Promoting Organizational Creativity Through an Action-Research-Process of Organizational Development

Organizational creativity (OC) is becoming increasingly important for organizations that operate in a dynamic and complex environment. Over the years, scholars have identified key dimensions of OC, but little is known about how OC can be stimulated in everyday organizational practice. The purpose of this research-in progress-paper is on the one hand, to conceptualize OC as organizational development and learning practice and on the other hand, to present an action research case study design and action learning process that allows the research team to start a dialogical exchange among those committed to creativity in the organization. A multi-level online-assessment has been developed based on established creativity tests and has been expanded with selected newly developed inhouse items, in order to help organizational members grasp their own work-related creative capabilities and to help managers get a better understanding of the creative capabilities within the organization or team. The paper aims at giving an outlook on an action research case study design. The research approach involves five case studies of innovation-driven, knowledge-intensive medium-size firms in Switzerland.