Department Chair

Gerard J. Puccio, Ph.D., Chair and Distinguished Professor of Creativity and Change Leadership

Date of Award

8-2021

Access Control

Campus-Only Access

Degree Name

Creative Studies, M.S.

Department

Center for Studies in Creativity

Advisor

Gerard J. Puccio, Ph.D., Chair and Distinguished Professor of Creativity and Change Leadership

Department Home page

creativity.buffalostate.edu

First Reader

Gerard J. Puccio, Ph.D., Chair and Distinguished Professor of Creativity and Change Leadership

Second Reader

John F. Cabra, Ph.D., Professor of Creativity and Change Leadership

Abstract

There is a consensus in the Western world's organizational (innovation) research and practice that we operate in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment. Somewhat paradoxically, the overwhelming body of research studying organizational innovation and its catalysts — creativity, design, and even brand — has been subscribed to modernist, positivistic, and deterministic philosophies, and subsequent methodologies. The present study proposed an arguably new approach: studying organizational innovation within a complex realist framework. Creativity, design, and brand were predetermined as causal forces necessary for organizational innovation events to be adopted. A case-based comparative research design was deployed, and three organizations were studied in-depth within a specific context. Results suggest that creativity, design, and brand were present and necessary for the realization of organizational innovation. Moreover, the three constructs (i.e., causal forces) were plotted on Roy Bhaskar's stratified ontological model and Margaret Archer's morphogenetic cycle — illuminating insights about how structure influences the agential powers and how those powers can influence structure. Arguably the most critical finding was that brand — the sub-domain least studied in conjunction with organizational innovation — was the determinant force for adopting new and useful ideas, products, services, or experiences. More and better research should follow, especially at the intersection of brand and innovation, in a complex reality. Collaboration between agents (i.e., scholars and practitioners of each field) and a ‘post-disciplinary’ approach should be encouraged to better understand, teach, and harness organizational innovation.

Comments

An arguably new approach to the study and practice of organizational innovation. Creativity, Design, and Brand understood as causal necessary conditions for organizational innovation to be realized. The three phenomena studied in the complex reality they interact, by using a case-based complex realist methodology.

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