Showing posts with label design. Show all posts
Showing posts with label design. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Organizational Creativity
A while back, I cowrote an article on the psychology of entrepreneurs. My role was to help update the paper that one of my colleagues had written a while before. I took a totally different approach as my background was in international management and communication. Our paper has been well received and still holds up. One reason it may still hold up is that we tried to identify the universals that came out of research regardless of discipline, culture, or methodology. These universals included a high locus of control, high tolerance of ambiguity, a risk taking personality, the ability to rebound after failure, and strong community/familiar support.
So how does that relate to organizational creativity? One of the concepts in the paper that I think was lacking was the creative mind of the entrepreneur. Part of the reason is that few people studied creativity among entrepreneurs is because we assume 1) entrepreneurs are already creative; 2) creativity is subjective and therefore difficult to measure or even observe; 3) business studies need to be “scientific” which means the “soft sciences” such as creativity, communication, innovation, and artistic sense do not have a place in business journals.
Recently, however, there has been a resurgence in research on organizational creativity and innovation. Just in searching “organizational creativity” on google scholar for 2013 (7 months) returned 14,800 hits compared to a total of 58,400 for the time period of 2000-2005 (an average of 11,800 per month). This does not include other concepts that might fall under “creativity” such as knowledge creation, innovation, product/idea development, organizational design, and collective knowledge.
My own research on knowledge creation in distributed groups has recently had me reevaluating my data to answer the following questions:
1) What organizational, departmental, and group processes affect individual creativity and the creativity at all levels of an organization? How do these processes inhibit or encourage innovation and creativity?
2) How do cultural practices (organizational, departmental, academic discipline/professional, societal) inhibit or encourage creativity? How creativity is perceived and/or defined?
3) What design features create the best environment for creativity? What environmental features? What interpersonal/societal/communication features?
I will be focusing on some of my findings about transactional and negotiated knowledge, knowledge boundaries at various levels, and the concept of “design” in organizational practices.
Reading list:
Shin, Soo-Young; Park, Won-Woo; Lim, Hyoun Sook, (2013). What Makes Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises Promote Organizational Creativity: The Contingency Perspective. Social Behavior and Personality: an international journal, Volume 41, Number 1, 2013 , pp. 71-82(12).
Anit Somech & Anat Drach-Zahavy (2013). Translating Team Creativity to Innovation Implementation
The Role of Team Composition and Climate for Innovation. Journal of Management. vol. 39 no. 3 684-708.
Cook, S & Yanow, D. (1993). Culture and organizational learning. Journal of Management Inquiry, 2 (4), 373-390.
Goodwin, C. (1994) Professional Vision. American Anthropologist, New Series, 96 (3), 606-633.
Mohammed, S., & Dumville, B. (2001). Team mental models in a team knowledge framework: Expanding theory and measurement across disciplinary boundaries. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 22, 89-106.
Rouwette, E. & Vennix, J. (2008). Team learning on messy problems. In Sessa, V. & London, M. (Eds) Work Group Learning (pp. 243-284). New York, NY: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Moreland, R., & Levine, J. (2001). Socialization in organizations and work groups. In M. E. Turner (Ed.), Groups at work: Theory and research (pp. 69-112). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erbaum Associates.
Jehn, K., Northcraft, G., & Neale, M. (1999). Why differences make a difference: A field study of diversity, conflict, and performance in workgroups. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44, 741-763.
Monday, November 26, 2012
Defining Design and Design's Role in Distributed Groups
I thought I had posted about this topic, which was actually an important idea that had to be cut from my dissertation. However, Colin Gray's current research on design and innovation resonates with the findings that design is a social construct rooted in multiple cultures within distributed groups. He speaks of the disruption of thought which is something that distributed groups do when they negotiate meaning.
Design is the application of power structure values and work patterns to genres. As a result, design becomes the processes by which genres are created, embedded in the organizational cultures, and aligned with organizational vision. Buchanan ( 1992) distinguishes between categories and placement of design.
Categories consist of fixed meanings that allow us to understand and analyze existing knowledge. These categories can fall into four forms: symbolic and visual communication, material objects, activities and organized services; and complex systems and environments. These types of categories represent the intention of “signs, things, action, and thoughts” (Buchanan, p.12) based on the understanding and analysis of perceived knowledge. In other words, design is the result of analyzing a situation, applying concepts based on experience and perception of what works and does not work, and developing a plan the creates boundaries within which individuals and workers have the intent to work.
A more important aspect of design, however, is placement. While categories imply a static structure analyzing “what already exists” (Buchanan, 1994, p. 13) , design is a reflection of the dynamic environment in which a plan must be implemented.
Placements have boundaries to shape and constrain meaning, but are not rigidly fixed and determinate. The boundary of a placement gives a context or orientation to thinking, but the application to a specific situation can generate a new perception of that situation and, hence a new possibility to be tested. Therefore, placements are sources of new ideas and possibilities when applied to problems in concrete circumstances. (Buchanan, p. 13)
In other words, design is the result of analyzing existing structures, but also helps in the creation of new meaning and understanding as designs are situated differently. The success of a design is based on environmental factors, intention (including the degree of agency granted to those implementing the design), and boundaries setting the orientation to thinking.
Study Findings
After the first series of interviews, I noticed that many of the participants used the term design, but each in a slightly different way. As a result, a definition of design was included in the second interview. In fact, the definition of design had very little in common from speaker to speaker. In addition, it seemed the most difficult term for the participants to define, most having long pauses before they answered.
Those from the stand-up training department tended to perceive design as a definitive construct using terms such as “strategies”, “content”, “framework”, and “curriculum.” For those in the elearning department, design was a more situated term to define, grounded in the creative and meaning making process. For example, “Design is the…planful…elegance and pattern…which gives…definition and meaning.” Not only is there some situated aspect to design, but those in the elearning department identified a sense of agency in their definitions.
Such a divergence in the understanding of what design is could lead to differences in understanding during the creation of a collaborative document, especially when there is no structure to the document, such as the Project Map. The first writing project, using a clearly defined structure was, “Well, the quarterly report’s always a by-product of individual contributions.” On the other hand, the second collaborative project studied was a document created by the group to help identify the various aspects of the elearning project. In discussing this document in a group interview, the difficulty in creating an agreed upon product was obvious:
Later:
Those in the stand-up training department seemed to perceive design in what Buchanan (1992) refers to as the categories of design: “Categories have fixed meanings that are accepted within the framework of a theory or a philosophy, and serve as the basis for analyzing what already exist (p. 12).” The elearning department looked at the possibilities of design, however. This is what Buchanan refers to as placement of design. “Placements have boundaries to shape and constrain meaning, but are not rigidly fixed and determinate. The boundary of a placement gives a context or orientation to thinking, but the application to a specific situation can generate a new perception of that situation and, hence, a new possibility to be tested. Therefore, placements are sources of new ideas and possibilities when applied to problems in concrete circumstances (p. 13).”
It appears that coming to the collaborative writing process from these two different approaches affects the knowledge creation and collaborative process. In the one instance, categories, the design is part of tangible knowledge: artifacts, clearly defined processes and skills. In the second instance of placement, design requires spatial knowledge, or the ability to link ideas and construct or create knowledge by building new ideas and theories. The categories of design, then, use knowledge that can be identified or represented tangibly (i.e. diagrams, processes, symbols, formats) whereas the placement of design requires environmental, social, and cognitive interaction to create knowledge networks where externally held knowledge can be accessed when needed. During the collaborative process within this distributed group, the different approaches in design resulted in tensions due to different expectations.
Collaborative Design:
Fundamentally, design is always done in the context of a group. Collaborative design gives ownership of the process and product to the group. However, design does more than develop a shared process and product. Collaborative design creates a shared mental model and understanding of the work task, identifies group member strengths, weaknesses, resources, and knowledge networks, and develops social relationships within the group. It also gives access to group member knowledge networks and group members that can translate knowledge from outside of the group so that it has meaning for the group. Design becomes both the categories (schemata, paradigms, values and perspectives) and the placement (possibilities) in the application of group knowledge (Buchanan, 1994; Goodwin, 1994; Nonaka, 1994).
To maximize partaged knowledge within the group, distributed groups need to have time to design collaboratively on a continual basis. It is important that group members have a mechanism to continually align perspectives and understand group members’ knowledge networks as these networks redevelop.
Design is the application of power structure values and work patterns to genres. As a result, design becomes the processes by which genres are created, embedded in the organizational cultures, and aligned with organizational vision. Buchanan ( 1992) distinguishes between categories and placement of design.
Categories consist of fixed meanings that allow us to understand and analyze existing knowledge. These categories can fall into four forms: symbolic and visual communication, material objects, activities and organized services; and complex systems and environments. These types of categories represent the intention of “signs, things, action, and thoughts” (Buchanan, p.12) based on the understanding and analysis of perceived knowledge. In other words, design is the result of analyzing a situation, applying concepts based on experience and perception of what works and does not work, and developing a plan the creates boundaries within which individuals and workers have the intent to work.
A more important aspect of design, however, is placement. While categories imply a static structure analyzing “what already exists” (Buchanan, 1994, p. 13) , design is a reflection of the dynamic environment in which a plan must be implemented.
Placements have boundaries to shape and constrain meaning, but are not rigidly fixed and determinate. The boundary of a placement gives a context or orientation to thinking, but the application to a specific situation can generate a new perception of that situation and, hence a new possibility to be tested. Therefore, placements are sources of new ideas and possibilities when applied to problems in concrete circumstances. (Buchanan, p. 13)
In other words, design is the result of analyzing existing structures, but also helps in the creation of new meaning and understanding as designs are situated differently. The success of a design is based on environmental factors, intention (including the degree of agency granted to those implementing the design), and boundaries setting the orientation to thinking.
Study Findings
After the first series of interviews, I noticed that many of the participants used the term design, but each in a slightly different way. As a result, a definition of design was included in the second interview. In fact, the definition of design had very little in common from speaker to speaker. In addition, it seemed the most difficult term for the participants to define, most having long pauses before they answered.
Those from the stand-up training department tended to perceive design as a definitive construct using terms such as “strategies”, “content”, “framework”, and “curriculum.” For those in the elearning department, design was a more situated term to define, grounded in the creative and meaning making process. For example, “Design is the…planful…elegance and pattern…which gives…definition and meaning.” Not only is there some situated aspect to design, but those in the elearning department identified a sense of agency in their definitions.
Such a divergence in the understanding of what design is could lead to differences in understanding during the creation of a collaborative document, especially when there is no structure to the document, such as the Project Map. The first writing project, using a clearly defined structure was, “Well, the quarterly report’s always a by-product of individual contributions.” On the other hand, the second collaborative project studied was a document created by the group to help identify the various aspects of the elearning project. In discussing this document in a group interview, the difficulty in creating an agreed upon product was obvious:
Well, what formally…I think the … for the classroom trainers, they have a document. Module 1 contains X number of elements. Module 2 contains X number of elements. Eh…for me, there’s a sort of isomorphic mapping of those content elements onto a schema that reflects those same strains and tho…and that same order.
Later:
P: There’s a certain way to do that in the classroom. So, um… I think that’s…I don’t know if you can…say right now what your product is going to be. It’s going to be some type of elearning product.
R: Right. I mean…
P: But what it’s going to look like and how it’s…how it’s going to work is not…really isn’t there yet.
R: It isn’t really there... I mean, we have an idea…
Those in the stand-up training department seemed to perceive design in what Buchanan (1992) refers to as the categories of design: “Categories have fixed meanings that are accepted within the framework of a theory or a philosophy, and serve as the basis for analyzing what already exist (p. 12).” The elearning department looked at the possibilities of design, however. This is what Buchanan refers to as placement of design. “Placements have boundaries to shape and constrain meaning, but are not rigidly fixed and determinate. The boundary of a placement gives a context or orientation to thinking, but the application to a specific situation can generate a new perception of that situation and, hence, a new possibility to be tested. Therefore, placements are sources of new ideas and possibilities when applied to problems in concrete circumstances (p. 13).”
It appears that coming to the collaborative writing process from these two different approaches affects the knowledge creation and collaborative process. In the one instance, categories, the design is part of tangible knowledge: artifacts, clearly defined processes and skills. In the second instance of placement, design requires spatial knowledge, or the ability to link ideas and construct or create knowledge by building new ideas and theories. The categories of design, then, use knowledge that can be identified or represented tangibly (i.e. diagrams, processes, symbols, formats) whereas the placement of design requires environmental, social, and cognitive interaction to create knowledge networks where externally held knowledge can be accessed when needed. During the collaborative process within this distributed group, the different approaches in design resulted in tensions due to different expectations.
Collaborative Design:
Fundamentally, design is always done in the context of a group. Collaborative design gives ownership of the process and product to the group. However, design does more than develop a shared process and product. Collaborative design creates a shared mental model and understanding of the work task, identifies group member strengths, weaknesses, resources, and knowledge networks, and develops social relationships within the group. It also gives access to group member knowledge networks and group members that can translate knowledge from outside of the group so that it has meaning for the group. Design becomes both the categories (schemata, paradigms, values and perspectives) and the placement (possibilities) in the application of group knowledge (Buchanan, 1994; Goodwin, 1994; Nonaka, 1994).
To maximize partaged knowledge within the group, distributed groups need to have time to design collaboratively on a continual basis. It is important that group members have a mechanism to continually align perspectives and understand group members’ knowledge networks as these networks redevelop.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Feedback on my preliminary findings
I presented my findings to the communication department's proseminar on research that faculty and graduate students participate in. Interestingly enough, the one idea that people seem to be latching on is the fact that the participants in my study created a secondary channel of communication when they were instructed by those in authority that discussion should be ended. I didn't see the importance of this until one of the professors that I was presenting my preliminary findings to asked the question,"Why did they continue? If the power structure and those in authority deemed the discussion irrelevant, why did they continue the conversation? If you can answer this question you will come away with a really important insight."
Thinking this through, and looking back at the data, the reason was that the group wanted to understand what their group members where doing because all the group members had a vested interest in the document they were writing. They all felt a sense of ownership of the document, but more so, that document would be the basis of their future work. Their work would reflect on them, in some cases within their department, in others, within the organization, and, still with others, in their profession. I think I need look further into the Social Identity theory and what the communication and learning implications are to groups continuing the dialog, even after they appear to be finished or they have been told to finish their discussion.
Another factor that came up was the implication of different understanding of design on organizational learning. I need to articulate better what the differences in "design" understanding is, how it affects communication and group learning, and perhaps even how different designs from different professions, departments, and organizations impact training, group documentation, and the creation of shared mental models. I have a feeling also that these differences in "design" are at the heart of the differences in "genres". "Design" can be defined as the way in which different people organize information and "knowledge", either through processes or product (genres). Therefore, can "design" be used for training?
Thinking this through, and looking back at the data, the reason was that the group wanted to understand what their group members where doing because all the group members had a vested interest in the document they were writing. They all felt a sense of ownership of the document, but more so, that document would be the basis of their future work. Their work would reflect on them, in some cases within their department, in others, within the organization, and, still with others, in their profession. I think I need look further into the Social Identity theory and what the communication and learning implications are to groups continuing the dialog, even after they appear to be finished or they have been told to finish their discussion.
Another factor that came up was the implication of different understanding of design on organizational learning. I need to articulate better what the differences in "design" understanding is, how it affects communication and group learning, and perhaps even how different designs from different professions, departments, and organizations impact training, group documentation, and the creation of shared mental models. I have a feeling also that these differences in "design" are at the heart of the differences in "genres". "Design" can be defined as the way in which different people organize information and "knowledge", either through processes or product (genres). Therefore, can "design" be used for training?
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