113 2 nd INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON MANAGEMENT (2 nd ICM 2012) PROCEEDING 11 th - 12 th JUNE 2012. HOLIDAY VILLA BEACH RESORT & SPA, LANGKAWI KEDAH, MALAYSIA ISBN: 978-967-5705-07-6. WEBSITE: w w w . i n t e r n a t i o n a l c o n f e r e n c e . c o m . m y FACTORS CONTRIBUTING STUDENTS’ CREATIVITY Wumaierjiang Ayoufu, Mojgan Afshari & Simin Ghavifekr Faculty of Education University of Malaya tulpar712@yahoo.com ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to determine the factors which could foster and enhance students’ creativity in three research universities in Malaysia. The data collected from 520 postgraduate students. Correlation analysis was employed to analyze data. Findings of this study indicated that three factors such as intrinsic motivation, psychological empowerment, and support for innovation contribute significantly to the development of students’ creativity. It is suggested that universities should create a supportive environment, assist students’ psychological empowerment and develop an innovative culture in order to enhance students’ creative thinking. Field of Research: Intrinsic motivation, psychological empowerment, support for innovation, research university, students’ creativity ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. INTRODUCTION Creativity has defined by Sternberg and Lubart (1995) as ‘producing new and original idea’ which is critical factor for organization’s development (Amabile 1996). Nowadays, many organizations face competitive environment in their production processes, however, to keep organizational growth and survive, organizations should have to be more creative and innovative (Jung et al., 2003). As Colinger (2002) has emphasized that being creative in work place can enhance individual’s creativity and motivate them work creatively. Many researchers believed that intrinsic motivation (Amabile, 1996; Amabile et al., 1996; McCullagh, 2005; Shin & Zhou, 2003), psychological empowerment ((Deci et al., 1989; Spreitzer 1995; Gumusluoglu & Ilsev, 2009), and support for innovations (Scott & Bruce, 1994; Elkins & Keller, 2003) are significant factors to foster creativity among individuals in organizations including educational institutions. It is widely believed that creativity can be enhanced and cultivated if the conditions and contributing factors provided respectively. The previous literatures has showed that there are researches have been done regarding the factors which could contribute to enhance creativity among students, but the correlation among those factors and determinant level is have not examined yet. This paper is seeks to examine the correlation between variables of psychological empowerment, intrinsic motivation and support for innovation. brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by UM Digital Repository