Abstract
A field experiment compared managers'(n=90) and non-managers'(n=66) attitudes toward divergent thinking before and after training in a three phase process of creative thinking emphasizing problem finding as well as solving and implementing. The mediating effect of personal creative problem solving style was also measured. The sample was comprised of a variety of functional specialties, hierarchicalevels and organizations. Before training, managers were lower in tendency for premature convergence but non-managers were higher in preference for active divergence. After training, both groups had improved both attitudes and between-group differences were no longer statistically significant. The manager and non-manager groups were found to have different distributions of creative problem solving style. For managers, the dominant style was conceptualizor and for nonmanagers it was generator. Among both groups, training benefitted participants with the optimizer style the most in improving the two divergent thinking attitudes.
