Organisations are under enormous pressure to become more innovative in all areas of their operations if they are going to continue to compete successfully (Leavy, 2003). The first stage of successful innovation is ensuring that creativity, the generation of novel ideas, is achieved (McFadzean, et al., 2004). With regards to an organisation's creative environment, theory has suggested that the basic orientation of a company's support for creativity comes directly from the behaviours of the highest levels of management (Amabile, 1996). Despite this proposed relationship, little empirical research has been conducted that examines the role that senior management of an organisation play in influencing a work environment that stimulates creativity. A research model has been developed that illustrates the possible relationships between the functions of senior managers and the creative work environment of an organisation. Essentially this model is be utilised as a framework to examine how do the management functions create the stimulants and impediments of an organisation's environment that affect creativity? The method used to investigate this research question is a qualitative investigation of two manufacturing plants that operate in a larger New Zealand food processing company. This entailed gathering information through semi-structured interviews with employees from the senior management to lower level employees. In addition, direct observations at the plants and archival data in the form of company reports, articles and prior studies were used to gather further information. From this research, three key findings were established. (1) Amabile, et al's., (1996) theory that a number of variables stimulate creativity, while others impede it, was supported. (2) Trust was found to be the key intervening variable, the foundation, upon which a creative context can be built. (3) The Senior Manager, in the case of this research the Operations Manager and Production Centre Manager, played a crucial role in providing the contextual variables that facilitate creativity. As this research suggests, organisational creativity is complicated by the fact that it is affected by the social dynamics operating between key parties within an organisation. Consequently, it is characterised by informal relationships, freedom and resource allocation that ultimately requires that a level of trust exists between key parties. It is senior management's responsibility to ensure that such a work environment is created. These managers are only able to build trust within their organisations by acting with benevolence, integrity and demonstrating that they are committed to employee creativity.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/215254 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Rangiaho, Melina |
| Publisher | Lincoln University |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | http://purl.org/net/lulib/thesisrights |
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