Barriers to Organizational Creativity

Introduction:

Interestingly, more than half of the life altering technologies and innovations came into being in the past 200 years (Albery & Yule, 1989). Like human beings, organizations too have experienced the impact of changes brought about by new innovations. If organizations don’t adapt then they would be replaced by other organizations therefore, resource utilization in the most creative possible way is essential for the survival in the ever-changing environment (Hitt, 1975 p.284). Stress on creativity is more now for two reasons; (1) the product life cycles has shrunk and organizations are juggling a number of products in their hands therefore, William & Yang (1999) concluded that “todays workers must adapt quickly as they switch from performing one specialized task to perform another equally specialized task”(p.375). (2) Especially in the private sector companies, in order to be more competitive innovation is required in terms of processes, products, services and practices. Janzen (2000) suggested that “after the age of efficiency in the 1950s and 1960s, quality in 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, we now live in the age of innovation” (p.3).

Literature Review:

creativity:

Creativity is one of the most important factors in success of an organization by improving the operational efficiencies of the work processes (Herbig and Jacobs, 1996). According to Oldham and Cummings (1996) employees perform creatively in organizations when they suggest “products, ideas, or procedures that satisfy two conditions (1) they are novel or original and (2) they are potentially relevant for, or useful to, an organization” (p.607). Kao (1991) defined creativity as ‘‘a human process leading to a result which is novel (new), useful (solves an existing problem or satisfies an existing need), and understandable (can be reproduced)’’ (p. 14). Another definition of creativity is focused on the process as suggested by Drazin et al., (1999). “Creativity[is] the process of engagement in creative acts, regardless of whether the resultant outcomes are novel, useful, or unique” (p. 287).
McCraken (1998) suggest that creativity is the sensitivity to the solution of a problem by identifying the information gaps and deficiencies, formulating hypotheses, evaluating, testing, and communicating the results. From an employee’s perspective, individuals can be considered as creative on their jobs if they generate novel and suitable ideas, improve job processes, implement different business strategies successfully and act as a solution provider to various problems (Perry-Smith & Shalley, 2003). In order to do so, a creative process is followed having the following steps; “problem identification, preparation, response generation, response validation and communication, and outcomes and their evaluation” (Amabile 1983, 1996).
Creativity in the workplace context has many definitions, however; the majority of researchers and instructors often refer to several factors in order to explain the concept (Mostafa & El-Masry, 2008). These factors include attributes, conceptual skills, behaviours, abilities, technologies, empowerment, experience of different processes and external influences (Mostafa & El-Masry, 2008).
A collection of literature has mainly focused on factors that enhance employee’s creativity in the workplace. However, there are a few studies attempted to examine the factors preventing employee to be creative in their respective jobs.
The connection between creativity & innovation:

According to Amabile, Conti, Coon, Lazenby & Herron (1996), “All innovations begin with a creative idea. Successful implementation of new programs, product introductions or services development’s depend either on a person or a team having a good idea—and developing that idea beyond its initial state” (p.1154). While creativity is defined as the creation of a new idea that is both novel and useful in any domain (Amabile et al., 1996), innovation has been known as the successful production or implementation of those ideas within an organization (Amabile et al., 1996).
Naiman’s (2011) distinction between creativity and innovation is clear, as he divides creativity into two parts one which is thinking of a new and useful idea, then developing that idea, while innovation is the creation and implementation of a creative idea into reality. Creativity which is coming up with new ideas or products that are both useful and unique is not enough, thus any organization need innovation to implement a creative idea into reality. Amabile et al., (1996) argued that creativity by individuals and teams is the first step to innovation, although it is not a sufficient condition for successful innovation. Innovation can be influenced by other ideas, product or services generated outside the organization or reworking on the existing products or processes (Woodman, Sawyer & Griffin, 1993, Amabile et al., 1996). Isaken, Lauer and Ekvall (1999) suggested that when employees are open to new ideas and viewpoints then organization becomes supportive of innovation. Research has proven that shared values promote organization culture and urge innovation and change (Scott & Bruce, 1994).
As established by the literature reviews, innovation cannot stand on its own unless it is backed by creativity. Having creative people in an organization is important but to have them actually perform creatively is what contributes to innovation (Tang, 1998).
The proceeding literature review will reflect on various definitions and theories established on creativity, highlighting its importance within an organization and exploring the factors resulting in limiting organizational creativity. creativity in the organization:

Woodman, Sawyer and Griffin, (1993) developed a conceptual framework in order to understand creativity in a complex social settings. They defined organizational creativity as “the creation of a valuable, useful new product, service, idea, procedure, or process by individuals working together in a complex social system” (p.293). A number of researchers have argued that the most important step for organizations to gain a competitive advantage is by enhancing the creative performance of the employees (Amabile, 1988; kanterm1983; Shalley, 1995). Employees who perform creatively are able to provide the organization with raw materials for subsequent developments and possible outcomes which lead to enhancement of an organization’s ability to respond to opportunities, adapt to different environments, grow and compete effectively (Oldham & Cummings, 1996).
Amabile, (1988) established a theory stating that the environment of an organization affects the creativity of the workers and in turn the individual and team creativity influences the overall innovation within the organization. Further, he stated three components are necessary for organization-wide innovation; Management practices, Resources and Organizational motivation. Although, these are features of an organization but they establish a work environment for individuals within the organization. The theory also proposes that creativity is central to task motivation, expertise and creativity skills for individuals or within teams. However, the organizational environment has highest impact on “task motivation”. If the organization is motivated to place high value on innovation and creativity, in addition to other important factors, then the organization is most likely to engage in different activities leading to challenge the capabilities and knowledge of individuals and/or teams. It is important to note that each component mentioned above has its own importance. “Resources” include everything that an organization needs or has to engage in innovation. “Management Practices” include activities conducted by the upper management to design workplace environment to foster innovation. This can be done by empowerment or by establishing procedures to generate good communication among the teams and individuals and also stress on diversity of skills to produce different ideas inline to organization’s vision & mission (Amabile, 1996).
Innovation of new technologies and their implementation has resulted in changing the standard operating procedures followed in many organizations. “Information technology refers to many different software platforms and databases, including enterprise-wide systems designed to manage all major functions of the organization provided by different companies.” (Dewett, 2003). Overall, information technology has had an impact on the organizations by not only changing the work processes but also the mind-set of the management. A common perception is that IT might hinder the creative process of an individual as most of the problem solving is done by the computer system. However, according to Dewett, (2003) IT plays a crucial role in the creative process within an organization. Apart from providing specific benefits to the organizations, three important benefits in terms of creativity are highlighted in Dewett,(2003) research; “(1) Improved ability to link and enable employees, (2) improved ability to codify the organization’s knowledge base, and (3) improved boundary spanning capabilities”.
According to many researchers, electronic communication enables employees to communicate more as compared to following the traditional face-to-face method (Hiltz, Johnson, & Turoff, 1986). With these online connections, employees are more linked to current information enabling them to solve problems easily. In addition, communication in virtual teams has improved as a result of IT thus enabling team effectiveness and creativity (Nemiro, 2001). Various databases are used by organizations to maintain a history of transactions, called developing a knowledge-base, in order to keep track of the organizations activities. In addition, expert systems are used to facilitate managers in making intelligent decisions (Dewett, 2003). Lastly, IT has enabled employees to stretch to test the limits. By exploring the weak links in different organizations, employees can now gain access to other companies critical data such market intelligence activities are a directly result of IT implementation in organizations. However, if IT does play many supporting roles within an organization, then the question arises that how organizations can establish, IT to support creativity, as a norm or a culture? Since culture is defined as “complex pattern of beliefs, expectations, ideas, values, attitudes and behaviours, shared by the members” IT can help in the “sharing” aspect of the culture by facilitating the process. In addition, an organization’s mission, vision, strategies, operating procedures and all others, communicate creativity-supported messages. These can be easily communicated either by emails, voice mails, etc. thus, enabling IT to help in establishing a culture within an organization (Dewett, 2003). Despite of wider acceptance of technologies by almost all organizations, the drawbacks still exist. These drawbacks might act as a hindrance in the creative process such as information overload. Information Technology as the barrier to creativity will be addressed later, for now, it is clear that IT is and can play crucial role in generating creativity in organization.
Barriers to creativity:

In today’s business world, creativity and innovation are vital for any organization to be successful and have become a major factor that can influence organizational efficiency and effectiveness. Creativity and innovation has also become an essential element for organizations to be successful and gain competitive advantage with rapidly changing business climate. According to Wong and pang (2003), increased global competition, coupled with rapidly changing technology and shortening of the product life cycle, has made corporations more vulnerable to failure than at any time in the past”(p.29). Therefore, it has become important for any organization to address business issues objectively in order to enhance its employee’s creativity and the organization’s competitive advantage. Previous researchers have addressed a number of barriers to creativity in organization context that can lead to failure of an organization. Several factors can influence people’s creativity such as, individual personality, social environment and work environment (Wong and Pang, 2003).

In Wong and Pang (2003) research study, they identified barriers to creativity such as, low commitment to organization and systems, fear of change and criticism, time and work pressures, rigid rules and company style, perceived by the managers and supervisors in the Hong Kong hotel industry. Based on the result, time and work pressures, was the most important factor inhibiting mangers and supervisor’s creativity amongst the four other factors. Saadi and Fazal (2006) through survey questionnaires investigated a number of barriers to creativity in research works in an academic organization. These barriers included self-confidence and risk taking, need for conformity, use of the abstract, use of systematic analysis, task achievement, and physical environment. The results illustrated that “task achievement” is the most significant barrier to creativity and the need for conformity and risk tacking were found to be the least significant in academic setting. Sadi and Dubaisi (2008) examined several factors that could inhibit marketing managers from being creative in the work place in Saudi Arabia. In their study, the need for conformity and risk taking was found to be an extreme barrier to creativity for Saudi executives as compared to non-Saudis, while the use of abstract and systematic analysis were found to be relatively low barriers to creativity for Saudi executives as compared to the non-Saudis. Another study by Mostafa (2005) examined factors that could be associated with organisational creativity and creativity barriers in Egyptian organisation by defining a sample group of 170 mangers. According to the results, higher the education of the manager, the more likely he or she is to adopt creative and innovative activities. The study also found that when compared with female managers, male managers have significantly positive attitudes towards creativity. Also, risk aversion was found to be one of the significant barriers affecting creativity in Egyptian business organizations.
In another research conducted by Mostafa and El-Masry’s (2008) on different attitudes of British and Egyptian managers regarding barriers to creativity, concluded that management practices with respect to creativity must vary according to the culture. This would mean that culture clashes within an organization can hinder the creative process at a team-level and/or individually, negating the established concept of universalistic interpretation of creative processes, structures and functions.
External environment is defined as “any condition or situation that is outside the organization itself for example, market, global financial conditions, government, social system, etc. but can exert pressure on an organization’s performance” (Isaksen, Lauer, Ekvall & Britz, 2000-2001 p. 173). Unlike cultural values and beliefs, which are developed overtime, external environment is temporal meaning that it is continuously changing and these changes can be generated. According to an extensive study of cities throughout United States, Florida (2002) concluded that creative people “prefer places that are diverse, tolerant and open to new ideas” (p. 223). In addition, workers desire a place that is socially enriched and tolerant to diversity in terms of age, ethnicity and sexual orientation (p.224), such findings lead to conclude that external environment can act as a barrier to creativity within an organization when the employees are unsatisfied with the outside world. It is evident that personal life of an employee not only affects his or her work but in turn shapes the work process outcomes of the entire organization.
With the growth of organization, culture as defined earlier, is established. Each company has its own pattern of work processes. Google for example has an open and informal culture while General Motors value closed and formal culture. Boston consultancy group’s survey of senior managers (Andrew et.al, 2007) reinforced the importance of organizational creativity, when managers were asked to identify the one barrier to innovation in their sight; about 38% pointed to risk-averse corporate culture as the top barrier to innovation.
As mentioned earlier that despite of the benefits that IT brings to enhance creativity, the flip side is that it acts as a barrier to the creative processes. The use of IT for communication purpose is limited as it does not allow the user to obtain ‘soft’ information (Mintzberg, 1975), ‘rich’ information (Daft, Lengel & Trevino, 1987) or the ‘meaning’ of information (Weick, 1985), putting the aspect of domain relevant knowledge support of IT in question. This means that quality information would be limited and since a creative process requires vast amount of information therefore, inhibiting the generation of ‘qualitative’ ideas.
Each organization would face a particular or a number of barriers to its creativity. It is essential that the commitment to generating new ideas is communicated by the upper management to establish same mind-set organization-wide.
However, the current literature lacks to reflect on certain aspects of creativity within organization. The following section will list down the gaps required to be catered in future research.
Points to Consider In Future Research:

When reviewing the current set of literature, following gaps were identified. These gaps represent the absence of literature on these issues: 1) Creativity is theoretically linked to innovation with little or no actual practical evidence of its relationship within organizations. 2) Role of specific forms of IT must be defined to find out if they act as a barrier to creativity or not. 3) It is unknown to what extent the factors identified, act as barrier to creativity. A logical question arises when reviewing the literature that do the factors inhibit creativity at a low level or do they diminish the entire creative thinking process? 4) Most of the research conducted surrounds having one factor acting as the barrier to creativity. It is unknown what the complete outcome will be of creativity if multiple factors acting as barriers are merged?

Conclusion:

Interestingly, a lot of research has started to emerge and this knowledge when applied can bring beneficial changes in organizational issue –employee creativity. Products or services provided by organizations are meant to ease and solve problems of the consumers. Organizations that are richer in ideas and imaginations are most likely to be effective in meeting consumer’s expectations in problem solving. The field of creativity is being considered as “applied science” (Kaufman & Sternberg, 2010). Researchers have been engaged in investigating the factors for creativity for more than 30 years. Their work will help in strengthening the organizational efforts to promote creativity by enabling the management to develop strategies in relation to individual creativity, creativity processes and creative environments, ultimately to gain internal and external innovation.
References:

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