INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW
2.3 MEANING OF CREATIVITY AND CLIMATE
Understanding the meaning of creativity and climate is essential to the discussions in this study. While the focus is mainly on creative climate, the relationship between creativity and climate cannot be ignored.
Creativity
Many researchers have referred to creativity in psychological studies and other perspectives to synthesize and identify theoretical approaches. There are five major approaches to the study of creativity. Lauer (1994:4) enumerates them with their prominent researchers as:
1) Cognitive, Rational and Semantic approaches (e.g., Guilford, 1950; Osborn, 1953;
Torrance, 1962; Parnes, 1967), 2) Personality and Environmental approaches (e.g., Barron, 1972; MacKinnon, 1975; Stein, 1974; Crutchfield, 1962; Taylor, 1975), 3) Third force Psychology approaches (e.g., Maslow, 1971; Rogers, 1954), 4) Psychoanalytic or Psychodynamic approaches (e.g., Freud, 1920; Kris, 1952; Kubie, 1958; Rank, 1932), and 5) Psychedelic approaches (e.g., Barron, 1969; Payne, 1973).
Over the years researchers and practitioners from different perspectives have examined the concept of creativity. Any definition of creativity that aspires to objectivity, and therefore requires an inter-subjective dimension, will have to recognise the fact that the audience is as important to its constitution as the individual to whom it is credited (Csikszentmihalyi 2001).
A creative environment can take advantage of knowledge in different fields to produce radical innovations (Greve 2004). Research on the concept of creativity has been challenging due to the fact that creativity is a complex phenomenon that is somewhat obscure, elusive and unpredictable.
The early definitions of creativity were on the notion of the creative process in which the outcomes were known as creative. Yet there are many recent diverse definitions of creativity that compounds its complexity and elusiveness. Most of the dominant writers on creativity acknowledge a broad spectrum of activity, that can be described as creative (Craft 2001). For example, Montuori (n.d) explains that creativity involves constant organising, disorganising, and re-organising. It involves actively breaking down assumptions, givens, and traditions, pushing boundaries and moving out of comfort zones. Hughes (1998) argues that creativity is nothing more than going beyond the current boundaries, whether those are boundaries of technology, knowledge, current practices, social norms, or beliefs. Creativity is nothing more than seeing and acting on new relationships, thereby bringing them to life.
Hence, the focus on creativity in organisations has tended to expand in recent years due to increasing worldwide competition in the market place. Another reason is that for business survival, creativity is now becoming an organisational aspiration. Studies show that creativity is now encouraged to see a 'problem' from a novel perspective that involves escaping from old methods and ideas. Solutions to problems can be acted on spontaneously or as a result of sustained effort.
Because the brain organises information in patterns and people are encouraged to be analytical and evaluative in their thinking, staff are also encouraged to form new patterns in the brain by using intuitive approaches. Creativity connects the mind with problem-finding abilities, mental mobility, with a personal aesthetic, inner motivation and risk-taking.
Creativity is also influenced by spatial environments, group dynamics, resources, time and by work pressures. In this respect it has been perceived that the best way to meet this challenge is by making the organisation flexible enough to meet the challenge of competition through:
1) better utilisation of their employees' talents including creative abilities; 2) making the organisation more open to change; and 3) increasing the ability of the organisation to be innovative through the development of new products (Lauer 1994). Implicit with the above concept of creativity, the heart of this study would relate to the perceptions and interactions between the employees and variables of the work climate of Thekwini FET College.
Climate
To understand human behaviour at this institution, creative climate emerges as a meaningful concept. Climate describes the atmosphere of the interpersonal functioning of people within a given environment. By understanding the climate of an organisation, one may begin to see the dynamic, inter-actional role climate has in relation to the behaviour of those within the organisation (Grivas 1996). Therefore climate is a contributing variable to creative behaviour. Figure 2.2 was adapted from Isaksen & Lauer (1998).
Figure 2.2 Factors Affecting Climate
MISSION
TASKS LEADERSHIP
STRUCTURES RESOURCES
In the above figure 2.2 Ekvall (1991:7) summarises the relationship between climate and organisation:
In the context of organisational processes climate plays a part of an intervening variable, which affects the results of the operations of the organisation. The climate has this moderating power because it influences organisational processes such as problem solving, decision-making, communications, coordination, controlling and psychological processes of learning, creating, motivation and commitment.
Literature defines climate as the recurring patterns of behaviour, attitudes, and feelings that characterise life in the organisation. At the individual level of analysis, the concept is called
psychological climate. At this level, the concept of climate refers to the individual perceptions of behaviours. When aggregated, the concept is called organisational climate.
These are the objectively shared perceptions that characterise life in the organisation (Isaksen et.al 2001).
Organisational climate is described as a phenomenon between employees and the organisational situation. Factors in the organisational climate such as bureaucracy, procedures, rules, policies, monotonous work and physical environment elicit reactions in the individuals involved. Ekvall (1991) indicates that it is these reactions in the form of behaviour, feelings, and attitudes that constitute the climate in the realistic sense. But we also have to count the people themselves as part of the organisational situation.
Phenomenologically speaking, it is the individual's apperceptions of these conditions, factors and events in the organisation that constitute the climate. It is their way of assigning meaning to procedures, policies, and events that come to constitute the climate.
A study by Ekvall (1987 cited in Isaksen & Kaufmann 1990) shows that organisational climate can be understood according to objectivistic or subjectivistic viewpoints. The objectivistic views climate through behaviours, attitudes and feelings and sees the climate as existing independently as a part of organisational reality. The subjectivistic view regards climate as a perceptual and cognitive structuring common to those who comprise the organisation.