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

Organizational creativity is increasingly important for organizations aiming to survive and thrive in complex and unexpectedly changing environments. It is precondition of innovation and a driver of an organization’s performance success. Whereas innovation research increasingly promotes high-involvement and participatory innovation, the models of organizational creativity are still mainly based on an individual-creativity view. Likewise, the definitions of organizational creativity and innovation are somewhat equal, and they are used as 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 the implementation of these ideas. The research streams of innovation and organizational creativity seem to be advancing somewhat separately, although together they could provide many synergy advantages. Thereby, this study addresses three main research gaps. First, as the knowledge and knowing is being increasingly expertized and distributed in organizations, the conceptualization of organizational creativity needs to face that perspective, rather than relying on the individual-creativity view. Thus, the conceptualization of organizational creativity needs clarification, especially as an organizational-level phenomenon (i.e., creativity by an organization). Second, approaches to consciously build organizational creativity to increase the capacity of an organization to demonstrate novelty in its knowledgeable actions are rare. The current creativity techniques are mainly based on individual-creativity views, and they mainly focus on the occasional problem-solving cases among a limited number of individuals, whereas, the development of collective creativity and creativity by the organization lacks approaches. Third, in terms of organizational creativity as a collective phenomenon, the engagement, contributions, and participation of organizational members into activities of common meaning creation are more important than the individualcreativity skills. Therefore, the development approaches to foster creativity as social, emerging, embodied, and collective creativity are needed to complement the current creativity techniques. To address these gaps, the study takes a multiparadigm perspective to face the following three objectives. The first objective of this study is to clarify and extend the conceptualization of organizational creativity. The second is to study the development of organizational creativity. The third is to explore how an improvisational theater based approach 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, it contributes toward the conceptualization of organizational creativity by extending the current view of organizational creativity. This study views organizational creativity as a multilevel construct 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 actions of an organization as a whole. The study defines organizational creativity as an overall ability of an organization to demonstrate novelty in its knowledgeable actions (through what it does and how it does what it does).Second, this study contributes toward the development of organizational creativity as multi-level phenomena, introducing developmental approaches that face two or more of these levels simultaneously. More specifically, the study presents the cross-level approaches to building organizational creativity, by using an approach based in improvisational theater and considering assessment of organizational renewal capability. Third, the study contributes on development of organizational creativity using an improvisational theater based approach as twofold meaning. First, it fosters individual and collective creativity simultaneously and builds space for creativity to occur. Second, it models collective and distributed creativity processes, thereby, contributing to the conceptualization of organizational creativity.

Digital Creativity: Advantages, Problems, Responsibilities

The paper focuses on the rapid development of the digital culture and the challenges it imposes to human creativity. It analyses e-learning, digital entertainment, digital art and the issues of creativity and improvisation. It also presents a classification of the levels in the creative structure including hardware and software tools; product developers; creators and end users. Special attention is paid to the advantages of the new digital culture and the responsibilities of all people who create it or use it. We conclude that more attention should be paid to the threats and to ways of boosting positive creativity in the various fields of application of information and communication technologies.

A "audiação" no desenvolvimento da criatividade na aprendizagem do saxofone

Relatório de estágio de mestrado em Ensino de Música

Mistä on kollektiivinen luovuus tehty? : tarkastelun kohteena ulkoasun visuaalinen suunnitteluprosessi Animatricks-animaatiofestivaalille

Opinnäytetyössä pyritään selvittämään, mistä kollektiivisen luovuus rakentuu. Työn tavoitteena on ollut rakentaa aihetta käsittelevän kirjallisuuden pohjalta optimaalisen kollektiivisen luovuuden teoria ja vertailla sen pohjalta parityönä tehdyn Animatricks-animaatiofestivaalin ulkoasun suunnitteluprosessia. Opinnäytetyössä luotu optimaalisen kollektiivisen luovuuden teoria koostuu pääosin improvisaatioteatterin lainalaisuuksista ja yhdistelee niitä tieteen- ja taiteenalojen muihin luovuuden määritelmiin. Näistä huomioista kiteytetään kymmenen kohtainen kollektiivisen luovan toiminnan määritelmä. Analysoinnin tuloksena vuorovaikutus näyttäisi nousevan tärkeimmäksi tekijäksi kollektiivisessa luovassa toiminnassa. Ryhmässä on mahdollista esiintyä luovuutta myös ilman ainuttakaan esitetyistä kymmenestä kohdasta, mutta tällöin ryhmän jäsenten merkitys ei kasva osiensa summaa suuremmaksi. Animatricks-animaatiofestivaalin visuaalisen suunnitteluprosessin kokemuksen pohjalta näyttäisi, että keskeisimmät elementit kollektiivisen luovuuden onnistumisen kannalta ovat vuorovaikutus, ja siihen suoraan liittyvät pelot ja sosiaaliset naamiot sekä epäonnistumisen hyväksyminen. Toisaalta, jos nämä seikat ovat täysin kadoksissa, esimerkiksi optimaalinen määrä aikaa tai pakotteiden ja palkintojen puuttuminen tuskin parantaisivat lopputulosta. Tämän päivän ryhmätyökeskeisessä työelämässä ei hyvän vuorovaikutuksen merkitystä voida liikaa korostaa. Opinnäytetyö avaakin toivottavasti uusia ajatuksia monille työntekijöille.

Educating Practitioners for Integrative Rural Practice

Arguably, living and working in rural communities can pose significant challenges for human service practitioners - challenges that are different from those encountered by their urban counterparts. Human services employers, like many other employers in rural areas, have difficulty in recruiting and retaining staff. There is now considerable evidence to support the notion that rural and remote practice constitutes a different and distinct form of practice and has undergone significant changes over the past decade. Living and working in rural communities means that practitioners are not only influenced by the rural and remote context of practice, they are also part of that context. Given the difficulty encountered in attracting and retaining rural practitioners and the changes in this area, an important question which emerges is: How can practitioners best be prepared for this work through largely urban based social work and human service education? The multifaceted and multilayered complexities in rural practice requires creativity, improvisation and a capacity for 'integrative thinking' (Martinez-Brawley 2002). This paper discusses six elements of newer forms of rural and remote practice and how they might be most effectively addressed through social work and human service curricula. An education model which integrates these elements and other principles for rural practice is proposed.

How can we help students to improve their creativity? – lessons learned from a case study

One of the main concerns of today’s organizations is to cope with the rapid pace of change while maintaining their competitive advantage. This means that firms must be innovative, create new knowledge and have new ideas constantly. Similarly, one of the main concerns of lecturers is to help students to develop creativity. According to some authors, new ideas, new thoughts, innovation can arise in an appropriate environment and with the development and train of adequate competences and skills. This means that although some persons were born more creative than others, it is possible to help those less creative to improve their innovative capacities and competences. The question that remains now is “how”. How can we, as lecturers and educators help our students to become more creative? In this paper we describe a Portuguese case study that took place at ISCAP (School of Accountancy and Administration of Porto – Portugal), in the course of Business Communication, in the unit “Marketing Communication” (3rd year (1st Bologna cycle), 1st semester). We will describe and characterize the situation at the beginning of the semester (situation A), explain the tasks and activities proposed to students and the final result (situation A2). We will discuss differences between situation A and A2, formulate some hypotheses concerning differences and draw some recommendations.