Introduction: The Absence of Creativity in Practice and Management Writing

It is common to argue that we live today in a society characterized by the increasing influence and importance of intangible resources such as intellectual capital, know-how and knowledge. Since the 1970s, sociologists, economists and political analysts has debated the wide-ranging change from a society and an economy based on industrial production and manufacturing to one centred on service industries and intangible products and services. The movement from the primary sector of agriculture to the secondary sector of manufacturing was named the ‘Industrial Revolution’. To date, the next movement from the secondary sector of the economy, manufacturing, into the third sector of service industry has not yet been given such a spectacular label, though the terms ‘knowledge society’ and ‘information society’ have been made popular; yet the changes can be argued to have been almost as influential. One of the most important implications to be drawn from this change is the emphasis on knowledge-intensive industries. Today, domains of the economy such as the finance, pharmaceuticals, and higher education sectors are playing increasingly important roles in western societies. These different industries share the common feature of being dependent on the use of intellectual capital and know-how. The emphasis on intellectual capital or knowledge as one of the major organizational resources has been one of the dominant traits of management studies since the mid- 1980s year.