Are individual-level factors necessary for creativity? A necessary condition analysis

Are individual-level factors necessary for creativity to occur in the workplace ? Using a novel statistical approach, Necessary Condition Analysis, we tested empirically the hypothesis that individual factors (conative factors, drivers, and creative process engagement) were critical to creativity in the workplace, using a sample of 1384 workers in France. We examined three known conative factors of creativity: openness to experience, creative personality, and creative personal identity. We examined three types of drivers: intrinsic motivation, job self-efficacy and creative self-efficacy. Additionally, we examined creative process engagement. We observed that all conative factors were necessary for creativity, even though they each showed small effect sizes. We found a similar small effect size for creative process engagement. We found that creative self-efficacy was a critical driver for creativity: an employee will not be able to achieve high creative performance if he or she does not have strong confidence about his or her creative capacities, regardless of other factors. However, neither job self-efficacy nor intrinsic motivation proved to be necessary for creativity: their absence can be compensated by other factors. Our findings highlight the need to distinguish between what makes a variable “important” or “necessary”, in the field of creativity and innovation.