2020 SCIENCELINE

Journal of Educational and Management Studies

J. Educ. Manage. Stud., 10(1): 01-07, March 25, 2020

License: CC BY 4.0,

ISSN: 2322-4770

DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.51475/jems.2020.1

Design of creativity matrix based on importance - performance

model in government executive agencies

Pzhman Pirmon², Naser Hamidi¹^, Nabiollah Mohammadi³and Homa Doroudi⁴

¹Ph.D. Student, Department of public Management, Zanjan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Zanjan, Iran

^2*Associate Prof, Department of Management, Qazvin Islamic Azad University, Qazvin, Iran

³Assistant Prof, Department of Management, Zanjan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Zanjan, Iran

⁴Associate Prof, Department of Management, Zanjan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Zanjan, Iran

^Email: n.hamidi2044@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

Original Article

The real war of the future countries is not based on energy or markets, but on human capital.

Therefore, the need for countries to develop the talents and abilities of knowledge, expertise,

PII: S232247702000001-10

skills, and most importantly, the ability of creative thinking. The purpose of this study is to

Rec. 14 January, 2020

foster creativity by using the Creativity Matrix to fulfill organizational mission. This study

Acc. 14 March, 2020

designed a matrix consisting of a questionnaire that was identified by barriers and creativity

Pub. 25 March, 2020

experts and then evaluated their reliability / validity. In the second step, the creativity

strategies questionnaire was completed using expert opinion and using the best-worst-case-

importance method. And the position of each in the importance-performance matrix was

identified. By analyzing the data, after determining the importance-performance of each

Keywords

Creativity,

Creativity Matrix,

Importance-Performance

Model

strategy in terms of creativity matrix, design in two ways in each organization: a. Designing a

separate matrix: An importance-based matrix and a performance-based matrix. B: Matrix

Design Integrated, after identifying the importance-function of each strategy, a three-

dimensional matrix is designed, one in which the importance-performance diagram, one in

architecture creativity, and the third in creativity in the process. Organizations vary in terms

of applying creativity in architecture and process. Hence, in order to use them optimally, the

type of organization and the importance-performance value of each creativity strategy must

be identified.

opportunities in a timely manner and develop itself

(Seyed Javadin and Jalilian , 2014 ). One of the factors

that lead to the creation of creativity in a community

is to make the background and context among people

to create a culture in which everyone tries to help

grow one another and they help improve the society

by their impact on each other. One of the conditions

for the creation of new ideas is the peace of mind that

is why people need to try to create the conditions in

the community where the brain can think and evolve,

and lead to new ideas and create the conditions for

construction in the community (Samad Aghaei, 2001 ).

Researchers have found that individual creativity

reaches a peak when individuals are triggered by

internal commitment, challenges, job satisfaction,

self-control mechanisms, and self-discipline. They

developed their view from individual variables level to

the level of contextual variables in their studies. They

have found that environments provide opportunities

for prosperity of creativity through the elimination of

restrictions, and rewards (Mir Miran, 2005 ). One of

the management experts mentions four factors

influencing creativity and innovation (King and

INTRODUCTION

The real war between countries in the next few

decades will not be for energy nor markets, but it will

be about human capital. This is why countries need

more people than before whose talents and abilities

are nurtured in a way that enables them to have great

knowledge, expertise, skills, and most importantly,

the ability to think creatively (Azar et al., 2016).

Despite the long history of the existence of creativity

in human beings' life, organizations have only

recently realized that creativity is the key source of

sustainable competitive advantage through the rapid

pace of technological changes, global competition and

economic uncertainty (Aarabi and Mousavi, 2009 ).

The creativity of the employees helps the survival of

the organization because when employees are

creative in their job they will be able to offer and apply

new and useful ideas about products, performance,

services, or procedures of the organization (Sayyedat

et al., 2013). Thus, production and benefit from new

ideas give the ability to the organization to adapt to

the changing conditions, respond to threats and

Citation: Pirmon P, Hamidi N, Mohammadi N and Doroudi H (2020). Design of creativity matrix based on importance - performance model in government executive

agencies. J. Educ. Manage. Stud., 10(1): 01-07. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.51475/jems.2020.1

Pirmon et al., 2019

Andersen, 1990 ) which are as follows: 1. Deployment

possibility of a stubborn Pawn becoming a Queen can

be considered as the importance of perseverance and

the pursuit of small ideas (Bassett-Jones, 2005 ).

and recruiting creative and innovative employees in

the organization; 2. Appropriate research and

financial facilities for innovative efforts; 3. Sufficient

freedom to carry out activities and creative efforts; 4.

Applying the results of creative activities and giving

appropriate responses to creative people; When an

organization is designed based on these four factors,

creativity and innovation can be developed and

improved within the organization (Vakili, 2006 ).

Important factors which are effective on the

improvement of creativity and innovation in the

organization include social capital, the method of

leadership, supportive structure, intellectual capital,

The creativity matrix: creativity in architecture

and process in management

Based on the matrix of creativity the project or

organization environment is divided into two parts

which include creativity in architecture and creativity

in the process. Architectural creativity is related to

the type of creativity needed in project structure (or

in production) or the organization and it is connected

to their results. Creativity in the process is also

management

methodology

and

management

organizational

style,

communication,

organizational

trust,

management practices.

organizational

support, organizational culture and organizational

learning (Alice et al., 2013). Going slow and steady. A

creative person is someone who slowly moves along

in a specific way like the Pawn in a chess game,

without any deviation to left or right. Only in this

method the Pawn can become a Queen and have a lot

of freedom of action. The Rook strategy is the direct

pursuit of the issue and avoiding beating around the

bush, creative people, unlike ordinary people, do not

hide the issue under unnecessary foliage and useless

wastes. To creative people, the issue is important in

its pure final form and sub-questions and the minor

details are of no importance except for the key to

solving the main issue. The Rook strategy means

attacking the issue, an unconditional and

wholehearted attack. Creative people regularly move

out of the ordinary and common route. They approach

their intended purpose indirectly in a tortuous way

like the Knight in chess. If we consider Rook as a

symbol of vertical thinking, the Knight represents the

horizontal thinking on the chessboard, and both of

them worth nothing without each other. A creative

person attacks a point like a Rook with high intensity

and focus, but they choose a different angle than the

direct route for this goal. The Bishop strategy is a way

for continuing the ideas and achievements that we

have obtained by playful ramblings of the Knight

strategy. While playing chess, a creative person leaves

his king behind in the chessboard and tries to win the

game by using his other chess pieces. And at the same

time, they do not neglect the dangers that threaten

the King piece. Creativity is the same as mastering

normative and transient ways and realizing that only

relying on the movement of the King will have no

outcome other than loss. The Queen strategy is the

key to creativity. The Queen strategy is related to the

simultaneous use of the skills of Rook, to keep track of

the issue vertically, and also about using the skills of

Bishop (horizontal) to attack (side-by-side). The

This matrix has four quadrants in two

dimensions and there is a distinction between

creativity in architecture and creativity in the

process. Any manager of an organization must be

aware of this distinction, because different

management strategies, tools, and techniques are

needed for every quarter of the matrix. This matrix

offers specific recommendations on the use and

application of creativity in both the process and

architecture of the organizational departments.

Simple "high" and "low" measurements are used for

each type of creativity in the creativity matrix and as

a result the matrix has four sections. Vertical

coordinates show the information on process

creativity while horizontal coordinates represent

architectural creativity. An appropriate creative

strategy depends on the organization, industry,

company and maybe even the individual project (Sue ‐

Chan and Hempel, 2016 ). The first quarter: high

process creativity, low architectural creativity. This

quarter indicates the projects or organizations that

are known to have low architectural creativity but

J. Educ. Manage. Stud., 10(1): 01-07, 2020

high process creativity. Projects related to the

is called the importance / performance matrix. In fact,

the role of the importance / performance matrix

consists of four parts or quadrants. Each quarter has a

specific strategy, which helps the decision-making

process. This matrix is used for the identification of

the priority of indicators for improvement.

production of artwork, traditional publishing,

advertising, and public relations, are in this category.

The second quarter: low process creativity, low

architectural creativity. This quarter indicates

projects or organizations that are specified by low

creativity in architecture and process. Service

activities such as system upgrades, software

maintenance, and information technology projects as

well as maintenance projects are placed in this

category. The third quarter: high process creativity,

high architectural creativity .This quarter shows

organizations (or more precisely, different types of

projects) and it is characterized by high creativity in

architecture and process. This category includes the

development of information technology systems as

well as the development and research of medicines.

The fourth quarter: low process creativity, high

architectural creativity. This quarter shows projects

with very creative architecture but a constant trend

and low creativity of the process. Accounting and

defense systems are placed into this category.

Importance

First quarter

Focus here

Second quarter

Do a good job

Third quarter

Low Priority

Fourth quarter

Down

Waste of resources

Down

Performance

Figure 2. Quadrant model of performance-importance

analysis

Four quadrants can be distinguished regarding

how important each indicator is (optimal status) and

how well is the organization performing in terms of

this indicator (current status): The indifference scope:

Low performance - low importance .The dissipation

scope: High performance

The analysis of importance and performance

The analysis of importance and performance is

taken from one of the methods of gap analysis. This

technique was first presented by John Martilla and

John James in 1977 . This technique is very similar to

the SERVQUAL technique in terms of data collection.

The analysis of importance and performance is an

effective tool for evaluating an organization's

competitive position, identification of opportunities

for improvement, designing marketing strategies and

providing purposeful services. Martilla and James

(1977) for the first time presented the importance-

performance analysis for identifying and prioritizing

product features or the service which the

organization can focus on maximizing customer

satisfaction. Effective suggestions can be made for

managers through creating a two-dimensional matrix

which its vertical axis shows the perception of the

customer about the performance (quality) of each

feature and its horizontal axis shows the importance

of that feature in customer's decision making. This

two-dimensional matrix is called the importance-

performance matrix. Since the separate analysis of

data on performance dimension and importance

dimension might not be significance especially when

each dataset is studied simultaneously, therefore, data

on the importance level and performance of the

indicators is shown on a two-dimensional network in

which the vertical axis represents the dimension of

importance and the horizontal axis represents the

dimension of performance. This two-dimensional grid

- Low importance. The weaknesses scope: Low

performance - high importance The acceptable scope:

High performance - high importance. The main gap in

the importance-performance analysis model exists in

the second and fourth quarters. If most of the

indicators are placed in the second quarter it means

the organization has invested in indicators that are

not worth much and the performance is high in terms

of unimportant indicators. If most of the indicators

are in the fourth quarter, it means that the

organization has a weak performance in terms of

important indicators. The strategy of the organization

must attempt to initially move the elements from the

fourth quarter to the first quarter and delete all the

elements of the second and third quarters. The

importance-performance analysis is very convenient

for SERVQUAL analysis and competitive analysis.

Usually, a questionnaire with a range of 5, 7 or 9

degrees is used for data collection (Timothy, 2015 ).

Creativity researchers developed their view from

individual variables level to the level of contextual

variables in their studies. They have found that

environments provide opportunities for prosperity of

creativity through the elimination of restrictions, and

rewards (Tai and Mai, 2016 ). In the rest of the review

of the literature, we will review the most recent

related studies and their results.

Pirmon et al., 2019

colleagues and managers, etc.), lack of intrinsic

METHODOLOGY

motivation, pressure to do work and the lack of a

suitable environment to create and nurture creativity.

Step 4: Development of a questionnaire of

creativity strategies and obtaining the opinions of the

expert’s .In this section of the study, the strategies

identified in this study were evaluated using the best-

worst method. At first, the questionnaires of the

research were designed to evaluate research

strategies using the best-worst method and then they

were given to the experts. After the questionnaires

were completed by the experts we evaluated and

prioritized research strategies by using the relations

in the best-worst method.

The next step in the best-worst method is the

selection of the best (most important) and worst (least

important) strategy. After identifying the best and

least important strategy, the experts provide their

opinion based on the paired comparisons

questionnaire, regarding the superiority of the best

strategy over other strategies and the superiority of

all strategies over the least important strategy.

The present study is applied research in terms of the

nature of the problem and the purpose of the study.

And in terms of the type of implementation, it is a

descriptive survey study. The research steps are as

follows: Step one: data collection .To design the

matrix, at first, data was collected about creativity,

creativity barriers, creativity propellants, creativity

strategies, importance-performance model, and

creativity matrix were collected using the library

method and studying the books, authentic articles and

magazines. Step two: Designing a basic questionnaire

about the propellants, and creativity barriers, and

gathering Expert Opinion. After collecting data based

on previous models of factors affecting employee

creativity and also the creativity barriers are

summarized and the initial questionnaires were

designed. Step three: Expert opinion analysis and data

validation. After designing the questionnaire of the

creativity propellants, and create barriers, the

objectives of the test were explained to the experts

and the operational definitions of the content of the

questions were outlined. The content validity ratio

(CVR) method was used to assess content validity. In

this method, 15 experts were asked to classify each

question according to the Likers scale "there is a high

fit", "there is a fit", "and there is a low fit", "and there

is no fit". And then according to the following formula,

the Law she Content validity ratio was calculated.

Table 1. The List of Strategies

No.

Strategies

Pawn

Rook

Knight

Bishop

Queen

King

Table 2. The mean of expert opinions on the

superiority of the best strategy over other strategies

In this formula we have: N: Total number of the

experts/NE: The number of experts who chose the

"necessary" option. Thus, by considering the number

of experts, the questions whose validity was above

0.49 were confirmed and the validity of the remaining

questions was rejected.

After calculating the content validity by the

propellants, the validity was confirmed for creating a

background for individual creativity, individual

factors (internal commitment, challenge, job

satisfaction, and self-control and self-discipline

mechanisms), organizational Culture, Knowledge-

Based Strategies and Policies, senior management

support, the style of leadership, organizational

Strategies Pawn Rook Knight Bishop Queen King

Best

Strategy

4.816

3.519

3.287

2.724

2.701

Table 3. The mean of expert opinions on the

superiority of all the strategies compared to the worst

strategy

Strategies

Worst Strategy

Pawn

Rook

Knight

4.816

3.437

3.650

Bishop

Queen

King

3.727

3.103

structure,

organizational

atmosphere

and

strengthening the values of the organization. Also in

terms of barriers, the content validity was confirmed

for lack of confidence, fear of criticism and failure,

lack of mental focus, individual factors (lack of

motivation for creativity, etc.), environmental factors

(a creative person not being accepted acceptance by

The next step is to find the weight of each

strategy. To that end, based on the relations in the

best-worst method, initially, the mathematical model

of the problem was formed as follows.

min 휉

푊2

− 4.816| ≤ 휉

푊1

J. Educ. Manage. Stud., 10(1): 01-07, 2020

푊2

of the other strategies and the rankings obtained for

− 3.519| ≤ 휉

− 3.287| ≤ 휉

− 2.724| ≤ 휉

− 2.701| ≤ 휉

− 3.437| ≤ 휉

− 3.650| ≤ 휉

− 3.707| ≤ 휉

− 3.103| ≤ 휉

푊3

푊2

them can be seen in the table above separately. After

the recognition of the importance and performance of

each of the strategies, the creativity matrix can be

designed according to the type of organization. This

design can be done in the two following methods: A.

Designing creativity matrix separately: In this mode,

after identifying the importance and performance of

each strategy in the organization, one creativity

matrix is designed based on the importance and one

creativity matrix is designed based on performance.

So, in the importance-based creativity matrix, the

position of each strategy in the matrix can be seen in

two dimensions: creativity in architecture and

creativity in the process: Designing the Matrix of

creativity in a combined way: In this mode, after

identifying the importance and performance of each

strategy in the organization, a three-dimensional

creativity matrix is designed. One dimension of this

matrix shows the importance-performance diagram,

another dimension shows creativity in architecture

and the last dimension shows creativity in the

process.

푊4

푊2

푊5

푊2

푊6

푊3

푊1

푊4

푊1

푊5

푊1

푊6

푊1

푊1 + 푊2 + 푊3 + 푊4 + 푊5 + 푊6 = 1

푊 ≥ 0 . 푓표푟 푎푙푙 ꢀ

푗

The problem weight of each research strategy and

the ranking of the strategies were calculated by

solving the mathematical model. The final results

obtained from solving the research model can be seen

in Table 4 and Figure 1.

Table 4. Weight of the problem dimensions with the

optimal value of the objective function

Rank

Wt.

0.0582

0.3419

0.1387

0.1532

0.1813

0.1266

1.0547

Scale

Pawn

Rook

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

Knight

Bishop

Queen

King

The researches mentioned in the literature review are

some of the most important researches on creativity

and the use of creativity in organizations, and as it

could be seen, those studies only addressed a part of

creativity. But the present study has addressed this

issue more comprehensively with various dimensions.

Finally, we can conclude that organizations differ in

terms of using creativity in architecture and process.

Therefore, the type of organization and the

importance and performance of each creative strategy

must be identified to use the employee creativity

optimally and design a creativity matrix so that the

goals and objectives of the organization can be

achieved. It is suggested based on the findings of the

study that the managers of the organization identify

the barriers and propellants of creativity for efficient

and effective use of creativity. They should also

eliminate removable barriers and make the most use

of the best propellants, and finally, consider creativity

strategies in architecture and management processes.

Due to the difficulty of designing the creativity

matrix in the three-dimensional combined form (one

dimension of importance-performance analysis, one

dimension of creativity in architecture and the third

dimension of creativity in process), as well as

understanding its dimensions and interpreting it,

caution must be observed and the people who are

skilled in the field must be used to design it.

휉^∗

King

0.1266

Minister

Elephant

Horse

0.1813

0.1532

0.1387

0.3419

Castle

0.0582

0.1000

soldier

0.0000

0.2000

0.3000

0.4000

Figure 4. The amount of the importance of each

strategy

RESULTS

As it is clear from the results of the tables above, the

Rook strategy has achieved the first rank among all

strategies in the study because it has gained the most

weight among research strategies. The Queen and

Bishop strategies have the second and third place

after the Rook strategy. The weight of the importance

Pirmon et al., 2019

Table 5. The advantages of the present research compared to previous research

The amount of attention and focus on different dimensions of creativity

Research title

√

Existence Research

─

Visionary leadership and employee creativity in China (Zhou et al., 2018)

The impact of leaders’ technical competence on employees’ innovation

and learning (Van Minh et al., 2017)

Proactive personality, organizational context, employee creativity and

innovative capability Evidence from MNCs and domestic corporations

(Tai and Mai, 2016 )

Transformational leadership, innovation climate, creative self-efficacy

and employee creativity: A multilevel study (Jaiswal and Dhar, 2015)

Network structure, organizational learning culture, and employee

creativity in system integration companies: The mediating effects of

exploitation and exploration (Hahn et al., 2015)

─

√

─

√

─

√

─

Studying the links between organizational culture, innovation, and

performance in Spanish companies (Naranjo-Valencia et al., 2016)

The creativity-performance relationship: how rewarding creativity

moderates the expression of creativity (Sue ‐Chan and Hempel, 2016)

Overcoming work-related stress and promoting employee creativity in

hotel industry: the role of task feedback from supervisor: Overcoming

work related stress and promoting employee creativity in hotel industry

(Hon et al., 2013)

─

√

─

√

─

√

─

Impact factors; SSCI journals; Academic success; Creativity; Academic

freedom; Performance indicators

─

√

─

√

Work environment and atmosphere: The role of organizational support

in the creativity performance of tourism and hospitality organizations

Creativity cognitive style, conflict, and career success for creative

entrepreneurs (Chen et al., 2015)

─

√

─

√

Managing creativity in business market relationships

Sue ‐Chan, C., & Hempel, P. S. (2016). The creativity‐performance

relationship: How rewarding creativity moderates the

expression of creativity. Human Resource Management, 55(4),

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