Chapter 12

CULTURE: ENABLING AND

CONSTRAINING CREATIVE
PROCESSES AT WORK
 Organizational Culture

 Organizational Culture

 A set of values held by individuals in a firm that help

employees understand acceptability of actions
 Creating Organizational Culture

 Step 1—Formulate Strategic Values

 Step 2—Develop Cultural Values

 Step 3—Create Vision

 Step 4—Initiate Implementation Strategies

 Step 5—Reinforce Cultural Behaviors

 Creating Organizational Culture

 Establish Values
 Strategic values
 The basic beliefs about an organization’s environment that shape
its strategy.
 Cultural values
 The values that employees need to have and act on for the
organization to act on the strategic values.

 Create Vision
 Create a picture of the organization that portrays how the
strategic and cultural values will combine to create the future.
 Creating Organizational Culture

 Initiate Implementation Strategies

 Take actions founded on the strategic and cultural values to
accomplish the vision.

 Reinforce Cultural Behaviors

 Use formal and informal reward systems to encourage desired
employee behaviors
 Characteristics of Culture

 It is a shared Phenomenon: social and normative binding

shared by a group

 Exists at two levels:

- Surface (visible): visible pattern of group
behavior
- Deeper (less visible) relates to the values that the group
shares and the norms that establish the kind of behaviors
members of the group should expect from one another

• Culture is learned: through formal and informal, explicit

and implicit socialization process
 Culture and its importance to creativity and
innovation

 It is in the heart of creativity and innovation

 Innovative companies tend to have culture that

emphasis and reward values and norms that support
the generation and implementation of new ideas
 Norms that promotes creativity and innovation

1. Focus on idea generation

2. Support a continuous learning culture
3. Risk-taking
4. Tolerance to mistakes
5. Support change
6. Conflict handling
 Norms that promotes implementation of
creativity and innovation

1. Teamwork and effective group functioning

2. Speed and urgency

3. Flexibility and adaptability

4. A sense of autonomy
 Five pitfalls that managers have to avoid

1. Overemphasizing individual accountability

2. Overemphasizing quantitative goals and budgets
3. Punishing mistakes
4. Promoting internal competition
5. Striving to be the same
 Principles of creativity and innovation

1. Sustain faith and treasure identity as an innovative

company
2. Be truly experimental in all functions
3. Structure real relationship between marketing and
technical people
4. Generate customer intimacy
5. Engage the whole organization
6. Never forget the individual
7. Tell and embody powerful and purposeful stories
Four principles that promote creative culture

1. Start with a collaborative approach to management

2. Create a no fear climate

3. Encourage stretching beyond the comfort zone

4. Celebrate individuality and encourage uncertainty