Creativity, Organisation and Entrepreneurship: Power and Play in the Ecological Press of Money

Abstract

Drawing on how Marx reverses consumption perspectives (C-M-C) to capture the money-orientation of entrepreneurs (M-C-M), the paper addresses ways the 'ecological press' of creativity (Rhodes, 1961) is affected by money-orientations becoming internalised deeply into institutions. Accepting Hjorth's (2005, p.389) critique that managerialism aims at producing 'today's ideal of self-managing enterprising employees', the pressing issue is to understand how organisation, when re-configured around budgets, targets and other metrics, can be opened up to passion, carnival and play without augmenting the 'power of place'. Asking how 'spaces of play' get foreclosed by the 'ecological press' of creativity being turned towards moneymaking, particular scrutiny is given to the ways in which 'institutional logics' (Thornton & Occasio, 2008) get altered by internalising money-orientations. Three paradigm cases of innovation are examined: namely Edison's supply of electricity, Sloan's use of ROI to grant autonomy, and JIT's lead towards the flexible factory. While suggestive of the role money may play in limiting creativity to the possible and the potential, the analysis shows how change towards the virtual can be triggered by complex modes of reverse-thinking. While the analysis challenges 'market logics' that put creativity in the hands of the 'chance and caprice' of internal competition, I conclude that negative effects on the ecological press of creativity, such as 'making play pay', might be better countered by more research over how money's presence and absence is created and tempered.

From ideas of power to the powering of ideas in organizations: Reflections from Follett and Foucault

“…That is, power as a dynamic and positive phenomenon that is generative in relation and can produce organizational creativity, as the quotes from Follett and Foucault attest, is more or less absent. This is an omission that also characterizes the emergent practice-based approaches to creativity, though exceptions do occur (Coldevin et al, 2019;Hargadon, 2006;Munro, 2018).…”

Organizational Creativity, Play and Entrepreneurship: Introduction and Framing

“…Munro shows how reverse thinking gives us ways to challenge managerial power over organizational places so as to open spaces for play in spite of the ecological press that a money-oriented control means. In a refreshingly surprising way, this article (Munro, 2018) shows how expecting the surprise of the unpredictable unleashing of the virtually new is itself a well-grounded (in time and space) and playful way of resisting the institutionalized ecological press of money.…”

The Topographical Imagination: Space and organization theory

“…It is in this sense that the question of space cannot be untied from the question of the political (Massey, 2005, p. 99), and therefore from the question of power and critical thinking. This kind of sensitivity comes, for example, in Munro's (2018) analysis of how organizational routines for allocating money give senior managers a form of flexi-power enacted in spatial dispersal and distance. Rather than acting directly on bodies, money flows are found to act indirectly as an almost playful form of managerial discretion, controlling through atmospheres of ambiguity and caprice.…”