Organisational Cultural Conditions and Creativity and Innovation in the South African Media Industry
Date
2012-02-13
Authors
Crwys-Williams, Geraint
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Abstract
Many organisations turn to innovation as a potential source of quick additional
profits, or in the hope that the sudden surge of creative focus will deliver to the
business a powerful new element of competitive advantage out in the
marketplace. This seldom happens though, and organisations wanting to tap into
the creativity and innovativeness of their employees need to start by examining
the culture of their organisation.
This research report attempts to identify which elements or characteristics of
organisational culture encourage employee creativity and innovation. It is hoped
that by discovering which specific attributes of a company’s culture promote these
behaviours, those people leading the organisation will be better equipped to put
together a set of meaningful interventions to eliminate the undesirable elements of
the culture, and consciously promote others.
An extensive examination of the theory base was carried out, and the findings
emanating from the review were then compared to the data collected from
questionnaires administered and interviews conducted with respondents from
Primedia (Ltd), a leading South African media company.
Emerging from the research was the confirmation of twelve organisational cultural
characteristics which encourage creativity and innovation, that were identified in
the existing literature. One additional attribute emanating from the literature was
not accepted as being applicable to this research context. This research also
identified five new cultural characteristics, which did not emerge in the existing
theory base, as being drivers of creativity and innovation in the South African
media organisational context.
Description
MBA thesis - WBS
Keywords
Media industry, Creativity in the media industry