TENSIONS IN CORPORATE CREATIVITY

Sa？etak The standard definition of creativity is based on a tension between originality and effectiveness. Borrowing from the waveparticle duality in physics one could say that there is an originality-effectiveness duality at work for creativity. The paper explores how this tension pervades Amabile’s (1997) componential theory of organizational creativity with the components organizational motivation, management practices (including work assignment and work control) and resources. As a method the so called value square (“Wertequadrat”) developed by Helwig (1967) and Schulz von Thun (1998) is used which balances a value with its countervalue. The author identifies a tension of corporate tradition and corporate change for organizational motivation, a tension of skills and challenges for work assignment, a tension of management by control and management by loss of control for work control as well as a tension of organizational efficiency and organizational slack for resources. Additionally different implications of these tensions for the resistance of a company to creativity, for an organizational climate conducive to creativity as well as for resource allocation in creative endeavours are discussed