In 1974 an article appeared in Science magazine with the dry-sounding title “Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases” by a pair of psychologists who were not well known outside their discipline of decision theory. In it Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman introduced the world to Prospect Theory, which mapped out how humans actually behave when faced with decisions about gains and losses, in contrast to how economists assumed that people behave. Prospect Theory turned Economics on its head by demonstrating through a series of ingenious experiments that people are much more concerned with losses than they are with gains, and that framing a choice from one perspective or the other will result in decisions that are exactly the opposite of each other, even if the outcomes are monetarily the same. Prospect Theory led cognitive psychology in a new direction that began to uncover other human biases in thinking that are probably not learned but are part of our brain’s wiring.

Thinking fast and slow.

What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.

The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

(1991). Applied Linear Regression Models. Journal of Quality Technology: Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 76-77.

Applied Linear Regression Models

'Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony', American Journal of Sociology, 83, pp. 340-63.

In Two Minds. Dual Processes and Beyond

Concerns that sophisticated algorithms and autonomous machines are replacing human labor have driven a recent interest in creativity as a key factor in maintaining innovation and economic growth. Within management and entrepreneurship research, the dominant definition of creativity is that it entails the generation of ideas or products that are both novel and useful. Novelty—being new, unique, or different, relative to central practices or views—and usefulness—being appropriate, correct, or valuable to the task at hand—are therefore each seen as necessary conditions for something to be classified as creative. In spite of its importance, a major obstacle to the study of creativity has been the translation of this simple two-criterion conceptual definition into an operational one to be utilized in empirical study. This dissertation aims to take a step back and answer the question of whether, how, and under what conditions novelty is related to usefulness. Following recent advances in the study of creativity it emphasizes that, although creativity may be jointly composed of the novelty and usefulness, these are distinct concepts that should best be considered as such. This dissertation contributes to research on creativity, management, and entrepreneurship by providing new insights into the conditions under which creativity emerges—yielding new insights as to why some novel offerings see widespread use whereas other ostensibly similar offerings linger in obscurity. This dissertation consists of four essays that address the overarching research question from a variety of theoretical lenses, and each essay is centered on a setting where creativity is of particular importance: university students who are close to starting knowledge-intensive and skilled work, the creative industries, and academia.

Richard Haans

Papers

Disentangling novelty and usefulness : Essays on creativity in the arts and sciences