یکپارچه سازی صلاحیت در فرآیندهای خلاقانه

Research on creativity focuses extensively on it as a personal skill or discusses how an organization can contribute to a creative environment for its staff. Rather than referring to the organization as the environment, this paper concerns interorganizational and intraorganizational interaction between different creative individuals who together shape the creative process and output. Specifically, the paper focuses on the integration of new competences into present structures, thereby emphasizing competences in use in creative processes. Two case studies from the advertising sector illustrate the integration of competences obtained through interorganizational interaction and the hiring/development of staff. The paper concludes that the integration of new competence is path dependent. As a new competence is added, the creative process becomes increasingly complex and marked by representation rather than participation in creative processes. An overlap between competences is necessary if they are to add to the output. This paper contributes to research on creativity at interorganizational and intraorganizational levels through exploring differences between competences per se and competences in use in regard to the integration of competence in creative processes. It also contributes to research on advertising through its depiction of competence integration among advertising agencies.

This paper discusses the integration of new competences into present structures and its effects on creative processes. Competence is defined as knowledge and skills of individuals (Andrews, 1971 and Mooney, 2007), and competence integration in this context refers to the coordination of new and existing competences, based on their interaction, to obtain a joint output. Creativity refers to the capability of developing novel yet appropriate solutions (Amabile, 1988). The literature on creativity typically describes it as a set of personal skills, and organizations are seen merely as the environment that may support the creativity of the organizational members (Amabile et al., 1996 and Cummings, 1965). This paper views the environment as consisting of interacting individuals (cf. Woodman, Sawyer, & Griffin, 1993) on intraorganizational and interorganizational levels. The creative process is hence influenced by the competences of its participating individuals and the way they interact. The purpose of the paper is to describe and discuss how the integration of new competence affects the creative processes of firms. Such integration takes place in two ways: through internal competence development (the hiring or development of staff) and through collaboration with external parties. The paper illustrates the integration of competence at advertising agencies. The following questions are discussed: • How does adding competence affect the creative process? • What impact does the choice between developing competence internally or in collaboration have on the creative process? The research gap the paper intends to fulfill is that of the relation between competence integration and creativity. The paper pools research on creative processes and interaction, while discussing them from a competence integration point of view. The description of the creative process as interactional indicates that different individuals impact one another, and hence new competences may change present creative processes. The objectives of the research are to explain the difference between competences per se and competences in use in the integration of competences into creative processes, and to provide an alternative view of creativity on the organizational level, as processed in interaction among intraorganizational and interorganizational individuals. The paper contributes to research on creativity through discussing it on the interaction level and on interorganizational levels. Further, the paper contributes to research on advertising (cf. Nyilasy & Reid, 2009) through connecting ideas on creativity with empirical findings relating to the practices of advertising agencies: The different ways of integrating new competence in creative processes are illustrated by two case studies about advertising agencies. The designation of advertising agency refers to companies that focus on designing and producing marketing campaigns, strategies, and packages to help other firms in their marketing communication. Compared to creativity in processes of innovation, advertising emphasizes creativity as artistic skills, with a focus on complementary professional competences that together develop a shared output (Reid and Rotfeld, 1976 and Sasser and Koslow, 2008). Hence, each individual has a predefined role on a team that possesses complementary competences for each creative process (i.e. advertising campaign project). The competences of advertising agencies have traditionally resided in project leaders who manage individual campaigns and customer contacts, art directors who decide on visual ideas, and copywriters who produce texts (Fletcher, 1990). These competences are supplemented by the skills of assistant art directors, graphic designers and production managers in the production of campaigns. Printing has often been kept out of advertising agencies, and photography, public relations, communication, and sometimes copywriting have usually been contracted with freelancers or bureaus specialized in these areas of competence. New ways of communicating, dominated by the Internet as a marketplace and social media as communication tools, have put pressure on advertising firms to integrate new competences with present ones (Sasser, Koslow, & Riordan, 2007). The new competences include technological skills that also contribute to the creative process through providing ideas for solutions as well as artistic presentation. This development is marked by agencies that are reconsidering their competences, how to develop their businesses (Hermelin, 2009), how to design individual campaigns, and how final customers act in response to marketing (Sasser, 2008). The paper is structured as follows. In the next section, the theoretical point of departure is described. The theoretical foundation of the paper is based on research on creativity and on competence interaction and integration. Following the section on theory, the method used is described. Next, the two cases are presented. Thereafter, the cases are analyzed. The paper ends with a concluding discussion that includes managerial implications and ideas for further research.

The purpose of the paper is to describe and discuss how the integration of new competence affects the creative processes of firms. The paper draws attention to the difference between competences per se and competences in use in the integration of competences into creative processes. It also provides an alternative view of creativity to the one that refers to the individual as the creative unit and the organization as its supporting environment (e.g., Oldham & Cummings, 1996). With special emphasis on such items as coordination, specialization, complementarity, knowledge gaps, formalization, and controls, the interactional level of creativity is thus put in focus. Competences are represented by individuals, but their actual output and ability to use their competences and enhance creativity and quality of output are on an interactional level (Perry-Smith and Shalley, 2003 and Watson et al., 1991). The individual's ability to contribute to shared outputs, and much of the inspiration for such output, result from interaction. Such interaction may take place on intraorganizational or interorganizational levels. As illustrated in the paper, the interorganizational interaction allowed for more flexibility in terms of actors involved, the intraorganizational interaction for more flexible contribution by its actors. New competences, however, increasingly brought attention to the management of creative processes and specialization of individuals, and the management of interaction had a decisive impact on the individual's ability to contribute in the creative process. The introduction of this paper raised two questions. How does adding competence affect the creative process? The integration of new competence may potentially contribute inspiration, broadened concepts, and knowledge in creative processes (Thompson, 2003). However, as demonstrated in this paper, complexity increases when more competences are added. The integration of new competences gives rise to knowledge gaps due to specialization, coordination issues, formalization and control, with the result that the full potential of the various competences is not exploited. As this happens, the creativity declines on the interaction level and leads to increased differences between competences per se and competences in use. Such a decrease in creativity may mean that although new individuals are added that represent complementary creativity (cf. Unsworth, 2001), the overall creativity decreases. What impact does the choice between developing competence internally or in collaboration have on the creative process? This paper points to integration of new competence as having a greater impact on the creative process than does the choice between developing competence internally or through collaboration. While new competences may be reached either through collaboration or internal development, their consequences would be similar in terms of perceived needs for control, formalization, representation rather than participation, and increased deviation between competences per se and competences in use. This points to that the way competences are coordinated, in terms of degrees of freedom versus control and their closeness versus diversity, have greater impact than does the choice between internal development and collaboration. When the creative processes were still self-regulatory (i.e. before new competences were introduced), collaboration enhanced flexibility with regard to the actors involved, and internal development caused flexible contribution by organizational members. Such strengths were outbalanced once specialization, formalization and control were implemented on intraorganizational and interorganizational levels. This paper illustrates how the preconditions for interaction and creativity move from contradictory to similar: closeness (which is normally regarded as fostering interaction while inhibiting creativity) becomes a precondition for integrated competences to contribute positively to the creative process and output. Freedom (which may inhibit interaction while promoting creativity) is then a prerequisite for individuals to contribute in the process. This indicates an inverted U-curve for creativity in interaction and output, where creativity is affected by the number of competences and their overlaps/relatedness. If there are too few competences, they will be insufficient to provide inspiration (Perry-Smith & Shalley, 2003). If there are too many, coordination issues will inhibit creativity and promote representation rather than participation, with the risk that control mechanisms will negatively impact the creativity (cf. Sagiv et al., 2010). If competences are too similar, the integration of new competences will not contribute much to the process (Woodman et al., 1993). If they are too dissimilar, individuals will be unable to understand one another, thus negatively impacting creativity and learning (cf. Håkansson et al., 1999). Fig. 7 illustrates these effects and also shows how competences in use decrease while competences per se continue to increase as new and more dissimilar competences are added. The figure indicates that there are an optimal number of competences in use and an optimal degree of relatedness. New optima would require changed paths of interaction in creative processes.The paper's discussion on competences per se and competences in use indicates how creativity on the interaction level is different from the sum of its parts. It also points to how the integration of new competences mutually impact previous ones and change the conditions of interaction. While the advertising agencies reached new competences, these, along with the perceived need for formalization and control, and representation rather than participation, indicate not only how certain competences are excluded, but also how those that still participate may perform more poorly and cause a decline in creativity. The paper hence contributes to research on creativity at interorganizational and intraorganizational levels through exploring differences between competences per se and competences in use in regard to the integration of competence in creative processes. It also contributes to research on advertising through its description of competence integration among advertising agencies. Findings related to the advertising sector indicate how ongoing changes (cf. Ashley and Oliver, 2010, Hermelin, 2009, Sasser, 2008 and Sasser et al., 2007) may make sector and management levels more visible in interaction processes. Such increased visibility had consequences for new competence integration, coordination and creativity.