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.

Is it the train or the tracks that are important

Harold Jarche had an interesting post about a metaphor used in the book Revolutionary Wealth. In it the authors outline a metaphor using the speed of the train as an indication of readiness for technological change.

However, I did not like this metaphor. I feel it is the tracks (which includes the structure and the paths laid out for the trains to go on) which makes entities ready or not for change. Some organizations, such as the government, might have the newest technology available, but are restricted in how they can use it. I see the train as the technology itself. Some older trains can do very well if there is a well kept track, while even the most advanced engines must slow down for poorly maintained and planned tracks.

There is portion of the train ride from Albany, NY to NY City were trains have to come to the slowest crawl imaginable because the track cannot sustain the train. There is a delay in Washington DC as engines from the south (or north) must change to fit the difference in track size between the south and north. Trains from the mid-west to the east coast are always late due to the complex structure and poor condition of the rails around the Buffalo area. Trains must feed into this one high traffic area where there is always rail repair going on.

So with that in mind, I developed the follow metaphor using the tracks, rather than the train. I have copied it from the comment section on Harold's blog:

I can’t say I really like that metaphor. It assumes that Business is the only fast train with all other support services as behind the times.

I think a better metaphor would be the “tracks”. Big business has the fastest tracks maintained and built right to their door. As a result, they have the fastest track to progress.

Small business must try to deal with their track being just a bit out of reach, so they have a fast train to a certain point, but then must be creative in getting the goods (knowledge and technology) to their door.

The civil society makes sure that there are spurs off the main track. Even if these spurs are a bit slow and in need of some help, at least it gets to a larger number of people. They just need to be patient.

The government train has the nicest tracks around, although they don’t go to the places that they necessarily need to go. However, this is a very efficient train, so it doesn’t matter if it is going anywhere, as long as it can prove that it went SOMEWHERE. Meanwhile, the train employees would just like someone to plan out the track and END at some point.

Education keeps having the tracks ripped up and relaid. Sometimes this means that the train will get to where it needs to go, but for those on poorer or more isolated routes, it might just go around in circles. Of course, then the passengers blame it on the conductor and engineer, who are just trying to keep the train on the tracks.

The international track goes only so far, and then it stops. There is no coordination, and the track owners of one railroad won’t speak with the track owners of the others. When they do, it still takes time to move from one set of tracks to another.

The political system train can’t decide where to lay the track. It stops at their friends houses, but doesn’t connect to others. As a result there are hundreds of miles of tracks planned, but nothing is actually laid out because no one can agree on a system.

Finally, the legal train builds up, then takes down tracks. The piece meal track system means that there is no coordination with actual walls between some, but bridges that link others. As fast as the political system is laying out track, the legal system is rearranging it.

I can't help but think there are some stakeholders missing. Perhaps members of minority groups or "non-techies". Non-techies put up walls to prevent the track from coming to their community and hope to preserve their way of life.

Minority groups, tired of always being by-passed by the larger companies, lay their own tracks often in isolation. The larger more popular tracks then have others who come from outside who want to link them up to the main tracks.

Perhaps you can think of other groups.

Understanding the Patterns of Organizations and Students

I just spent a wonderful week in Georgia (the US state, not the country) for Thanksgiving. We were visiting relatives. Our cousin's husband works in the construction industry and was telling us some of the recent initiatives he and a colleague had developed to improve safety.

"Bob" is a middle manager who worked his way up through the ranks. He supervises groups of workers on large constructive projects (commercial and industrial). What struck me as he described his "training" programs was how well he understood the students, his workers. Not a trained educator (he has a high school education), he intuitively knew how to get a concept across to those that would benefit from the training, engaging his workers, teaching them what they needed to know about safety, and motivating them to use what they learned.

This led me to wonder what he was doing differently from the "fancy" paid outside trainers they had brought in for training in the previous years. It also get me to thinking about the in-house-outside training debate that often comes up in training departments.

Differences between in-house and outsider training

Yakhlef (2002) had an interesting study looking at the impact that outsourcing IT services had on an organization. He found that there was a shift in knowledge from within a department to a mediator between the outside contractor and the end-user. The middleman became more and more important as functions were taken outside of the department and created in a distributed means both within and outside the organization.

The same could be said for having outsiders do the training. In some cases, this is a goal as an organization would like to change its culture. But more often than not, organizations are looking for subject matter "experts" rather than looking for experts in the "field". In other words, Bob's company might have looked for someone who has studied the roots of accidents and then delivers this to the workers.

However, what organizations should be looking at are those outside the organizations that understand the patterns of behavior of the students. To do this, they may have to interact with the workers, have an expert in the community of practice, or have someone from inside the organization as a team member. In other words, having an engineer who understands the types of time constraints workers might feel which might lead to them cutting safety procedures is more important than having someone who is an expert on the safety procedures that will cut accidents. In the first case, a trainer can identify those situations that workers are most apt to let down their guard and give ways to counteract the temptation to cut corners. For example, if there is a deadline for completion of a project, a supervisor might not have a worker who comes to work without the proper equipment go back and get the equipment. However, with an understanding of how much time lost might be the result of improper equipment, the supervisor might take the up front time so as not to lose time due to accidents.

Implications for instructional design and transition into the workplace/community

It seems to me, therefore, that it is important that instructional designers and university professors have a good understanding of the behavioral and communication patterns for organizations and communities of practice.

The following are questions that we must either ask as we begin a training assignment, or teach our students to ask as they transition into the workforce:

• Who decides what knowledge is important? What are the organizational, departmental, and group power structures in which someone is working?
• What is the usual way of communicating within the organization, department, and work groups? How might this be the same or different from the field in which a worker has been trained or is working (i.e. how do engineers communicate, how do accountants communicate, how do nursing personnel communicate)? What are the communication structures and formats used by the organization? by the field? Which technologies will accommodate those structures and formats?
• Who controls access to information? Who controls storage of information? What information networks are available to a worker within a community of practice? within a group? within a department? within an organization? What are the prerequisites to gaining access to information (i.e. training, trust by a superior, expertise, position, need)?
• Who are the reference groups that influence worker perceptions? work practices? perception of risk? organizational culture?
• What is the epistemology (belief in what "knowledge" is) of students, workers, the organization, and the field of expertise? How do workers resolve conflicts between epistemologies? For example, in business there is the belief that the bottom line is the main measure of success. However, healthcare workers are taught that they should do anything humanly possible to save a life. How do healthcare workers resolve the dilemna of saving a life at an exhorbatant price if the patient cannot pay (thus putting the organization into the red)?
  
  Yakhlef, A. (2002). Towards a discursive approach to organisational knowledge formation. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 18, 319-339.

The impact of organizational politics on workplace learning

As I get deeper into my dissertation study, I am finding that office politics have a great impact on knowledge management, what employees learn, how what they have learned translates into how they work, and how they work impacts the learning environment. I am still the beginning stages, but here are some of the trends I am looking at:

• there is a tension between the way an interdisciplinary group works (prioritizes, accomplishes tasks, what they "know", roles, and leadership) and the department from which an employee comes. Which one will take precedence when there is conflict is dependent on the political situation and the employees perception of which group will impact his work most immediately.
• Leadership seems to influence what "knowledge" is needed and how work is accomplished. Workers take their cue from leaders and without leadership, there is a "herding cats" mentality which results in lack of coordination, duplication of effort, and a void in terms of direction.
• Some personalities just prefer not to work in a group. Others do not feel comfortable in a leadership role. The most effective groups are those in which there is a safe environment for conflict and differences of opinion, a process to make meaning that allows others a voice, and a sense of support rather than criticism.
  
• Employees that do not know where they fit within the organization as a whole or feel alienated from the organization tend to work independently. This may result in conflicts during group or team work as they will continue with their own work rather than conform to organizational dictates (especially if they don't understand how these organizational dictates fit into their own work).

I don't remember learning about the office politics in any of my management courses. Specifically, there is little said about the "unwritten" rules of authority and how a new worker is supposed to learn these rules and their role in the organization. It seems to me that this is an important skill in the new "flat" management structure as there is no longer a job title cue that will tell where one is in the organization.

What are we doing as teachers to make ourselves literate in the workplace?

In a recent comment I posted to Ken Allen, I mentioned that we as teachers have the advantage over our students in that we have the opportunity to create deeper understanding for ourselves by trying to explain concepts and negotiate meaning with our students. To do this however, we need to have interaction with our students.

However, how many instructional designers and trainers are given the opportunity to really discuss a topic indepth with their target audience? How many even have an understanding of the environment in which their students work?

At the conference I attended on Distance Learning last week, one of the presenters spoke of being "blown away" at some of the feedback she had asked for. One of the students felt that her formating requirement for the subject line was in fact making things more difficult for him to follow rather than easier. He was doing the entire course using his blackberry so the e-mail options made him difficult to follow which threads went with which discussions. What surprised her was that he was using a common technology in a different way. Had she not asked for feedback, she would not have been able to make accommodations for his situation.

As a result of these questions, I think we need to be careful as develop work literacies that:

1. We recognize that these are not stagnant, nor will specific work literacy skills fit all contexts
2. Workers might have or not have these skills without being aware of it
3. There is a cultural underpinning with all literacies that might be difficult, yet necessary to identify
4. Instructional designers and teachers may or may not be aware of the contexts in which their target audience is using, but must ask the right questions to determine student needs and skills

I feel that we should be looking more systematically at the organizations and understand the cultures and epistemologies first. From there, we can begin to identify the various work literacies needed to succeed in the modern workplace. These then can be put into a framework (as Tony has sketched out, but perhaps with broader categories). The framework can then be used to develop different assessment tools, technology, and instructional designs based on the culture and organizational/individual epistemologies. That should only take another 20 years to accomplish!

Literacy Gap

While I have previously written about the trends I see happening in education and the workplace as a result of new technologies, I think there are many other issues that will contribute to the work literacy gap.

First, let me begin by saying that I don't think the technology and its adoption is necessarily the debate here. Studies indicate that, contrary to popular belief, older workers do adopt new technologies. However, their reasons are different than younger workers (Morris and Venkatesh, 2000). Younger workers embrace new technology because it is new and the intrinsic value of anything new, whereas older workers adopt it either because it is required (through policy or, informally, required to stay within the organizational power structure) or because it is demonstrated to achieve results (later adoption).

However, I think this is true of any generation and technology. My generation embraced the PC because it was new and we were learning how to use it in school, whereas my father embraced it after other workers started to use it and demonstrated how it could impact the organization. I am sure the same happened when the xerox machine and telephone was introduced. That said, I feel that work literacy as we are discussing today is really based on two main changes: the change in organizational structures (from vertical to flat, corporate to module, long-term stability to just-in-time) and the change in the basis of our economy from agricultural to service. The result is that we expect more flexibility of our workers, while at the same time expect them to work in a much more dynamic environment, constantly changing. The paradox to this is that "content" is now a product (transitioning to the service economy) which means we want our knowledge workers to "know more".

As I see it, the real problem is that our educational system is still set in traditional structures (due in part to businesses wanting more "content" which will be a product for them to sell in the future). The true gap, therefore, is between those educated in a traditional way and the new "skills" needed to work in a module setting (able to move people, companies, offices, departments around without losing knowledge or the knowledge product) communicating through a network (rather than the old vertical structures) with critical thinking and problem solving skills that allow workers to react to the environment as it changes and create new knowledge (or knowledge products) in a short period of time.

Looking at work literacy from this viewpoint, technology is only a tool with which these knowledge workers will be able to draw on. If students coming out of high schools and college are ill prepared for these new structures, then the workplace will need to start training new workers in terms of critical thinking and problem solving skills, new communication skills (including how to interact without "authority" figures and initiate communication), team and group work skills (as module structures require participation in groups), and metacognitive skills (in order to be aware of what is going on in the work environment and retooling as appropriate).