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The concept of organizational creativity identifies a relatively unexplored area in organizational change and innovation. Organizational creativity is the creation of a valuable, useful new product, service, idea, procedure, or process by individuals working together in a complex social system. It is, therefore, the commonly accepted definition of creative behavior, or the products of such behavior (e.g., Arieti, 1976; Barron, 1969; Golann, 1963) placed within an organizational context. We frame the definition of organizational creativity as a subset of the broader domain of innovation. Innovation is then characterized to be a subset of an even broader construct of organizational change. Although organizational change can include innovation, much of organizational change is not innovation. Similarly, even though creativity may produce the new product, service, idea, or process that is implemented through innovation (cf. Amabile, 1988), innovation can also include the adaptation of preexisting products or processes, or those created outside of the organization.
It is our belief that the organizational sciences can benefit from systematic investigations of creative behavior in complex social systems. Creativity for individuals and organizations--doing something for the first time anywhere or creating new knowledge--represents a dramatic aspect of organizational change that may provide a key to understanding change phenomena and, ultimately, organizational effectiveness and survival. In addition, the exploration of organizational creativity may serve to link diverse literatures and research traditions, most specifically behavioral research on individual creativity and organizational research on innovation. West and Farr (1990) argued for the wisdom of bringing these research streams together.
An understanding of organizational creativity will necessarily involve understanding (a) the creative process, (b) the creative product, (c) the creative person, (d) the creative situation, and (e) the way in which each of these components interacts with the others (Brown, 1989; Harrington, 1990). Research by Amabile and her associates (Amabile, 1983; Amabile, Goldfarb, & Brackfield, 1990) documents the value of examining the creativity of individuals and groups within their relevant social settings. The theory developed in this paper brings the perspective of interactional psychology to bear on the integration of process, product, person, and situation into a more comprehensive theory of organizational creativity than previously proposed (e.g., Amabile, 1988; King & Anderson, 1990; Mumford & Gustafson, 1988; Staw, 1990; Steiner, 1965). Interactional psychology provides a...