Organizational Climates for Creativity

Abstract

The characteristics associated with the creative individual and the identification of these characteristics have been explored in a companion paper in this Journal. Once this important task has been accomplished, the equally significant administrative question of the optimum utilization of this creative talent arises. The effective utilization of creative abilities within a goal seeking organization is conditioned by many variables including: top management's attitudinal posture regarding the value of creativeness and innovation; the organizational slack present in the resource inputs, and, certainly, the organizational climate created by the organization's design, control system, and reward system. Given the characteristics of the creative individual and given the recruitment of persons with creative abilities, this paper explores the issue of the organizational climate most conducive to the generation and maintenance of constructive creative responses oriented toward the organization's goals. We will first explore the question of what is the administrative hierarchy attempting to accomplish when it establishes a given organizational design. Within this framework, the organizational design of traditional administrative theory will be superimposed upon our model of the creative individual as developed previously. Given the basic incongruities of the “fit,” the question of the possible variation of organizational structures to fit variable purposes arises. Finally, implications for possible organizational designs needed to utilize creative talent effectively will be explored.