We propose that organizations use a new framework of workday design to enhance the creativity of today's chronically overworked professionals. Although insights from creativity research have been integrated into models of work design to increase the stimulants of creativity (e.g., intrinsic motivation), this has not led to work design models that have effectively reduced the obstacles to creativity (e.g., workload pressures). As a consequence, creative output among professionals in high-workload contexts remains disappointing. In response, we offer a framework of work design that focuses on the design of entire workdays rather than the typical focus on designing either specific tasks or very broad job descriptions (e.g., as the job characteristics model in Hackman et al. 1975). Furthermore, we introduce the concept of "mindless" work (i.e., work that is low in both cognitive difficulty and performance pressures) as an integral part of this framework. We suggest that to enhance creativity among chronically overworked professionals, workdays should be designed to alternate between bouts of cognitively challenging and high-pressure work (as suggested in the original model by Hackman et al. 1975), and bouts of mindless work (as defined in this paper). We discuss the implications of our framework for theories of work design and creativity. © 2006 INFORMS.

Using the established definition of situated cognition in organizations as "the interaction of cognitive schemas and organizational context" (Lant 2002), we examine empirical case studies from the last 15 years to illustrate what situated cognitions in organizations might actually look like. Grounded in this research, we develop a framework that identifies how some specific forms of cognitive schemas (i.e., rule schemas, event schemas, person schemas) and specific contexts (e.g., physical contexts, institutional contexts) interact during sensemaking processes to give rise to momentary perceptions that we call situated cognitions. We present evidence that common patterns of interaction between schemas and context may occur during sensemaking in organizations. In terms of theoretical implications, our framework focuses attention on the specific interactions between context and cognition (rather than on context or cognition alone) that comprise situated cognitions, and helps to more concretely define situated cognitions as momentary or temporally bounded perceptions. We offer several practical implications of this framework for managers and suggest avenues for further elaboration on our ideas through research. © 2005 INFORMS.