ABSTRACT
Creative action in organizations often requires individuals to risk huge investments of time and credibility in the face of highly uncertain and distant returns. Given the magnitude of the personal and organizational stakes involved even in relatively modest creative endeavors, it would seem unwise to proceed with novel proposals without carefully considering how they produce value for affected stakeholders. In organizational settings, value tends to have a “bottom line” quality to it-at some point, the magnitude, duration, and scope of a novel idea’s economic contribution must be articulated. This is not a trivial task. Several different streams of research in the administrative sciences raise important questions regarding the value of novel proposals in organizational environments. Novel proposals often create value and serve as the impetus to important organizational and industrial changes, but more often they do not. A variety of explanations have been offered to explain circumstances when novel proposals are likely to create value, and when they are likely to fail. The purpose of this chapter is to describe a few of these theories in an effort to depict environmental constraints and challenges that affect creativity in organizational settings. In particular, we are taking the rather unconventional approach of describing attributes of business environments outside the boundaries of specific organizations that are largely beyond the control of specific organizations and organizational actors. The environmental influences we describe herein place im-portant constraints on
creative discretion within organizations, and must be considered by those charged with implementing creative proposals that affect an organization’s external constituencies. Consequently, we propose important boundary conditions that should be taken into account by investigators who aim to better contextualize organizational creativity research (Heath & Sitkin, 2001).
