Psychological safety has been found to have significant effects on both individual and team creativity. There are a number of mechanisms and pathways through which psychological safety has been shown to positively affect creativity, such as through increasing individual engagement, team trust, and team communication, among other variables. In this chapter we review the literature regarding psychological safety and creativity. In addition, we review the potential antecedents of psychological safety, particularly leadership, team and organizational structure, and social processes, and how these antecedents influence the emergence of psychological safety.

Creativity and innovation are important for organizational survival and growth, as globalization and technological advances increase the need to address rapid changes and uncertainty in the marketplace. As such, organizations and researchers have produced a significant amount of work on creativity and innovation to help address organizations’ need to develop creative ideas and solutions. These studies have yielded a variety of findings, sometimes contradictory, since organizational creativity is a multi-level issue; factors of creativity and innovation at one level may be different, not predictive, or even contradictory at another level. This chapter overviews these findings to summarize the factors in organizations that facilitate or hinder creativity and innovation at each manifested level: the individual, team, and organization. At the individual level, work on creativity and innovation focuses on the creative problem-solving process, personality of creative individuals, and motivational variables. At the team level, creativity and innovation focus on factors within leadership, team processes, and climate. Finally, creativity and innovation at the organizational level are overviewed regarding organizational strategy, goals and rewards, top management teams, and availability of resources.

Creativity and innovation have been shown to be an important force in organizational performance and survival (Ford and Gioia, 1995; Dess and Picken, 2000; Shalley, Zhou, and Oldham, 2004; Mumford and Hunter, 2005; George, 2007). Changes in technology, globalization, and increased competition have all created an environment in which creativity and innovation are needed to handle situational demands, economic pressures, and frequent changes (Woodman, Sawyer, and Griffin, 1993; Mumford et al., 2002; Shalley et al., 2004; West et al., 2004). A recent survey by IBM (2010) indicated that addressing rapid changes and uncertainty are viewed as commonplace for managers, and therefore one of the most important skills for managers is that of creative thinking. Consequently, it is not surprising that organizational researchers have shown increased interest in understanding what improves creativity in organizations.