The Relationship between Creative Performance and Personality, Context and Culture in the Hong Kong Police Force

Abstract

This study examined the relationship of creative performance with personality, context, and organizational culture. 120 participants from the Hong Kong Police Force completed the CPAI-2 subscales of divergent thinking, diversity, novelty, self-acceptance, and locus of control; KEYS® subscales of supervisory encouragement and work group coherence; a self-devised scale on participants’ opinion of the existence and degree of creativity-hindrance of cultural characteristics including conformity, face-consciousness, hierarchic, stability, and conventionality; and the verbal test of Wallach-Kogan Creativity Test. Result revealed that education and rank together predicted 13% of creative performance. Creative performance is also significantly correlated with divergent thinking and work group coherence. Hierarchic and conventional culture only predicted creative performance if participants perceived that they exist in the organization as well as hindering creativity. Impact of cognitive process on creativity is suggested to be stronger than the personal and contextual characteristics. Further research direction and the need for creative training are discussed.