Intellectual stimulation essentially means innovative, creative and novel ways of doing the conventional. It is defined as the degree to which you persuade others to be creative in approaching the old problems in new ways and build an environment that is tolerant (Prabhakar, 2005). According to another definition, intellectual stimulation is questioning old assumptions and the status quo (Hetland and Sandal, 2003). Thus, intellectual stimulation could be alluded as problem-solving attitude and new ways of completing the tasks. Intellectual stimulation pushes critical thinking and problem solving. It enhances one’s cognitive development at work and has a tendency to create deeper connection to the work and a stronger feeling of responsibility to the organization. It can thus enhance organizational development and survival. As cited in the study by Heylighen (1992),
self-actualization is refered to as a ‘growth need’; the more an individual develops his capacities, the greater is the thrust to develop them more and more, and this is a continuous process. From this, we can derive that both intellectual stimulation and
self-actualization are the highest need for an individual and they together lead to the psychological health of an employee. Thus, when an employee is satisfied with all the basic or lower order needs like comfortable work environment, social interaction, recognition and sense of personal accomplishment, eventually he gets bored when there is nothing more to achieve. This is when the intellectually stimulating tasks can trigger an employee’s need for self-actualization. This is an indication to the managers in organizations to design jobs in such a way that an employee has new skills to learn to have a positive experience through the process of experimenting and innovation exercised through a certain level of autonomy.
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