Computational Thinking as A Problem-Solving Competence: Conceptualization and Its Impact on Digital Creativity

Abstract

Digital technologies are now critical to both human life and organizational production. Computing, as the foundation of widespread digital technologies, profoundly affects various aspects of society. Computational thinking (CT), as an important competence that supports computing and facilitates problem-solving with digital technologies, has gradually drawn the public attention, which is believed to help people better adapt to the current digital society and world-wide digitalization. It aligns with the emphasis on human-IT interaction in IS research, so that introducing CT to IS research can be meaningful to IS theory development. However, although CT theories have been developed for almost two decades since 2006, CT is still a new concept to IS field and its conceptualization and measurement need improvements. On the other hand, establishing the nomological network between CT and IS constructs is also important for clarifying CT’s position within IS theoretical framework and provides new opportunities to IS theory development, which extends CT theories at the same time. Therefore, for contributing both CT and IS theories, this thesis first proposes a new conceptualization and measurement of CT and then establishes a structural equation model (SEM) to reveal the theoretical relationships between CT and digital creativity, expanding both IS theories and CT’s nomological network.

The first study, based on previous literature, develops a new CT conceptualization and measurement by considering CT as a problem-solving competence. According to cognitive psychology theory, knowledge, skills, and attitudes are three important cognitive components when solving problems. Therefore, the first study refers to the CT framework composed of these three components as the “Tripartite View of CT” and constructs CT as a third-order formative construct aggregated by them. Furthermore, based on this conceptual framework, a new scale is developed for measuring CT, which can reflect participants' underlying cognitions of problem-solving and address shortcomings of previous measurements. The scale is developed following a strict process in IS research, with detailed verification of the reliability, validity and factorial structure. The results demonstrate that the developed scale exhibits strong reliability, validity and clear factorial structure.

The second study establishes a theoretical model to inform how CT as a problem-solving competence influences employees’ digital creativity in their work, expanding innovation theories in IS study and the nomological network of CT. Digital creativity is the mapping of digital innovation at individual level, involves that individuals match work problems with solution designs based on digital technologies. Therefore, it is worth exploring whether and how CT, as a problem-solving competence, can affect employees' digital creativity, which contributes to IS research, where understanding digital creativity from the perspective of problem-solving is currently limited. To address these issues, this thesis constructs a theoretical model upon by utilizing technology and task adaptation from the Adaptive Structuration Theory for Individuals and collects longitudinal data for validation. PLS-SEM is used for the empirical analysis of the data and model. The results demonstrate that CT can significantly have positive effect on digital creativity, which is further mediated by technology adaptation and task adaptation. These findings not only reveal the mechanism by which CT affects digital creativity but also enrich the nomological network of CT.

Date of Award	13 Aug 2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	City University of Hong Kong
Supervisor	Jian MA (Supervisor) & Kwok On Matthew LEE (Co-supervisor)