This article we are exploring the barriers to creativity in private language schools. The eighth in a ten-part series examining some key concepts leaders of private language schools might find useful to become familiar with.
Introduction
Defined as a process involving the generation of new and useful ideas (Runco & Jaeger, 2012), creativity can help a private language school to sustain its competitive advantage and to remain innovative (Mullins & Christy, 2016). Given the central significance of creativity for organisational performance, school leaders need to first understand what hinders it before attempting to nurture it.
External or internal
The barriers to creativity within a private language school can be broadly categorised as being either external or internal. Research from the field of design management shows that the external barriers consist of: insufficient outside funding; small markets; a lack of consultation and government support; and cultural differences (Elmansy, 2015). Internal barriers include a lack of in-house knowledge, skills and experience, as well as a lack of understanding of specific roles within an organisation (Elmansy, 2015). Management barriers also constitute internal barriers; these comprise a lack of focus on creativity, the absence of departmental connections, poor management practices, and unclear roles and titles (Elmansy, 2015).
Despite the significance of external barriers to employee creativity, most probably the internal ones have the most powerful bearing in a school. In fact, Amabile (2012) acknowledges that one of the most important factors in her componential model of creativity consists of the social environment. This is because ‘creativity should be highest when an intrinsically motivated person with high domain expertise and high skill in creative thinking works in an environment high in supports for creativity’ (Amabile, 2012). This implies that the work environment poses one of the biggest challenges to the cultivation of employee creativity.
The obstacles to creativity that employees face in the work environment can be effectively overcome by the adoption of authentic leadership practices on the part of school leaders (Semedo et al., 2018). Authentic leadership directly predicts employee creativity, as well as mediating it via affective commitment and job resourcefulness (Semedo et al., 2018). A study on managers’ practices in the context of virtual teams shows that the factors that inhibited creativity and success included distrust, personality differences and generational differences in perspectives (Han et al., 2017). Managers addressed these challenges by producing norms and guidelines aimed at encouraging positive interaction among team members and facilitating creativity; trust-based open communication was another important strategy used for the same two purposes (Han et al., 2017).
Misconceptions
Perhaps one of the most powerful barriers to creativity consists of school leaders’ misconceptions about its nature. In The Myths of Creativity, David Burkus (2014) demolishes a number of misconceptions that people have with respect to creativity in organisations. For example, he argues that creativity is not only the preserve of the gifted individuals that companies seek to recruit in order to spur innovation. These individuals rarely produce great work in isolation, and it is erroneous to believe that innovative ideas will always be given their due recognition. Nor is creativity exclusively synonymous with a ‘eureka moment’ that enables a business to come up with a game-changing idea. Most often, creativity consists of an iterative process that gradually refines an existing idea. In addition, creativity does not really flourish as a result of incentives such as promotions and bonuses. If people find their work satisfactory and motivating, they are much more likely to tap their creative potential. Similarly, creativity does not require a cohesive work environment or absolute freedom; most often people manifest creativity in situations that tolerate dissent and that are characterised by constraints.
Burkus’s (2014) views on creativity seem to be substantiated by the theoretical and empirical literature. Firstly, different personality types working together in teams helps an organisation to produce new products or services that are valuable and useful (Sharif, 2015). In fact, organisational creativity and efficiency are both positively affected by social capital, i.e. the resources derived from one’s connections, networks and group membership (Sözbilir, 2018). Secondly, people’s implicit theories of creativity are related to whether they recognise creativity in others and how they categorise creative ideas (Gralewski & Karwowski, 2016). In addition, divisions within an organisation may appear destructive, but in reality they act as sources of creativity and facilitate organisational renewal and development (Gorup & Podjed, 2015). Lastly, creativity in organisations thrives when people are allowed to operate in a flexible, non-autocratic corporate environment, while still being expected to adhere to rigorous standards (Griebel, 2017).
Constraints
Given the influential nature of the assumption that creativity is impeded by a lack of time and other constraints, it is worth further examining the role that constraints play vis-à-vis creativity. In the creativity research literature, constraints are understood as factors that either enhance creativity or hinder it. Acar et al. (2019) have developed a comprehensive taxonomy of constraints that helps to illuminate how creativity and innovation are affected. Constraints are categorised as being of an input, process or output nature, with the first having to do with the lack of time, capital and materials (Acar et al., 2019). Process constraints consist of the rules and procedures that determine the creative process, while output constraints refer to the standards, regulations and requirements that help to define what the creative outcome should look like (Acar et al., 2019). All three kinds of constraints can either facilitate or hamper creativity. Even though some literature emphasises the negative influence of constraints on creative action (Lombardo & Kvålshaugen, 2014), many studies highlight the fact that constraints are paradoxical since they can either be perceived as inhibiting creativity or else enticing it to flourish through a set of challenges (Caniëls & Rietzschel, 2015).
While creative organisations are typically seen as embodying freedom, autonomy and a lack of rules and boundaries, it is also true that constraints enable organisations and individuals to be more creative (Caniëls & Rietzschel, 2015). This suggests that the perspective adopted on constraints plays a vital role. In fact, in the field of engineering, whether constraints stimulate creativity or have a negative impact on it depends on which design model is used rather than what kind of constraint it is (Hatchuel & Chen, 2017). Similarly, while financial constraints tend to be seen as undermining creativity, research actually shows that they can be beneficial to it by leading to the ideation of more creative products (Scopelliti et al., 2013). This is in line with other research showing that teams that discover opportunities in constraints benefit creatively from them (Rosso, 2014).
Conclusion
The cultivation of creativity within a private language school depends on how supportive its climate and structures are. Creativity is about supporting a group of people from different backgrounds to work together to come up with viable solutions (Catmull, 2008). Creativity has to exist at every level of the organisation, but leaders play a key role in supporting employees to demonstrate creative behaviour (Kremer et al., 2019). For this reason, school leaders need to understand what the barriers to creativity consist of and whether they themselves are acting in ways that hinder creativity before seeking to nurture it in their employees.
