Dancing in chains: Creative practices in/of organizations

Abstract

According to Friedrich Nietzsche, artists impose restrictions on themselves to encourage creativity and even have a way of “making things difficult” – imposing new constraints on themselves within which they have to dance. At least in the arts, it is difficulty rather than ease which promotes creativity in accordance with this view. This goes beyond the well-known idea of rules and other structures not only restricting but also enabling creativity; it also goes beyond insight into the creativity-enhancing effects of constraints, as recently emphasized in organization studies. Nietzsche adds three dimensions to this dialectic: time and the process of dancing inspired and encouraged by constraints; the opposition of old and new constraints; and the quality of intended, stimulating self-binding. We see this as an opportunity to explore the inspiring potential of Nietzsche’s piece about arts, “Dancing in chains”, when it comes to the different realm of creative practices and creativity in and of organizations. Such an exploration can obviously not aim to offer recipes of how to bring about valuable novelty, but simply intends to identify pertinent themes, issues and questions for organization studies – topics and aspects brought into a new or sharper light when looked at from Nietzsche’s perspective and that of some other philosophers, including Jon Elster’s analyses of constraints in general and of the complications of self-binding in order to promote creativity in particular. Also, we consider Míchel de Certeau’s “silent production” and Martha Feldman’s improvisational routines as being cases of “dancing in chains”.

Transition rather than balance: Organizing constraints for collective creativity in pharmaceutical development

“…Hence, constraints do not only obstruct creativity, but can also pose an obstacle that challenges participants to come up with novel solutions (Marguc, van Kleef, & Förster, 2015). They can inspire and challenge ingenuity by making things difficult, instead of making things easier (Honig, Karlsson, & Hägg, 2013; Lampel et al, 2014; Ortmann & Sydow, 2018).…”

“…Essentially, management must strike a balance between “ under‐ and over‐organizing ” to foster creativity (Chen, 2012). However, this insight leads to an all too simple message concerning constraint management for creativity: “ tight enough, but not too tight; difficult enough, but not too difficult ” (Ortmann & Sydow, 2018, p. 915). In summary, the literature suggests balancing constraint, meaning to establish and keep an optimized middling amount of constraints to organize for collective creativity (see also Cirella, 2016; Lampel et al, 2014).…”

“…Yet, this notion of balancing constraint is often too enigmatic to help organize collective creativity in practice (Caniëls & Rietzschel, 2015; Ortmann & Sydow, 2018; Rosso, 2014). For instance, it remains unclear if and how management should balance between distinct types of constraints (Acar et al, 2018).…”

“…To do so, constraints are not examined as static parameters that can enhance or hinder creativity (Caniëls & Rietzschel, 2015), but as dynamic variables themselves, that change and develop during collective creative processes (Fortwengel, Schüßler, & Sydow, 2017; Ortmann & Sydow, 2018). The goal is hence to understand how constraints unfold during collective creative processes.…”

“…This paper suggests that the sources of constraints illustrate vital aspects regarding the creative process not depicted by type alone. Second, some studies already point to the inextricable interweaving of constraint handling and creativity (Joas, 1996; Lombardo & Kvålshaugen, 2014), stating that transformation of constraints is part of creative processes (Ortmann & Sydow, 2018). Refining this notion, the present article illustrates that phases of collective creativity and phases of constraint transition are distinctly separate.…”