Building organizational creativity – a multitheory and multilevel approach for understanding and stimulating organizational creativity

摘要

Organizational creativity is increasingly important for organizations aiming to survive andthrive in complex and unexpectedly changing environments. It is precondition of innovationand a driver of an organization’s performance success. Whereas innovation researchincreasingly promotes high-involvement and participatory innovation, the models oforganizational creativity are still mainly based on an individual-creativity view. Likewise, thedefinitions of organizational creativity and innovation are somewhat equal, and they are usedas interchangeable constructs, while on the other hand they are seen as different constructs.Creativity is seen as generation of novel and useful ideas, whereas innovation is seen as theimplementation of these ideas. The research streams of innovation and organizationalcreativity seem to be advancing somewhat separately, although together they could providemany synergy advantages. Thereby, this study addresses three main research gaps. First, asthe knowledge and knowing is being increasingly expertized and distributed in organizations,the conceptualization of organizational creativity needs to face that perspective, rather thanrelying on the individual-creativity view. Thus, the conceptualization of organizationalcreativity needs clarification, especially as an organizational-level phenomenon (i.e.,creativity by an organization). Second, approaches to consciously build organizationalcreativity to increase the capacity of an organization to demonstrate novelty in itsknowledgeable actions are rare. The current creativity techniques are mainly based onindividual-creativity views, and they mainly focus on the occasional problem-solving casesamong a limited number of individuals, whereas, the development of collective creativity andcreativity by the organization lacks approaches. Third, in terms of organizational creativity asa collective phenomenon, the engagement, contributions, and participation of organizationalmembers into activities of common meaning creation are more important than the individualcreativityskills. Therefore, the development approaches to foster creativity as social,emerging, embodied, and collective creativity are needed to complement the current creativitytechniques. To address these gaps, the study takes a multiparadigm perspective to face thefollowing three objectives. The first objective of this study is to clarify and extend theconceptualization of organizational creativity. The second is to study the development of organizational creativity. The third is to explore how an improvisational theater basedapproach fosters organizational creativity.The study consists of two parts comprising the introductory part (part I) and six publications(part II). Each publication addresses the research questions of the thesis through detailed subquestions.The study makes three main contributions to the research of organizational creativity. First, itcontributes toward the conceptualization of organizational creativity by extending the currentview of organizational creativity. This study views organizational creativity as a multilevelconstruct constituting both of individual and collective (group and organizational) creativity.In contrast to current views of organizational creativity, this study bases on organizational(collective) knowledge that is based on and demonstrated through the knowledgeable actionsof an organization as a whole. The study defines organizational creativity as an overall abilityof an organization to demonstrate novelty in its knowledgeable actions (through what it doesand how it does what it does).Second, this study contributes toward the development oforganizational creativity as multi-level phenomena, introducing developmental approachesthat face two or more of these levels simultaneously. More specifically, the study presents thecross-level approaches to building organizational creativity, by using an approach based inimprovisational theater and considering assessment of organizational renewal capability.Third, the study contributes on development of organizational creativity using animprovisational theater based approach as twofold meaning. First, it fosters individual andcollective creativity simultaneously and builds space for creativity to occur. Second, it modelscollective and distributed creativity processes, thereby, contributing to the conceptualizationof organizational creativity.