The Curvilinear Relation Between Experienced Creative Time Pressure and Creativity: Moderating Effects of Openness to Experience and Support for Creativity Markus Baer and Greg R. Oldham University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign This study examined the possibility of a curvilinear relation between the creative time pressure employees experience at work and their creativity. The authors also examined whether this curvilinear relation was moderated by employees’ scores on the openness to experience personality dimension and by the support for creativity employees received from supervisors and coworkers. Data were obtained from 170 employees and 10 supervisors of a manufacturing organization. Results showed an inverted U-shaped creative time pressure-creativity relation for employees who scored high on openness to experience while simultaneously receiving support for creativity. The authors discussed the implications of these results for future research and practice. Keywords: creativity, time pressure, openness to experience, support Substantial evidence now suggests that employee creativity makes an important contribution to organizational innovation, competitiveness, and survival (Nonaka, 1991). As a consequence, there has been increasing interest in identifying the contextual conditions that influence such creativity (see Shalley, Zhou, & Oldham, 2004). One condition that is frequently mentioned in this literature is the time pressure employees experience at work (see Amabile, 1996). Specifically, commentators suggest that the ex- perience of high time pressure stifles creativity by reducing the extent to which employees engage in exploratory thinking and by causing them to rely on familiar algorithms when approaching problems (see Andrews & Smith, 1996). Unfortunately, the few studies that have tested this idea have produced results that are generally weak and inconclusive (e.g., Amabile, Conti, Coon, Lazenby, & Herron, 1996; Madjar & Old- ham, 2006). For example, Andrews and Smith (1996) showed that product managers who experienced high time pressure developed marketing programs low in creativity. However, Andrews and Farris (1972) found positive relations between scientists’ per- ceived time pressure to complete their work and the “innovative- ness” of that work. But Amabile and Gryskiewicz (1989) found a nonsignificant relation between experienced time pressure and the creativity of employees from five different groups (e.g., govern- ment lab, educational institution). One factor that may have contributed to the pattern of results obtained in these earlier studies involves the way time pressure was measured. Most previous research assessed the overall amount of time pressure employees experienced at work, which may or may not have captured the extent to which they experienced pressure with respect to creativity. Specifically, while a measure of overall time pressure may reflect employees’ perceptions regard- ing pressure for creative pursuits in cases where creativity is an essential component of employees’ jobs, this may not be the case in situations where creativity is less central to employees’ daily routines. In such circumstances, overall and creative pressures may capture different aspects of experienced time pressure at work— employees may not necessarily feel high levels of overall time pressure in their jobs, but may still feel that they have little time available to pursue creative activities. This ambiguity with respect to the specific aspect of pressure being measured may have con- tributed to the pattern of inconsistent results obtained in previous studies examining the time pressure-creativity relation. Our study addresses this issue by examining the relation be- tween employee creativity and a specific form of time pressure that should be particularly relevant to creativity: experienced creative time pressure (i.e., the extent to which employees feel they have insufficient time to develop creative ideas at work). In addition, we examine the possibility that the relation between creative time pressure and creativity is curvilinear in nature—not linear as suggested by previous research. Activation theory (Gardner & Cummings, 1988) and earlier research on constructs related to time pressure (e.g., job tension and job demands; Janssen, 2001; Ziv- nuska, Kiewitz, Hochwater, Perrewe, & Zellars, 2002) suggest that the shape of an inverted U might best characterize the time pressure-creativity relation. Finally, based on an interactionist per- spective (Woodman & Schoenfeldt, 1989, 1990), we also examine the possibility that dimensions of employee personality and the social environment (i.e., openness to experience and support for creativity) moderate the curvilinear creative time pressure- creativity relation. We propose that individuals who experience intermediate cre- ative time pressure should be fully engaged in their activities at work (Freedman & Edwards, 1988), leading to greater exploration of ideas and experimentation with novel approaches to solving Markus Baer and Greg R. Oldham, Department of Business Adminis- tration, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Beginning August 1, 2006, Markus Baer will be Assistant Professor, Olin School of Business, Washington University in St. Louis, 1 Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO 63130-4899. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Markus Baer, Department of Business Administration, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL 61820. E-mail: baer@uiuc.edu Journal of Applied Psychology Copyright 2006 by the American Psychological Association 2006, Vol. 91, No. 4, 963–970 0021-9010/06/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/0021-9010.91.4.963 963