From dualisms to dualities: On researching creative processes in the arts and sciences

Abstract

Creativity and organization are usually considered as contradictory or even paradoxical (e.g. DeFillippi et al., 2007), not only in the arts but also in the sciences. For creativity implies the creation of something novel and, at least potentially useful (Shalley et al., 2004) and, as such, is a necessary but not sufficient condition for innovation widely praised to guarantee the survival of organizations if not societies. Creativity is traditionally assumed to be fostered by individual freedom and slack resources. By contrast, organization – or organizing – with its emphasis on formality, rules, routines and systemness does not seem to foster but rather to hinder the unfolding of creativity in time and space. While temporary as well as partial forms of organizations are considered principally more supportive in this respect (Burke and Morely, 2016; Ahrne and Brunsson, 2018), I will argue in the following that any analysis of creative processes in and across organizations has to focus on both freedom and constraints – as well as on the tensions and contradiction arising from there, no matter whether these are of a truly paradoxical nature or not. Any process research on creativity, of a strong or more moderate nature (Fortwengel et al., 2017), should not only study “patterns in events” (Langley, 1999: 692) but focus on the interrelating of the two poles of the tensions, more appropriately conceived as a duality than a dualism. For Giddens (1984), whose work has been quite well received by economic geographers with respect to his concept of duality of structure and agency (e.g. Bathelt and Glückler, 2014), a duality is a melding of opposites. In more concrete terms, and following the definition by Graetz and Smith (2008), a duality comprises “the simultaneous presence of competing and ostensibly contradictory” (p. 270) properties, not unlike in a paradox. Ashforth and Reingen (2014), in a recent study of the relationships of idealist and pragmatists in a natural food cooperative, not only build on this definition and differentiation. Rather, these authors rightly emphasize that “the notions of ostensible contradiction and unified whole provide more conceptual space for exploring how the elements may in fact be complementary” (p. 475). With regard to such complementarities, or even supplementaries in a Derridean sense, including the more often than not productive role of (even self-imposed) constraints in creative processes (Ortmann and Sydow, 2018), we do need a more reflective and balanced account of organization and organizing – one which was already asked for by Adler and Borys (1996) more than two decades ago with regard to the enabling and constraining effects of bureaucratic structures. In fact, the four papers accepted for publication in this themed issue reflect to a large extent the long-needed move towards recognizing the importance of such a focus on tensions and contradictions as dualities (Farjoun, 2017). As correctly emphasized by Hautala and Ibert (2018) in their introduction to this theme issue these papers even share a processual approach to such dualities. In what follows, I will recap the tensions which not only of the four papers but also the commentary by Grabher (2018) address and inquire into exactly how they address them, for instance by unearthing the concepts these authors mobilize to theorize them. I will conclude that, from an organization theory perspective, economic geography seems on a good way to a more balanced and conflict-sensitive, even dialectical process understanding of creativity and organization that could well be pushed a bit further into this direction by not only considering tensions and contradictions as conditions and outcomes of organizing for creativity but also as important means. In addition, a more explicit study of tensions and contradictions and their role in creative processes in arts and sciences across different levels of analysis may be useful. At the same time, organization research has, despite some attempts to consider spatiality more seriously (e.g. Clegg and Kornberger, 2006), to learn a lot from economic geography about the multidimensional character of spatiality of creative processes.