Past research on idea implementation has focused on employees trying to win social support for their own ideas, but employees are often handed ideas to implement that were developed by others. We propose and test hypotheses on such handoffs, focusing on how handing employees relatively mature ideas to implement may lead them to build less creative final products. We tested our hypotheses using two studies: an archival study of 5,676 movies in the U.S. film industry and a complementary experiment. Results suggest that late handoffs yielded less creative final products than no or early handoffs, meaning it was costly to creativity when employees implemented relatively mature ideas without driving at least some of their prior development. However, serialized late handoffs—when implementers are handed relatively mature ideas after an earlier handoff between two other individuals—were less costly to creativity than late handoffs from one other individual. Mediation results suggest that late handoffs reduced implementers’ creativity by restricting their sense of psychological ownership and the coherence of their final products. This research advances theory on idea implementation, handoffs, and psychological ownership in creative work.

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为时已晚：创意工作中的交接和创意实施的有效性

过去对想法实施的研究主要集中在员工试图为自己的想法赢得社会支持上，但员工往往会被交给他人开发的想法来实施。我们提出并测试关于此类交接的假设，重点关注将相对成熟的想法交给员工实施可能会导致他们构建创意较少的最终产品。我们使用两项研究测试了我们的假设：对美国电影业 5,676 部电影的档案研究和补充实验。结果表明，与不交接或提前交接相比，延迟交接产生的最终产品创意较少，这意味着当员工实施相对成熟的想法而没有推动至少部分先前的开发时，创造力会付出高昂的代价。然而，序列化延迟交接——当实施者在其他两个人之间较早的交接之后被交给相对成熟的想法时——对创造力的成本低于另一个人的延迟交接。中介结果表明，延迟交接会限制实施者的心理主人翁意识和最终产品的连贯性，从而降低了他们的创造力。这项研究推进了有关创意工作中的想法实施、交接和心理所有权的理论。