Premium
Studying Organizational Creativity as Process: Fluidity or Duality?
Author(s) -
Fortwengel Johann,
Schüßler Elke,
Sydow Jörg
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
creativity and innovation management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.148
H-Index - 60
eISSN - 1467-8691
pISSN - 0963-1690
DOI - 10.1111/caim.12187
Subject(s) - creativity , perspective (graphical) , process (computing) , phenomenon , epistemology , sociology , creativity technique , duality (order theory) , psychology , social psychology , computer science , artificial intelligence , philosophy , mathematics , operating system , discrete mathematics
This paper contributes to process studies on organizational creativity by developing two competing research agendas. The first perspective, the ‘becoming’ view, depicts creativity as a constant flow of activity that crystallizes every once in a while in unpredictable moments of creativity. The second perspective, the ‘practice’ view, understands creativity as a practised social process, in which structures play the important role of both enabling and constraining individual agents in pursuing creativity as a collective phenomenon. We compare and contrast these two theoretical perspectives, which are based on different process ontologies, and discuss their methodological implications. We argue that the practice perspective offers particular promise, because it allows us to address the important yet paradoxical question of how creativity may be organized and managed.