Creativity management: towards soft control

Abstract

The paper deals with the management of creativity. Creative activity is peculiar since it covers specific (creative) worker, his (her) own working time, peculiar resources, implementation of a particular product. A creative worker resists to any forms of control and management including forced labour hours, work in an office, strong terms and contractual obligations. An office could be treated as a panopticon, i.e. as a prison, in which every labour operation of a worker-prisoner is observed. Transparent walls of an office are not a fashionable trend , but the requirement of control and management so that to see every motion of workers. Control over creative workers is an inevitable element of social order but it should be “soft” enough in order to avoid their frustration . There are two alternatives: control should be even harder in order to manage creative workers slipping from control as such, or it should be softer in order to catch at least the rest of the subjects to be controlled. Although creativity does not tolerate organizations with strong control and rigid hierarchy, if there is no (self-)control at all, most likely there would be no creative result either. A creative worker usually has no motives to create without any orders, both in a broader (social order) and in a narrow sense (economic order). Nevertheless, a “hard” structure of management with strong hierarchy is destructive for creativity. Creativity is usually mobilized by creative education and by stimulation of creative risks. There is a collision between the rules forced from outside and those created by a creative worker him/herself. Thus, collisions, contradictions and clashes are inseparable from creativity. The purpose of the paper is twofold: (1) to review different approaches to creativity management and (2) to show the specificity of creativity management.