Abstract
How is it possible to be creative in the environment of an organization? The answer offered here is informed by a theoretical frame of creativity as a phenomenon embedded within cultural context and of communication as an action capable of changing the meaning of potential environmental constraints. The purpose is to demonstrate how individuals can or cannot influence the meaning of “hierarchy” in an organizational culture ruled by particular meanings of hierarchy built and kept through communication, but also changeable through goal oriented actions in the process of communication. Thus, the ‘Creative Culture Analysis’ outlined in this chapter is based on observing how personal cultures interact with the organizational culture in ways that make one progressively change another and possibly turn the environment more favorable to creative ideas. To understand this dynamic, the following methodological procedures were adopted in studying an organization from Brasília – Brazil: participating in weekly group meetings; identifying professional profiles and their projects; making individual interviews with three different employees to know better how each one deals with organizational constraints and what solutions they find for them; and analyzing the interviews’ thematic content by considering the environmental conditions for developing or constraining creative ideas. The results point us to the ways in which each participant contributes to progressively change, even if at a micro level, the organizational culture by generating and developing new ideas and, in doing this this, inspires colleagues to build a more creative work environment.
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Formiga Sobrinho, A.B. (2019). Creative Culture Analysis: A Way to Understand How an Environment Is (or Isn’t) Favorable to Creative Ideas. In: Lebuda, I., Glăveanu, V.P. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Social Creativity Research. Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95498-1_23
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