ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AND CREATIVITY'S PERSPECTIVES

Abstract

My paper is focusing on the analysis and predictions that some famous experts offer concerning the dramatic changes in the future organizational culture, given the complex transformations in our economies, societies, and in our civilization in general. Two areas - education and leadership - seem to play an important role in improving or even in maintaining organizations on a normal scale of functioning. Both could be reinvented by creativity. But creativity, as it is treated in present educational institutions, seems to be each person's interior "promised land", which is buried deep inside. The revolution of creativity that Sir Ken Robinson suggests, starting from education and imprinting business sectors as well as other cultural sectors, seems a possible solution. In this spirit, I will evoke other authors with similar visionary suggestions.

Headnote

Abstract: My paper is focusing on the analysis and predictions that some famous experts offer concerning the dramatic changes in the future organizational culture, given the complex transformations in our economies, societies, and in our civilization in general. Two areas - education and leadership - seem to play an important role in improving or even in maintaining organizations on a normal scale of functioning. Both could be reinvented by creativity. But creativity, as it is treated in present educational institutions, seems to be each person's interior "promised land", which is buried deep inside. The revolution of creativity that Sir Ken Robinson suggests, starting from education and imprinting business sectors as well as other cultural sectors, seems a possible solution. In this spirit, I will evoke other authors with similar visionary suggestions.

Keywords: creativity, cultural creative industries (CCI), organization, organizational culture.

Motto:

"Truly effective leaders in the years ahead will have personas determined by strong values and belief in the capacity of the individuals to grow. They will have a image of the society in which they would like their organizations and themselves to live. They will be visionary, they will believe strongly that they can and should be shaping the future, and they will act on these beliefs through their personal behavior."

R. Beckhard, Organizational Development. Strategies and Models

1. Introduction

Nowadays we witness some considerable changes in our culture, from journalistic practices to the effects of new media on education, from the new technological revolution to its consequences on public preferences for reading. These changes are more and more influential on essential aspects of our social and individual sphere; besides, they occur faster and faster.

Given these premises, it will seem vital for any lucid mind of our days to try to analyze such a large process, even if we lack an objective distance, or a neutral period of time between the observance of the process and the evaluation of facts and ideas. But also it seems that we will never have these desirable conditions of study in the future; so we better hurry in facing new moving realities and searching for solutions to the problems occurring in the human ability to think rationally, before it is too late.

Too late would mean that we could eventually become part of the problem, in a future which shows no patience with humans, no help for their reasonable minds. As Sir Ken Robinson puts the problem in his field of education, it is a matter of survival1. In the future, we couldn't afford the phenomenon of mercerization as it is spreading today. A lot of events, values, domains in the Western organizational culture, which decades ago seemed immune to the tyranny of mercerization, nowadays they are submitted to this tyranny. They do not follow anymore certain ethical, civic or educational principles, neither the economic requirements for a healthy economy. And everyone could give here negative examples of how almost anything is treated and promoted as merchandize, from arts and artists to election campaigns. What some lucid minds which I'll evoke here are saying is that things have to change dramatically in the future, if we wished to have an acceptable future and not a barbarian one.

2. The change in organizational culture

First of all, I have to note that the famous definition which Hofstede gave to organizational culture - that of a group's 'mental software'2 - is not functional in the context of such complex factors that are intertwined in the nature and activity of an organization nowadays. That's because these factors are only influencing it, and they are in a permanent change themselves, so they are not causing such an entity as the mental software. This view would lead us to the idea that an organizational culture is hard to change, is not flexible enough in order to face the social, economic, cultural changes from all around it.

A more appropriate definition of organizational culture, also from the point of view of Romanian realities, could be this: 'an aggregate of values, beliefs, aspirations, expectations and behaviors articulated in time in each organization, which is prominent and both directly and indirectly influences its functionality and performances."3

Given all these specific items, it seems that the most flexible area for a fast adaptation in an organizational culture could be the area of leadership. In the future, a good leader should be capable of engaging in radical changing, involving in that the process of changing the other members' values, mentalities, beliefs, expectations and mostly their behaviour. And this kind of change requires a leader with a higher conscience of the realities of a multicultural world, with conflicting values and goals. In this respect, I will quote what Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars declare in a very influential book:

"So what really prevents periodic descents into barbarity is that a minority of people, but just enough, have created an integrity of personal conviction and personal attachment that resists cruel acts. Whether one is moved most by compassion for victims or by rage against illegitimate authority, both impulses combine to prevent abuse."4

Other author such as Howell and Dipboye were stressing more decades ago that is not so important what leaders and managers do, in order to understand their effectiveness. But is more important their style in doing things, in carrying out their responsibilities. And this concerns:

- the degrees to which the leader allows subordinates to participate in decision making;

- the way he structures their work roles;

- the way he considers their needs and feelings. The authors' conclusion is that the more participative, considerate styles of leadership "seem to produce greater employee satisfaction and commitment to group goals..."5

At the beginning of our century, two other authors - Conger and Kanungo - wrote an inspiring book on charismatic leadership, making useful distinctions between leadership and management and their opportunities and limits nowadays. Also they address the problem of business ethics more vividly, and they stress the need for innovation and creativity in an organizational culture which is oriented to the future and performance. Jay A. Conger and Rabindra N. Kanungo say:

"When organizations are overmanaged by underled, they often fail in their adaptive capability. To meet the challenges of the future, corporate executives must take on the responsibility to lead for change rather than simply to manage. This book provides a framework as well as examples of how this can be done. In addition, the attention of management researchers must be redirected from the exclusive preoccupation with specific task characteristics in small groups to the study of the larger global context within which organizations accomplish their mission" 6.

They include here a pragmatic study of specific charismatic leadership behaviours, in order to determine which is most effective and in which conditions, how they interact with certain variables and contingencies. Their vision is that past research has emphasized the transactional influence process,

"but future research must be directed toward exploring the basis of transformational influence in the context of the management of change, innovation, diversity, and business ethics"7.

The authors offer an interesting correspondence between the changes of cultural environment and the adaptive strategies which creative and charismatic leaders should adopt for business organizations. Here is the correspondence, according to three major environmental changes8:

1. Globalization of business - the major task would be managing competition, and the leader's qualities should be entrepreneurial and innovative;

2. Explosion of information technology - the major task would be managing this information and knowledge, and leader's qualities should be: change and scanning oriented, visionary, environmental, participative;

3. Diverse labor force and consumer markets - the major task would be managing diversity and gender issues, and the leader's qualities should be> culture sensitive, global mind-set, sensitive to members and costumer needs.

3.Creativity's input

Creativity doesn't mean solely to produce a new element, but it could mean approaching a new organizing principle of some existing elements and structures in the sense of Stefan Odobleja's definition of creation: 'Articulating new ideas out of the available elements. Elaborating new consonances between ideas or between world and ideas.'" This is taken as a working definition by some Romanian experts concerned in the effectiveness of our organizational culture, especially in that of cultural organizations and institutions. Thus, M. Moldoveanu et alia wrote:

"The effectiveness of culture institutions, their capacity of accomplishing their goals depend a lot on the personal qualities of their managers. Managers themselves consider that some qualities and capacities couldn't lack those who manage cultural values and facts in a collectivity. They meant, among other aspects, the attitude of creating new things, of coming up with original solutions to the problems (...), but also the capacity of mobilizing community's creative energies."9

As I believe, by understanding the complexity of today's rapid cultural transformations, we shall be able to orientate to the most effective areas and factors to face these rapid transformations, and first of all the human resource would be the target. The creativity which it could provide should be helpful for organizational culture, and mostly when it comes from a charismatic and creative leader. He could direct the organization forward and impart a rhythm of cultural change, he could organize short term specialized trainings with the members of organization, thus providing trainees with specialized information, new skills and perspectives, and also an ethical vision.

Of course, creativity could be approached for other reasons as well, but the context which I am focused on is the one of a grim future, if the things kept evolving the way they do now.

Under these circumstances, I will present Ken Robinson's revolutionary point of view on education and its role in stimulating creativity. He thinks that the future of education means partnership of schools with business sectors, philanthropic sectors and multiple cultural sectors. As an institution, school shouldn't be a sort of academic ghetto anymore, because it has much more to offer to various cultural sectors.10 He says:

"our best resource is to cultivate our singular abilities of imagination, creativity and innovation. Our greatest peril would be to face the future without investing fully in those abilities."11 "The organizations which are investing in people will discover that these people themselves would invest in the organizations. This is the power of innovation and of a creative leadership."12

As Robinson sees, there are four key values to be pursued by a new educational approach: creativity, communication, collaboration and critical thinking (the four Cs).

In author's vision, teaching for creativity as a method could improve an entire community, including business sector, organizations, philanthropic sectors, besides the educational sector. This method has three phases:

* encouragement implies the motivation of subjects to explore their own aptitudes and experiment without the fear of failure;

* identification presupposes their guidance in introspection and self-knowledge in order to detect the native affinities and esthetic preferences, vocations and endowments that they want to nurture;

* fostering presupposes the stimulation of independent activity, autonomous thinking, the communication of their ideas and feelings with self-confidence, praising intuition, the game of ideas and mental scenarios, critical thinking.

Now moving our focus on Romanian realities in what concerns creativity, we must admit there are only a few pragmatic approaches. About them we can find recent data in the annual Report issued by the National Institute of Research and Cultural Development (Institutul National pentru Cercetare si Formare Culturalä - INCFC). Thus, the last report from 2015 offers data about the new so called cultural and creative industries (CCI)13. In seems that CCI have an important spill-over effect on the occurance of new business patterns, especially in digital economy: the e-commerce and new integrated platforms. CCI can offer many opportunities, but still in our country they are not cultivated and exploited. The benefit of cultivating them would be the elevation of cultural environment, the raising of civilization level. The report's authors mention:

"Probably in a short term it will be difficult to find an area in which creativity in its absolute form not to be decisively involved, that's why these measurements and analysis are essential for the evaluation of future social developments."14

Now we are aware of the multiple present difficulties and deadlocks in our society which the implementation of CCI or creativity education could encounter. But we could try focusing on the improvements that might be obtained individually, if only each teacher in the classroom and each creative leader of an organization would be interested in these aspects, as Ken Robinson summarizes15:

- to promote experiment, analitical spirit, and even the disposition to fail;

- to encourage generative, free thinking;

- to encourage expressing of ideas and feelings;

- to transmit the understanding of creative activity stages and the need for the time requested for all these;

- to develop the awareness of the role of intuition and esthetic processes in creation;

- to encourage the others playing with the ideas and suppositions;

- to facilitate the critical evaluation of ideas.

Footnote

1 Sir Ken Robinson, Out of Our Minds. Learning to Be Creative / O lume iesitä din minti. Revolutia creativä a educatiei, Bucharest, Publica, 2011, p. 20.

2 Geert Hofstede, Gert Jan Hofstede, Michael Minkov, Cultures and Organization. Software of the Mind. Intercultural Cooperation and Its Importance for Survival / Culturi si organizatii. Softul mental, Cooperarea interculturalä si importanta ei pentru supravietuire, Bucharest, Humanitas, 2012.

3 Ovidiu Nicolescu, Ion Verboncu, Fundamentals of Organization Management /Fundaméntele managementului organizatiei, Bucharest, University Press, 2008, p. 322.

4 Charles M. Hampden-Turner, Fons Trompenaars, Building Cross-Cultural Competence. How to Create Wealth from Conflicting Values, Chichester, John Wiley and Sons, LTD., 2000, p. 108.

5 William Howell, Robert Dipboye, Essentials of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Chicago, The Dorsey Press, 3rd edition, 1986, pp. 188-189.

6 Jay A. Conger, Rabindra N. Kanungo, Charismatic Leadership in Organizations, London, Sage Publications, Inc., 1998, p. 250.

7 Ibidem.

8 Ibidem, p. 247.

9 Maria Moldoveanu (coord.), Valeriu Ioan-Franc, Romulus Antonescu, Alexandra Duma, Mangementul culturii/ Culture Management, Bucharest, Expert, 2000, pp. 137-138.

10 Sir Ken Robinson, op.cit., p. 320.

11 Ibidem, p. 69.

12 Ibidem, p. 296.

13 Valentin Cojanu, Carmen Croitoru, "Introduction" to Caietele Culturadata, National Institute for Research and Cultural Education, Bucharest, Pro Universitaria, 2015, pp. 10-11.

14 Ibidem.

15 Sir Ken Robinson, opt.cit., p. 328.

References

REFERENCES

Cojanu, Valentin, Croitoru, Carmen, (2015), "Introduction" to Caietele Culturadata of National Institute for Research and Cultural Education, Bucharest, Pro Universitaria.

Howell, Robert Dipboye, (1986), Essentials of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Chicago, The Dorsey Press, 3rd edition

Conger, Jay A., Kanungo, Rabindra N., (1998), Charismatic Leadership in Organizations, London, Sage Publications, Inc.

Hampden-Turner, Charles M., Trompenaars, Fons, (2000), Building Cross-Cultural Competence. How to Create Wealth from Conflicting Values, Chichester, John Wiley and Sons, LTD.

Hofstede, Geert, Hofstede, Gert Jan, Minkov, Michael, (2012), Cultures and Organization. Software of the Mind. Intercultural Cooperation and Its Importance for Survival / Culturi si organizatii. Softul mental, Cooperarea interculturala si importanta ei pentru supravietuire, Bucharest, Humanitas

Howell, William, Dipboye, Robert, (1986), Essentials of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Chicago, The Dorsey Press, 3rd edition

Moldoveanu, Maria (coord.), Valeriu Ioan-Franc, Romulus Antonescu, Alexandru Duma, (2000), Mangementul culturii / Culture Management, Bucharest, Expert.

Nicolescu, Ovidiu, Verboncu, Ion, (2008), Fundamentals of Organization Management/ Fundamentele managementului organizatiei, Bucharest, University Press.

Robinson, Ken, (2011), Out of Our Minds. Learning to Be Creative / O lume iesita din minti. Revolutia creativa a educatiei, Bucharest, Publica.