Thinking Outside the Clocks: The Effect of Layered-Task Time on the Creative Climate of Meetings

The turbulence of the new economy puts demands on organizations to respond rapidly, flexibly and creatively to changing environments. Meetings are one of the organizational sites in which organizational actors do creativity; interaction in groups can be an important site for generating creative ideas and brainstorming. Additionally, Blount (2004) demonstrated the importance of organizational temporalities for group performance. We draw on both of these literatures and examine how temporal structures influence the climate for creativity, or the extent to which creativity is fostered, within groups. Specifically, we develop a hypothesis linking organization- and job-level temporal structures to the extent to which managers structure meetings with a climate supportive of creativity. Our results demonstrate that a nuanced relationship exists between temporal structures and creative climate such that certain temporal structures appear to either enhance or decrease the creative climate of meetings. We end with a discussion of the implications of the findings for management.