Martin, Lee David (2007) Creativity in and out of the Workplace. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.
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Abstract
Creativity is argued to be essential to the long term survival of organisations, institutions and even nations. Understanding how to enhance and utilise human creativity has become an important goal for academics, governments and practitioners, consultants, trade unionists and managers. Critical to this goal is the ability to recognise creative contributions, actualise creative potential and enable people who are creative in one context to perform creatively in another. However these goals are arguably beyond existing creativity research. The existing conceptual framework for creativity studies, and the conventional definition of creativity advocated within it, serve to check the realisation of these goals. This is because creativity is commonly defined through the recognition of produced and valued novelty. This definition obscures all that is unrecognised, un-actualised, unexercised and currently in potential from being considered creativity. This research is an attempt to resolve this paradox and enable the goals of understanding and enhancing creativity to be achieved. The thesis proceeds in two parts. First, the problems within the existing conceptual framework and its conventional definition will be located, reflected upon and then, through meta-theoretical development, a resolution to the paradox will be proposed. The result is presented as a critical realist inspired ontology of creativity, which includes an augmented framework and definition of creativity along with a more nuanced understanding of the following categories: unrecognised creativity, un-actualised creativity, cross-contextual creativity, creative potential and a solution to the problem of ex nihilo creativity. Secondly, the validity of these categories will tested through an empirical investigation into the nature of in-work and out-of-work creativity and how a person's creative potential can move between these contexts. It is concluded that, unless and until the meta-theoretical fog that blinds creativity research is cleared, the understanding of human creativity will remain impoverished.