursue new ideas illegiti-mately, and it allows the organization to exper-iment informally with a larger number of newideas, some of which can result in creative prod-ucts, while at the same time maintaining con-siderable flexibility in terms of how it can re-spond ex post to these illegitimate pursuits ofnew ideas.

Contributions

This article contributes a novel theory of thecontextual conditions and implications of creativedeviance. It also offers a rare cross-pollination ofinsights from the creativity literature and devi-ance literature and has implications for both. Thestudy of deviance has been dominated, to date,by two research streams that have focused ondescribing deviant acts that are either inher-ently positive or negative (Warren, 2003). Thisarticle contributes a theory of a nonconformingbehavior that is not inherently positive or nega-tive, that cannot be predicted a priori to producepositive or negative results, and, as a result, canbest be described as inherently uncertain. The

article also suggests that while creative devianceis usually socially ascribed only to the violator, itsrate depends primarily on the organization’s over-arching social structure.

The theory I have proposed links Merton’s(1968) theory to creativity in work organizations,but it also extends or departs from it in manyways. While Merton argued that tolerating an(unknown) degree of deviance is positive for so-cial systems, I drew on more recent perspectivessuggesting that equally if not more important isthe kind of deviance social systems selectivelytolerate. Moreover, because Merton did not ad-dress what normative enforcement consists of, Iintegrated insights from deviance deterrencetheories on the role of swift, severe, and certainsanctioning, as well as insights from researchon the role of selectivity, inconsistency, and dis-sociation in normative enforcement. Further-more, Merton argued that society can suppressdeviance by prescribing cultural goals that donot lead to structural strain. He suggested thatthis can be achieved by supplanting society’semphasis on material success with an emphasison artistic and creative activity. His assumptionwas that creative activity does not lead to struc-tural strain. I argued that, at least in work orga-nizations, prescribing creativity as a legitimategoal is associated with structural strain andwith deviance as well.

To date, creativity has been theorized as anact of conformity whereby a motivated em-ployee pursues creativity using the legitimatemeans of a supportive work context (Amabile,1988; Ford, 1996; Woodman et al., 1993). This ar-ticle offers a rare perspective of workplace cre-ativity as an act of nonconformity. It also sug-gests that new ideas may not be as fragile andsensitive to rejection as the extant literature por-trays them (e.g., Amabile et al., 2005), and iturges creativity researchers to pay more atten-tion to the role that elaboration plays in theevolution of new ideas in work contexts. Further-more, in the last twenty years creativity re-search has theorized elements like encourage-ment, autonomy, and time to play with ideas asunlimitedly positive qualities required to opti-mize the organization’s pursuit of creativity (e.g.,Amabile, 1988; Ford, 1996; Mainemelis & Ronson,2006; Woodman et al., 1993). This article sug-gests that encouragement, autonomy, and timeto play with ideas are only half of the story. The

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other half includes scarce resources, new ideasthat get rejected, and nonconforming behaviors.

Limitations and a Research Agenda

While the contextual factors I have discussedincrease the rate of creative deviance, individ-ual differences can explain why some peopleare more likely than others to engage in creativedeviance under the same contextual conditions.Personality traits such as risk seeking, indepen-dence, nonconformity, and courage are known toplay a role in both deviant (Staw & Boettger,1990) and creative behaviors (Feist, 1999a,b). Re-search has also shown that intrinsic motivationis positively related to creativity (Amabile, 1996)and that this may help explain why some peoplewill sacrifice customary rewards and face therisk of punishment or loss in order to pursuetheir ideas (Barron, Montuori, & Barron, 1997;Brower, 1999). Moreover, employees may violateworkplace norms in order to conform to thenorms of external social domains (Meyerson &Scully, 1995). Prior to joining an organization,engineers, physicians, artists, and scientists areprofessionally socialized to build great things,to improve life, to seek the truth, to challengesocial conventions, and so forth. Insofar as suchprofessionals perceive that an order to stop pur-suing an idea prevents them from performingtheir work according to such norms, and insofar astheir identities are invested more in their profes-sional domains than in their organization, theymay be more likely to violate managerial orders.Future studies can explore when and how person-ality traits, motivational orientations, and identi-fication with professional norms influence cre-ative deviance in work contexts.

Future studies can also explore the role ofmanagers. Beyer and Trice (1984) found that em-ployee, manager, and interaction characteris-tics are less important in predicting whethermanagers will sanction deviance and to whatseverity; these factors were primarily influencedby contextual and situational characteristics.Managers cannot single-handedly alter the con-textual conditions that induce creative devi-ance, and in contexts that value creativity, man-agers are less likely to find comfort in imposingsevere punishments on employees who exhibithigh creative motivation by illegitimately pur-suing new ideas (cf. Horne, 2004; Kendal, Feld-man, & Aoki, 2006).

Moreover, because managers take a personalrisk by sponsoring a new idea, they tend to se-lect less risky ideas that usually lead to incre-mental creative products (Ahuja & Lampert,2001; March, 1991; Smith & Tushman, 2005). Inorganizations that expect their managers to de-velop radically creative products, however,managers also must minimize the opportunitycosts associated with rejecting riskier ideas(Benner & Tushman, 2003; Brown & Eisenhardt,1997; Ford, 1996; Hedberg, Nystrom, & Starbuck,1976), which, in their initial expression, tend tobe hazy and lack evidence. As a result, theseideas are difficult to evaluate. To optimize theirevaluation, managers need to delay selectionand allow individuals to elaborate on ideas soas to produce more evidence about their value(Staw, 1990). This requires resources that orga-nizations provide to managers to a limited de-gree. As a result, managers are left to base theirevaluations on intimations of value while theyare held responsible at the same time for whatthey select.

Tolerating creative deviance allows manag-ers to displace the risk of the idea’s failure tothe employee, given that they reject the idea;at the same time it also allows them to mini-mize the opportunity costs associated with re-jecting the idea, given that the idea evolvesafter all, albeit illegitimately. This does notmean that managers necessarily strategicallymanipulate creative deviance but that when thelatter occurs, they may find it more attractive totolerate it than stop it. Future studies can ex-plore this possibility and identify characteris-tics of managers and of the dyadic interactionbetween managers and employees that affectcreative deviance.

Another limitation of the article is that it doesnot account for how other employees react tocreative deviance—for example, by offering psy-chological or/and practical support to the cre-ative deviant (Coleman & Ramos, 1998) or byexerting informal social control over the cre-ative deviant (Brauer & Chekroun, 2005;Hollinger & Clark, 1982). These issues are com-plex and require a separate path of investiga-tion. The possibility that I submit here is thatorganizational members are more likely to reactnegatively to the creative deviant and to exertcontrol over him or her when the work contextplaces a relatively higher emphasis on confor-mity (Nemeth, 1997); similarly, workers may be


more likely to tolerate, support, or even showadmiration for creative deviants (Heckert &Heckert, 2002; see also Rindova, Pollock, & Hay-ward, 2006) when the work context places a rel-atively higher emphasis on creativity.

While I focused on the rate of creative devi-ance, future studies can examine the factors thataffect an organization’s reactions to single actsof creative deviance. An obvious factor is thevalue and magnitude of the outcome (Heckert &Heckert, 2002). A creative deviance act that pro-duces a positive result is less likely to be pun-ished than an act of creative deviance that re-sults in a negative outcome. Other peripheralfactors may play a role in how organizationsreact to creative deviance acts. Organizationsmeeting their objectives are more likely to for-give a creative deviance act that has failed toproduce a positive result than those organiza-tions struggling to survive (Feldman, 1984). Em-ployees who have contributed to the organiza-tion’s success in the past are, on balance, morelikely to be forgiven for creative deviance thanthose who have consistently failed to help theorganization meet its goals (Hollander, 1958). Fu-ture research can examine these and other fac-tors that shape the social context’s reactions tocreative deviance acts.

While I have focused on the violation of man-agerial orders, employees may not even ask formanagerial permission in a situation where per-mission is required to work on a new idea. Sooneror later, however, organizations will have to dealwith such violations, and their potential reactionsare likely to be informed by the factors discussedin this article. That said, it would be useful toexplore how other forms of deviance may influ-ence creativity in the workplace.

The question this article ultimately posits forcreativity research is “What exactly is ‘optimal’in optimal creativity?” In most aspects of orga-nizational theory, the term balance is associatedwith desirable qualities, and the term strain isassociated with undesirable ones. If we takeoptimal creativity to mean that the organizationpursues a degree of creativity that does not trig-ger nonconformity, then we should considerstructural strain as an undesirable conditionand creative deviance as a destructive behavior.Alternatively, if we take optimal creativity tomean pursuing the highest degree of creativitypossible, then we should consider structural

strain as a desirable condition and creative de-viance as a normal, expected human response.

But if we take optimal to mean a rough bal-ance between pursuing creativity and maintain-ing the stability of the social system, then weshould consider structural strain as a largelyinevitable condition and creative deviance as asystemic by-product that mitigates some of thetensions of the social structure that produces it.“Stealing fire” is ultimately the act of a boldindividual who wants to keep on playing with anew idea. Behind such individual nonconform-ing acts, however, we are likely to discover moresubtle and more powerful social conditions thatinduce, regulate, and occasionally celebratePromethean behaviors.

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Charalampos (Babis) Mainemelis ([email protected]) is an associate profes-sor of organizational behavior at ALBA Graduate Business School in Athens, Greece.He received his Ph.D. in organizational behavior from Case Western Reserve Univer-sity. His research interests encompass creativity, time, playfulness, deviance, adap-tive flexibility, and learning.


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