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(Un)Sustainable Creativity? Different Manager-Employee Perspectives in the Finnish Technology Sector

Author

Listed:
  • Soila Lemmetty

    (Department of Education, University of Jyväskylä, Alvar Aallon katu 9, 40140 Jyväskylä, Finland)

  • Vlad Petre Glăveanu

    (Department of Psychology and Professional Counselling, Webster University, 15 Route de Collex, 1293 Geneva, Switzerland)

  • Kaija Collin

    (Department of Education, University of Jyväskylä, Alvar Aallon katu 9, 40140 Jyväskylä, Finland)

  • Panu Forsman

    (Department of Education, University of Jyväskylä, Alvar Aallon katu 9, 40140 Jyväskylä, Finland)

Abstract

The importance of creativity for working life and in organizations has increased in recent years. At the same time, the theme of sustainability has been intensely debated in research, society, and organizations. Together, creativity and sustainability have sometimes been described as a contradictory phenomenon: they are described in ways that place them in opposition to each other. To better understand creativity and sustainability and their differences from the perspective of people in different positions, we take advantage of a sociocultural approach in which we do not focus only on creative individuals but also on the impact of creativity on both organizational stakeholders and society at large. We aim to explore manager and employee descriptions of creativity and its relationship with sustainability at work in the Finnish technology sector, with a particular focus on how they relate to the sustainability of the creative processes and to workplace activities more generally. Based on a thematic analysis of 56 interviews, we found that the managers and employees in Finnish technology organizations described creativity in different ways, looking at the phenomenon from the viewpoints of clients, businesses, society, or colleagues, and had different perspectives on what it means to create, with the former treating creativity as huge innovations and the latter as daily problem-solving. We also found that sustainability in relation to creativity appears either as applying old solutions and thus recycling previous ideas or outcomes or as destroying old products and replacing them with the new (creative destruction). We discuss these partly conflicting discourses at the end of the article and present suggestions for future research.

Suggested Citation

  • Soila Lemmetty & Vlad Petre Glăveanu & Kaija Collin & Panu Forsman, 2020. "(Un)Sustainable Creativity? Different Manager-Employee Perspectives in the Finnish Technology Sector," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(9), pages 1-16, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:9:p:3605-:d:352035
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Andrew B. Hargadon & Beth A. Bechky, 2006. "When Collections of Creatives Become Creative Collectives: A Field Study of Problem Solving at Work," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 17(4), pages 484-500, August.
    2. Rajagopal, 2014. "Organizations and Innovation," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Architecting Enterprise, chapter 3, pages 58-86, Palgrave Macmillan.
    3. Robert J. Sternberg, 2010. "Innovation: Lighting the creative spark," Nature, Nature, vol. 468(7321), pages 170-171, November.
    4. Pfeffer, Jeffrey, 2010. "Building Sustainable Organizations: The Human Factor," Research Papers 2017r, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
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    Cited by:

    1. Qichao Zhang & Zhenzhong Ma & Long Ye & Ming Guo & Shuzhen Liu, 2021. "Future Work Self and Employee Creativity: The Mediating Role of Informal Field-Based Learning for High Innovation Performance," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(3), pages 1-17, January.
    2. Michał Kucia & Grzegorz Hajduk & Grzegorz Mazurek & Nina Kotula, 2021. "The Implementation of New Technologies in Customer Value Management—A Sustainable Development Perspective," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(2), pages 1-16, January.
    3. Monika Spychalska-Wojtkiewicz, 2020. "The Relation between Sustainable Development Trends and Customer Value Management," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(14), pages 1-18, July.
    4. Yenan Dong & Shangshang Zhu & Wenjie Li, 2021. "Promoting Sustainable Creativity: An Empirical Study on the Application of Mind Mapping Tools in Graphic Design Education," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(10), pages 1-15, May.
    5. MORARU Gina-Maria, 2021. "The Creativity Of Future Engineers, An Insufficiently Exploited Resource In Romanian Organizations," Management of Sustainable Development, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Faculty of Economic Sciences, vol. 13(1), pages 21-25, June.

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