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Creativity and Culture in Organizations

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The Palgrave Handbook of Creativity and Culture Research

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture ((PASCC))

Abstract

Organizational culture is averse to innovation. Some organizations are dedicated to creativity as a business (e.g. advertising, cinema or design): they nevertheless apply the classic production rules of labour division, specialism, incremental innovation and evaluation by demand. Creativity applied to organizations themselves, or to in-house processes, is tricky because organizations are by nature averse to change. There, creativity is confronted to a double bind: the injunction to set up something new but within the current rules and culture of the organization. Organizations are “installations” where the culture is distributed within three layers (built environment, embodied competences in members, institutional rules). The innovator jeopardizes the current state of things and hard-won compromises in this installation. That is an uncomfortable position and the fate of many innovators is tragic because they are troublemakers; often also they remain unrecognized. Unlike some other domains, creativity in organizations cannot be individual. We will describe in this chapter the nature of the double bind faced by creativity and innovation in large organizations and list some current solutions.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. London School of Economics and Political Science, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, 3rd Floor, Queens House, 55/56 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, WC2A 3LJ, UK

    Saadi Lahlou

  2. Telecom Paris Tech, Paris, France

    Valérie Beaudouin

Authors
  1. Saadi Lahlou
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  2. Valérie Beaudouin
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Saadi Lahlou .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

    Vlad Petre Glăveanu

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Lahlou, S., Beaudouin, V. (2016). Creativity and Culture in Organizations. In: Glăveanu, V. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Creativity and Culture Research. Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-46344-9_23

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