Creativity in Business Education: A Review of Creative Self-Belief Theories and Arts-Based Methods
“Business, Innovation and Art” Special Series Issue #6
By Sogol Homayoun and Danah Henriksen *
Published in Special Issue “Business, Open Innovation and Art” for MDPI Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market and Complexity, November 2018
“Today, the defining skills of the previous era — the ‘left brain’ capabilities that powered the Information Age — are necessary but no longer sufficient. And the capabilities we once disdained or thought frivolous — the ‘right brain’ qualities of inventiveness, empathy, joyfulness, and meaning — increasingly will determine who flourishes and who flounders.”
ABSTRACT:
Creativity has become one of the most sought-after skills from graduates across business and industry. It is therefore imperative to infuse creativity training within business programs of study and professional development experiences, to remind people of their eternally curious and creative nature. The objective of this paper is to explore the literature around theories of creative potential and performance — including creative identity, creative mindset, and creative self-efficacy. We consider perspectives that reveal that creativity is a mindset predicated on beliefs and ways of thinking. Educational psychology literature and theories of creative self-belief illustrate how creative identity, mindset, and self-efficacy form the core of an individual’s belief system to think, act, and develop creatively in the world. This connects to the potential of arts-based methods as a means to infuse creative learning into business education. We illustrate how our findings can be put into practice by sharing an example of an art-based intervention that is currently in progress to develop creative capacity among students in an internationally known business program. We conclude with the idea that it’s incumbent upon business education, professional development, and training to incorporate methodologies that enhance creative capacity by initially eliminating or minimizing self-perceived limitations in people, such as fear, negative personal judgement, and chattering of the mind — and theories of creative self-belief provide a foundation that can undergird arts-based methods toward this goal.
EXCERPTS:
Introduction
“There are many good reasons to support the promotion of creative thinking in business contexts or training, and the rationale for this has been established by existing literature, organized around the ways that creativity addresses problems and sustains economic development […], supports human wellness and expression […], and builds productive confidence […].”
Defining and Grounding Creativity as a Construct
“In management literature, creativity is not always well defined, but business professor Teresa Amabile’s definition is often cited, which suggests that creativity is “the production of novel and appropriate solutions to open-ended problems in any domain of human activity. This definition and most applications in the field of business lean toward a democratic perspective, which suggests that creativity can, and should, be developed by everyone, and acted on as a vital driver for innovation […].
“Thus, we assert that a more democratic perspective on creativity — paired with an aim to support learners in their own beliefs and capacity to act in novel, effective, and whole ways — can be informed by theories of creative self-belief. These theories include creative identity, creative mindset, and creative self-efficacy.”
Examining Theories of Creativity and Self-Belief
Creative personal identity (CPI) is defined as ‘the belief that creativity is an important element in a person’s self-definition; and creative role identity is about how important being creative is in each given position’.”
“…the positive relationship between creative personal identity and creativity at work was stronger when individuals had opportunities to engage in non-work experiences — such as arts-based activities — and apply these toward solving work-related problems.”
“The development of a creative identity at any age is a continuing and dynamic process. In fact, an individual’s creativity and personal identity grow and change together, since they develop at critical points in life based on experiences […].”
“Karwowski […] formally defined ‘creative mindset’ as ‘beliefs about the [fixed] versus [growth] character and nature of creativity’ […] Karwowski indicates that, like intelligence, people often believe creativity is fixed, and that only a few geniuses are truly creative.Yet, people with growth mindsets believe that creativity is trainable, and can be developed much like other characteristics […].”
“Interestingly, a fixed creative mindset had a positive influence on other-approach achievement goals (a goal of outperforming others, rather than deep engagement for mastery or creativity within the task). Their work finds that growth creative mindset had a direct, positive influence on creative self-efficacy and the students’ perceived performance and effort exerted, as well as an indirect influence on enjoyment. They conclude that holding a growth creative mindset is, thus, related to adaptive motivational and performance creative outcomes in business education settings.”
“In creativity literature, creative self-efficacy is defined as the self-view that one has the ability to produce creative outcomes […].”
“In short, the contexts and influences in the workplace — such as a leader’s approach — demonstrate the capacity of creative self-efficacy to influence business innovation.
“…employees with high creative self-efficacy resort to creative behavior when they receive a supportive innovation climate. Thus, creative self-efficacy has a key role to play in the innovative capacity of businesses, and it can be maximized through supportive environments that seek to empower creative behaviors.
“Other studies within organizations have also found that an employee’s creative self-efficacy has a significant effect on the individual’s creative behavior or creative outcomes […].”
Findings: Bringing Together Creative Self-Belief Theories and Arts-Based Methods
“ This demonstrates the ways that working on developing one area can have relational effects on others. But, more importantly, to truly form a stronger vision of creativity within people’s self-beliefs, we must promote or provide educative experiences that seek to enhance or expand each of these theoretical spaces within human psychology.
“Thus, creative self-belief theories align to suggest that, if the field of business seeks to promote more creativity from within, there is a need to engage people in educational activities that support creative self-beliefs. While there are many ways to do this, one key approach we suggest and explore further, as follows, is through the integration of arts-based methods.
“Arts-based methods, or the incorporation of techniques and processes derived from the arts, have grown in interest in business education and training settings in recent decades […]. Despite a common misperception that business and the arts have little to do with each other, business can learn from the arts, and successful artists and managers or leaders often share common characteristics — thus, business fields can develop and grow their creative and inventive capacity through connecting to the arts.
“This, in some ways, represents a broader aim to cross-fertilize ideas between business and the arts […]. Along these lines, Formica […] notes that the most essential and challenging problems in management are not technical, but human-centered, in nature.”
“All of these elements of self-belief, taken together, are thus amenable to influence by engaging in the arts. While scholars point out the varied ways that the arts can be valuable in business education, training, and development […], we emphasize their influence on creative self-beliefs. This aligns with the instrumental goals of business education, toward developing a more creative 21st century workforce. But, it also allows for a more human-centered approach to business, in which employees and students can engage in work that is innately human, productive, and creatively fulfilling, toward becoming more self-actualized and creative people […].”
*Author affiliations: Thunderbird School of Global Management and
Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Division of Educational Leadership and Innovation, Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ 85069, USA
Past issues:
(BIA) Introduction
(BIA Issue #1)
Twenty-First Century Leadership: A Return to Beauty
by Nancy J. Adler and Andre L. Delbecq
(BIA Issue #2)
(BIA Issue #3)
by Luca Simeone, Giustina Secundo and Giovanni Schiuma
(BIA Issue #4)
by Piero Formica
(BIA Issue #5)
by Fabio Maria Montagnino
Coming up next:
(BIA Issue #7)
Classical Guitar Study as Creativity Training: Potential Benefits for Managers and Entrepreneurs
by Jonathan Gangi
To be followed by:
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