Attempts by MNCs to Expand the Creative and Innovative Spirit through the Concept of Agility: Role of Global Managers

Faced with an environment that is changing faster and faster, companies have long sought to encourage the almost automatic emergence of new approaches that can respond or even anticipate these changes. The development of creativity has become an essential theme. For more than 20 years, companies have been promoting the concept of agility at the same time as they attempted to extend creativity to all employees. Managers have been called upon to implement the corresponding actions. Our research, based on semi-structured interviews with 35 global managers, analyses several aspects of the implementation of the concepts. We looked particularly at what managers think of agility, how this concept relates to the efforts made to develop creativity, what they experienced, and the conditions for success. The analysis of the responses highlights the significant differences in perception, often linked to the functions performed in the company or to nationalities. Regardless of the value associated with agility, the interviewees agreed on the importance of the manager's role while directing it in three different directions. The discussions also identify a series of necessary, but not sufficient conditions for creativity to emerge. Implications for Central European audience: This paper does not deal with a problem specific to Central Europe. It is a general problem going beyond regional limits, as international management tends to use the same concepts everywhere. However, in its processing, we sought to interview several managers from this geographic area. In the second phase, we plan to improve the representativeness of managers from Central Europe to understand better what is specific to them.