CREATIVE MANAGEMENT AND INNOVATION IN EUROPE AUTOMOTIVE DIMENSION

Nowadays, entrepreneurship is determined by creativity and innovations. Creativity means constantly aspiring process of innovation and progress, and both are important keys to any effort how to be success in business world. Innovation has an impact on every area of organization: design and technology, product development and value creation, creativity and problem solving, structure reorganisation etc.. Creativity and innovation in company or in entrepreneurship should be able to provide and contribute solving problems. The paper is trying to describe a creative process in management of innovation in European automotive companies in developing new products or creating new strategy. It develops the idea of how creative techniques and innovations can be used to enhance a potential of the activities of the organizational processes that can be oriented towards to achieve the objectives and specific tasks to manage

Creative problem solving method in organizational innovation

This research focuses on the development of entrepreneurship projects, using the creative problem solving (CPS) methodology and aims at demonstrating its effectiveness in improving team commitment to entrepreneurship projects. The design follows an adaptation of the 8-step process of Basadur’s problem solving approach (Basadur, 1997), into a 5-step procedure, consisting of fact finding, problem definition, solution finding and action planning. These steps are carried out in two four-hour sessions, using specific techniques that link creative people and management in order to develop a plan of action, thus initiating a system of transformation of the individual and team creativity into organizational innovation. Forty M.A. students, organized in four groups (two in art education and two in tourist entrepreneurship) were submitted to a pre-post test regarding team commitment, prior and after two 4-hour problem solving sessions, following one objective provided by the course director. At the end of the sessions they were also required to fill in a form where they were asked to express their evaluation of the method. Each project designed is now under implementation, and each group is registering all the necessary data to allow for the following up of the project. Results indicated an improvement in individual attitude towards emotional team commitment, during CPS sessions, as well as positive evaluations of the method. The possibilities of making a joint project, using the CPS method, were also demonstrated. Further research is expected once the projects are carried away and more teams involve in the construction of original entrepreneurship projects

ADR-based Workplace Conflict Management Systems: A Case of American Exceptionalism

[Excerpt] The diffusion of ADR-based conflict management systems is a development increasingly highlighted in the literature. Organizations are seen as putting in place multiple procedures and practices so that different varieties of workplace conflict can be effectively addressed. Just why organizations are electing to introduce these integrated bundles of innovative conflict management practices is a matter of debate, but many view the development as transforming the manner in which workplace problems are managed in modern organizations, with some even pronouncing that it amounts to the rewriting of the social contract at work (Lipsky and Seeber 2006). This paper argues that to the extent to which conflict management systems are being diffused, it is occurring mainly in the USA became the institutional context for the management of the employment relationship creates considerable incentives for the adoption of ADR-inspired conflict management innovations. Other Anglo-American countries, where it might be thought reasonable to expect a similar pattern of ADR innovation at the workplace to emerge, are not experiencing any discernible shift towards conflict management systems inside organizations. It is suggested that in the absence of institutional incentives to adopt workplace management systems, organizations are unlikely to opt for radical conflict management innovations. At the same time, drawing on research in the Irish context, it is argued that tried-and-tested conflict management practices do change over time, with an incremental and evolutionary approach adopted by some organizations to upgrade practices considered the most interesting development. The paper is organized as follows. The first section assesses why the emergence of integrated conflict management systems in organizations is considered to be a significant new development in the USA. The next section evaluates evidence and suggests that a similar pattern of workplace conflict management innovation is not occurring in other Anglo-American countries. After this evaluation, it is suggested that the institutional context in the USA creates uniquely strong incentives for organizations to adopt integrated bundles of ADR practices at the workplace - causing the emergence of conflict management systems to be a case of ‘American exceptionalism’. The following section argues that in the absence of strong institutional incentives to do so, organizations are unlikely to move radically away from established conflict management systems. The penultimate section explains that even in the presence of organizational inertia, conflict management practices seldom stay the same and uses research in the Irish context to suggest that organizations sometimes use an evolutionary approach to upgrade conflict management practices in an incremental yet continuous manner. The final section presents a number of case studies of this evolutionary approach to conflict management innovation. The conclusions bring together the arguments of the paper

Context matters: combined influence of participation and intellectual stimulation on the promotion-focus/employee creativity relationship

In this paper, we examined the interactive effects of two contexts — participation and intellectual stimulation, and promotion focus on creativity. On the basis of a multi-organization sample of 213 employees, we tested and found that although promotion focus was positively related to creativity, the relationship between promotion focus and creativity was most positive when both participation and leader intellectual stimulation were high. We discuss the way contexts in combination influence employee creativity for promotion-oriented individuals, through increasing decision latitude as well as stimulating and promoting creativity

Happy software developers solve problems better: psychological measurements in empirical software engineering

For more than 30 years, it has been claimed that a way to improve software developers' productivity and software quality is to focus on people and to provide incentives to make developers satisfied and happy. This claim has rarely been verified in software engineering research, which faces an additional challenge in comparison to more traditional engineering fields: software development is an intellectual activity and is dominated by often-neglected human aspects. Among the skills required for software development, developers must possess high analytical problem-solving skills and creativity for the software construction process. According to psychology research, affects-emotions and moods-deeply influence the cognitive processing abilities and performance of workers, including creativity and analytical problem solving. Nonetheless, little research has investigated the correlation between the affective states, creativity, and analytical problem-solving performance of programmers. This article echoes the call to employ psychological measurements in software engineering research. We report a study with 42 participants to investigate the relationship between the affective states, creativity, and analytical problem-solving skills of software developers. The results offer support for the claim that happy developers are indeed better problem solvers in terms of their analytical abilities. The following contributions are made by this study: (1) providing a better understanding of the impact of affective states on the creativity and analytical problem-solving capacities of developers, (2) introducing and validating psychological measurements, theories, and concepts of affective states, creativity, and analytical-problem-solving skills in empirical software engineering, and (3) raising the need for studying the human factors of software engineering by employing a multidisciplinary viewpoint.Comment: 33 pages, 11 figures, published at Peer

Project knowledge into project practice: generational issues in the knowledge management process

This paper considers Learning and Knowledge Transfer within the project domain. Knowledge can be a tenuous and elusive concept, and is challenging to transfer within organizations and projects. This challenge is compounded when we consider generational differences in the project and the workplace. This paper looks at learning, and the transfer of that generated knowledge. A number of tools and frameworks have been considered, together with accumulated extant literature. These issues have been deliberated through the lens of different generational types, focusing on the issues and differences in knowledge engagement and absorption between Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Generation Y/Millennials. Generation Z/Centennials have also been included where appropriate. This is a significant issue in modern project and organizational structures. Some recommendations are offered to assist in effective knowledge transfer across generational types.Accepted manuscrip