The main causes of workplace related stress are juggling work and personal lives, lack of job security, workload management and issues with co-workers. (Source: EAP provider ComPsych StressPulse survey, 2005). ; Credit: Getty Images/Getty Images
Is creativity sacred? Should and could it be policed? Those are questions we’ve been grappling with in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks and, to a lesser degree, the Sony hack tied to the comedy, “The Interview.”
The debate touches upon issues of free speech and creative freedom, with defenders arguing that artists and cultural workers should be given carte blanche to do what they want, and our culture’s obsession with political correctness has taken all the fun out of the creative process.
A group of academics have taken that line of reasoning to task in the context of the workplace. As U.S. companies seek to attract a more diverse workforce, these researchers set up an experiment to look at whether political correctness impedes or unlocks creativity. Their study will soon be published in the journal, Administrative Science Quarterly.
Guest:
Jennifer A Chatman, Professor of Management at UC Berkeley. She is one of the lead authors of the study, “Creativity from Constraint? How Political Correctness Influences Creativity in Mixed-Sex Work Groups,” which was published in the journal Administrative Science Quarterly.