When time pressure eases, employees often lose their driving force for innovation — but that’s not the case for individuals high in what’s known as the need for cognition, which is essentially a dispositional tendency to engage in and enjoy thinking, says a team led by Chia-Huei Wu of the University of Western Australia.

In a study of 179 employees working in a Dutch research and consultancy organisation, the researchers found that a need for cognition is associated with innovation behaviours, most notably when there’s an absence of other innovation drivers such as time pressure and high job autonomy. People with a need for cognition tend to feel positively about novelty, complexity and uncertainty; are better able to engage in information processing; and develop higher confidence in their ideas, the researchers say.

(Source: Journal of Management)

Published in Dawn, Economic & Business, March 2nd , 2015

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