Since Ilya Prigogine has revealed that non-equilibrium has a constructive role and irreversibility cannot be ruled out in appearance, management studies have also foregone a structural change, agreeing with the laws of chaos and complexity. Self-organization, self-reference and sensemaking have become the most important features for a new theory of the firm, undermining the foundations of well-established and reliable models. In management studies, this scientific path is still developing and continuously interlacing with other schools of thought. This paper gets into this intertwining of contributions and research issues, involved in understanding the drivers of processes of innovation and the evolution of organizations and, in particular, in explaining strategic innovation in dynamic and far from equilibrium environment. The basic idea is that organizational creativity can be considered the more suitable answer to external and internal perturbations. Creativity, in fact, is essentially a cognitive resource, necessary for surviving in a complex competitive landscape. In this paper, the organizational learning process, traditionally intended as adaptive behaviour, is viewed as a process of situated and distributed cognition, evolving towards new shared mental models and based on the interaction between a variety of mediating structures: i) the role of people in organizational sub-communities, ii) sub-cultures, social rules and values, iii) the division of labour, iv) mediating artifacts, v) discourses, languages, vi) visual, verbal or other abstract mediating tools. The thesis is that a firm’s creativity is fulfilled only if some of these well-established mediating structures are intentionally broken or renewed towards a new state of the organization, maybe far from equilibrium.

The role of mediating structures in organizational creativity

BORGHINI, STEFANIA
2002

Abstract

Since Ilya Prigogine has revealed that non-equilibrium has a constructive role and irreversibility cannot be ruled out in appearance, management studies have also foregone a structural change, agreeing with the laws of chaos and complexity. Self-organization, self-reference and sensemaking have become the most important features for a new theory of the firm, undermining the foundations of well-established and reliable models. In management studies, this scientific path is still developing and continuously interlacing with other schools of thought. This paper gets into this intertwining of contributions and research issues, involved in understanding the drivers of processes of innovation and the evolution of organizations and, in particular, in explaining strategic innovation in dynamic and far from equilibrium environment. The basic idea is that organizational creativity can be considered the more suitable answer to external and internal perturbations. Creativity, in fact, is essentially a cognitive resource, necessary for surviving in a complex competitive landscape. In this paper, the organizational learning process, traditionally intended as adaptive behaviour, is viewed as a process of situated and distributed cognition, evolving towards new shared mental models and based on the interaction between a variety of mediating structures: i) the role of people in organizational sub-communities, ii) sub-cultures, social rules and values, iii) the division of labour, iv) mediating artifacts, v) discourses, languages, vi) visual, verbal or other abstract mediating tools. The thesis is that a firm’s creativity is fulfilled only if some of these well-established mediating structures are intentionally broken or renewed towards a new state of the organization, maybe far from equilibrium.
2002
9789579078474
The 2002 International Conference in Management Sciences
Borghini, Stefania
File in questo prodotto:
Non ci sono file associati a questo prodotto.

I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.

Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11565/54345
 Attenzione

Attenzione! I dati visualizzati non sono stati sottoposti a validazione da parte dell'ateneo

Citazioni
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.pmc??? ND
  • Scopus ND
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.isi??? ND
social impact