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Fostering Creativity and
Innovation without
Encouraging Unethical Behavior
Melissa S. Baucus
William I. Norton, Jr.
David A. Baucus
Sherrie E. Human
ABSTRACT. Many prescriptions offered in the litera-
ture for enhancing creativity and innovation in organi-
zations raise ethical concerns, yet creativity researchers
rarely discuss ethics. We identify four categories of
behavior proffered as a means for fostering creativity that
raise serious ethical issues: (1) breaking rules and standard
operating procedures; (2) challenging authority and
avoiding tradition; (3) creating conflict, competition and
stress; and (4) taking risks. We discuss each category,
briefly identifying research supporting these prescriptions
for fostering creativity and then we delve into ethical
issues associated with engaging in the prescribed behavior.
These four rubrics illustrate ethical issues that need to be
incorporated into the creativity and innovation literature.
Recommendations for how organizations can respond to
the ethical issues are offered based on practices of
exemplary organizations and theories of organizational
ethics. A research agenda for empirically investigating the
ethical impact these four categories of behavior have on
organizations concludes the article.
KEY WORDS: ethics, ethical organizations, creativity,
innovation
and Utah State University prior to starting his own consulting
practice. He consults on strategy, business planning processes
and other issues with corporations. His current interests center on
creativity in organizations, specifically, how the latest neu-
roscience research can be used to help organizations fully develop
their employees’ creativity and human potential. Dr. Baucus
has published in Academy of Management Journal,
Academy of Management Review, Strategic Man-
agement Journal, Journal of Management and other
leading journals.
Sherrie E. Human earned her Ph.D. in entrepreneurship from
University of Kentucky. She serves as an associate professor
at Xavier University where she was the Director of the
Center for Entrepreneurship and the Castellini Endowed
Chair in Entrepreneurial Studies from 2005–2006. Her re-
search in entrepreneurship focuses on entrepreneurial and
interorganizational networks, ethical issues such as posturing
versus lying among entrepreneurs and new venture initiation.
Her research has appeared in Academy of Management
Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, Journal of
Management Education, Journal of Business Ventur-
ing, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Journal of
Small Business Strategy, and Journal of Small Business
Management.
Melissa S. Baucus, Associate Professor at University of Louis-
ville, teaches entrepreneurship courses to undergraduate and
Ph.D. students. She earned her Ph.D. in management at
Indiana University. Melissa’s research involves creativity and
ethics among entrepreneurs, advisory boards in entrepreneurial
firms and corporate illegality. Her research has appeared in
Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Business
Ethics, Journal of Management, Journal of Small
Business Management, Journal of Business Venturing
and other leading journals.
William I. Norton, Jr. received his Ph.D. in strategic manage-
ment from University of South Carolina. Bill currently tea-
ches entrepreneurship, strategy and leadership to
undergraduate and MBA students at University of Louisville.
He served in the U.S. Army in command and staff positions
and then practiced public accounting for 17 years prior to
launching his academic career. His research interests involve
entrepreneurial risk assessment by entrepreneurs, systematic
search for entrepreneurial opportunities and advisory boards in
entrepreneurial firms. His research has been published in
Small Business Economics, Journal of Engineering and
Technology Management and other management
journals.
David A. Baucus has a Ph.D. from Indiana University in
strategic management. He taught at University of Kentucky
Journal of Business Ethics (2008) 81:97–115 Ó Springer 2007
DOI 10.1007/s10551-007-9483-4
Introduction
Organizations face significant environmental com-
plexity in today’s global economy. Representative of
these challenges are the criticality of flexibility and
speed in responding to customers and markets (Davis
et al., 1999), operational efficiency to lower costs,
environmental issues, management of a diverse
workforce that often lacks commitment and the
development of good working relationships with
various stakeholder groups (Freeman, 1984; Wad-
dock, 2001) – all while creating wealth for the firm’s
shareholders. Researchers have responded to many of
these competitive challenges by advocating creativity
as a solution, whether in the guise of developing a
learning organization (Kline and Saunders, 1993;
Senge, 1990), an innovative firm (Kelley, 2001) or
simply a creative company (Robinson and Stern,
1997). Firms commonly encourage employees to use
their creativity and judgment through empowerment
(Gandz and Bird, 1996). Organizations increasingly
recognize that they must engage in ongoing processes
of experimentation, rethinking their design and
operations to creatively problem solve, innovate and
add value (Thomke, 2003). Creative problem solving
can enable organizations to develop innovative
products and processes, as well as cope with polarizing
issues such as outsourcing in ways that convey long-
term benefit to all stakeholders.
This heightened emphasis on creativity has re-
sulted in a variety of articles prescribing ways that
organizations can increase creative thinking and
problem solving. These articles address means for
employees to enhance their creativity in all orga-
nizational climates, whether supportive or hostile.
For instance, the creativity literature suggests that
employees should develop prototypes of new
products or processes in order to gain useful
feedback from colleagues (Schrage, 2000). Some
creativity models advocate using different thinking
styles (deBono, 1999) or developing more com-
plete problem-solving processes that incorporate
problem formulation, solution formulation, and
solution implementation stages (Basadur, 1995).
Employees are urged to develop ‘‘brain banks’’ of
creative ideas, talk with colleagues from diverse
backgrounds when working on problems, and rely
on a series of exercises that can enhance their
creative problem solving skills (Michalko, 1991).
These techniques represent just a few of the many
prescriptions aimed at individuals who want to
improve their creativity.
Most researchers and managers recognize that
creativity at the individual level represents only part
of the challenge. Organizations must create envi-
ronments that allow and encourage employees to
engage in creativity. Most organizations have
developed layers of rules, procedures and bureau-
cratic processes that stifle creativity (MacKenzie,
1998). Corporate norms and reward systems can also
discourage novel thinking. Structural impediments
take many forms: favoring proven or expedient
solutions; avoiding or punishing failure; advocating
consensus to the exclusion of critical thinking within
a group (Basadur, 1995; van Oech, 1998). A classic
prescription to overcome structural inertia is
empowerment. Though variously defined, empow-
erment commonly has three attributes: employees
are given reasonable autonomy; they are provided
with mission critical resources; they are given the
freedom to fail (Yukl, 2006). That said, organiza-
tions attempting to empower employees and facili-
tate creative thinking often encounter resistance
from managers whose roles have changed or who
have difficulty unlearning older, hierarchical lead-
ership styles (Gandz and Bird, 1996).
The dilemma
The creativity literature contains numerous pre-
scriptions for managers to facilitate creativity and
suggests ways for employees to ‘‘orbit the hairballs’’
(MacKenzie, 1998, viz., to operate outside of the
bureaucratic morass and engage in creative endeav-
ors). Our overarching objective is not to provide an
exhaustive review of the literature addressing ways
to enhance organizational creativity. Other
researchers provide excellent reviews of factors that
increase or inhibit creativity and innovation (see, for
example, Alencar and Bruno-Faria, 1997; Fiol,
1996; Glynn, 1996; Woodman et al., 1993). Rather,
this article focuses on the surprising lack of attention
to ethical issues and questions within the creativity
literature. We acknowledge that many approaches
for enhancing creativity raise few ethical questions
(e.g., fostering open dialogue among employees
across specialized disciplines). However, an ines-
98 Melissa S. Baucus et al.
TABLE I
Creativity recommendations and ethical issues
Recommendations for increasing creativity or innovation Citations Primary ethical issue(s)
Break the rules and standard operating procedures/approaches
Hire ‘‘Slow Learners’’ of the organizational code
Reward new thinking
Avoid emphasis on the status quo
Break rules, take shortcuts, & don’t follow directions
Break the rules & change the game
Sutton (2001, 2002)
Utterback (1994)
Amabile (1996)
Kelley with Littman (2001)
Gaynor (2002); Riccchiuto (1997)
Which rules to break?
When to break the rules?
How far to go in breaking the rules?
Who gets to make or break the rules?
Bring new rules of the game into reality
Hire people you (probably) don’t need
Use job interviews to get ideas, not to screen candidates
Play the revolutionary and challenge the rules
‘‘Break from Accepted Practices’’
Provide flexible norms in the organization
Winslow and Solomon (1993)
Sutton (2001, 2002)
Sutton (2001, 2002)
von Oech (1998)
Winslow and Solomon (1993)
Alencar and Bruno-Faria (1997)
Challenge authority and avoid tradition
Encourage people to ignore & defy superiors & peers
Loosen organizational controls
Provide ambiguity (ambiguity is essential for innovation)
Don’t try to learn anything from people who seem
to have solved the problems you face
Sutton (2001, 2002)
Utterback (1994)
Winslow and Solomon (1993)
Sutton (2001, 2002)
How do managers and employees ethically
challenge authority?
How do managers respond ethically to
employees’ challenges?
How do managers discourage illegitimate
challenges to authority while encouraging
legitimate challenges?Forget the past, especially your company’s successes
Become less aware of and less concerned with how
disruptions from creativity/innovation will impact
‘‘the Existing Web of Mutual Obligations &
Understood Limits’’ in the firm’s industry
Sutton (2001, 2002)
Utterback (1994)
Ask lots of provocative questions
Innovators ignore past history, rituals & traditions
Ricchiuto (1997)
Winslow and Solomon (1993)
Fostering Creativity 99
Table I
continued
Recommendations for increasing creativity or innovation Citations Primary ethical issue(s)
Create conflict, competition & stress
Find some happy people & get them to fight
View conflict as failure to find collaborative rather than
‘‘Either-Or’’ solutions
Foster competition with outside organizations
Hire people who make you uncomfortable, even those you
dislike
Develop weak social ties with people within and outside the
company & avoid becoming too central in the social network
Avoid conformity by doing the opposite of what’s expected &
by being foolish
Avoid, distract & bore customers, critics & anyone who just
wants to talk about money
Emphasize play to increase flexibility, new ideas & liveliness
Encourage play, including gags, tricks, games & one-upmanship
between employees
Sutton (2001, 2002)
Ricchiuto (1997)
Amabile (1996)
Sutton (2001, 2002)
Perry-Smith and Shalley (2003)
von Oech (1998)
Sutton (2001, 2002)
Amabile (1996); Ricchiuto (1997)
Kelley with Littman (2001)
What means can managers ethically use to create conflict,
competition and stress?
How far should managers go in developing conflict,
competition and stress?
What are the tradeoffs in creating a culture of conflict as a
means of getting more out of employees?
Take risks
Support risk-taking
Managers must take risks themselves
Tolerate greater ambiguity & hold positive fantasies about the
future
Reward success & failure, punish inaction
Reward risk-taking & entrepreneurial behavior
Encourage risk-taking and intelligent failures; reward risk-takers
Reward an individual’s competence & the value of his/her
work, not the results of the work (i.e., avoid evaluation of work)
Alencar and Bruno-Faria (1997)
Nolan (1989); Weaver (1993)
Winslow and Solomon (1993)
Sutton (2001, 2002)
Utterback (1994)
Leonard and Swap (2002)
Amabile (1996)
What types and sizes of risks can employees ethically take
in the organization?
What ethical consequences may arise from employees’
risk taking?
How should managers keep employee risk-taking within
reasonable levels (e.g., reward risk taking without letting
it get out of hand)?
Decide to do something that will probably fail, then convince
yourself & everyone else that success is certain
Sutton (2001, 2002)
Think of some ridiculous or impractical things to do, then plan
to do them
Sutton (2001, 2002)
100 Melissa S. Baucus et al.
capable tension between creativity and ethics results
when employees are told to relax standards as they
seek to innovate. Our synthesis of the literature
suggests four categories of recommendations for
fostering creativity and innovation that seem par-
ticularly problematic for organizational ethics: (1)
breaking the rules or avoiding standard approaches
to problems; (2) challenging authority and avoiding
traditions; (3) creating conflict, competition and
stress; and (4) taking risks.
We aspire to make several contributions to the
field of ethics. We seek to integrate the ethics and
creativity literature, demonstrating that efforts to
foster creativity must encompass concerns for ethical
behavior. We discuss four categories of behavior
commonly advocated by creativity scholars, explor-
ing how each may increase organizational creativity.
Our identification of key ethical issues embedded in
each category suggest questions that need to be ad-
dressed by practitioners and researchers. We then
demonstrate how these ethical questions may be
incorporated fully into practice and research on
creativity within organizations.
We begin our article by defining creativity. We
then examine the four categories of behavior offered
in the literature as ways to foster creativity (sum-
marized in Table I). We identify and discuss major
ethical issues within each category that need to be
integrated into discussions of creativity and innova-
tion. Recommendations for organizational responses
follow, along with a research agenda suggesting how
to empirically test some of the arguments in our
article. We conclude with implications for theory
and practice.
Definition of creativity
Creativity has been variously defined; we adopt a
definition that encompasses both the processes
individuals use and the outcomes that they develop.
Thus, ‘‘creativity can be regarded as the quality of
products or responses judged to be creative by
appropriate observers, and it can also be regarded as
the process by which something so judged is
produced’’ (Amabile, 1996: 33). We rely on this
definition of creativity that encompasses both process
and product/outcome for two key reasons: ethical
frameworks often evaluate both means (processes)
and ends (outcomes); and we aim to integrate re-
search on creativity and innovation with ethics re-
search in an effort to develop processes that
simultaneously foster creative and ethical behaviors
that add value for the organization and its stake-
holders.
Amabile augments this definition with an
important distinction: creativity involves ‘‘the
production of novel and appropriate ideas by
individuals or small groups’’ while innovation typi-
cally refers to ‘‘the successful implementation of
creative ideas by the organization’’ (1996: 230).
This definition thus imposes a litmus test for cre-
ativity: though products or outcomes judged as
creative may be novel, unique, surprising, or dra-
matically different, they must work well for the
purpose intended. A radically different idea falls
short of the ‘‘creative’’ standard if it fails to serve a
useful function or purpose.
Our preference for a definition of creativity that
embraces process and outcome excludes any defi-
nition that emphasizes a personological view, whe-
ther traits, cognitive style or related phenomena.
That perspective (mistakenly) reinforces the notion
that creativity resides in some but not all people.
Research suggests that creativity does not require a
special or unusual type of thinking (Goldenberg and
Mazursky, 2002). Most researchers agree that all
individuals possess creativity, though, admittedly,
some people neither develop nor use their capabil-
ities. Regrettably, contextual factors may suppress
novel thinking. Some jobs do not require or permit
creativity, such as a collectively bargained manu-
facturing environment that enforces rigid work
rules. Significant anecdotal evidence suggests that
some individuals and organizations regard creativity
as a frivolous distraction or a negative attribute. In-
deed, some educational processes discourage crea-
tivity and emphasize conformity (MacKenzie, 1998).
Organizational structure and systems need to be
implemented that foster creativity such as budgetary
freedom on projects, clarification of roles, network
building and developing powerful champions of
ideas (Rickards, 1993). The reality is that creativity
may reside in most organizational actors, but it is
often suppressed.
Definitions of creativity that emphasize person
rather than processes and outcomes parallel the de-
bate in ethics as to whether unethical behaviors arise
Fostering Creativity 101
from ethically deficient actors or from aspects of the
corporate culture and context that seduce individuals
to engage in unethical conduct. We subscribe to the
contextual approach and adopt a definition of crea-
tivity that emphasizes the importance of organiza-
tional processes and outcomes. This definition of
creativity provides a foundation for our discussion of
the four major categories of prescriptions offered to
enhance creativity.
Four problematic prescriptions for creativity
Our review of the creativity literature reveals four
prescriptions for fostering creativity that raise serious
ethical issues. These four prescriptions include: (1)
breaking the rules or avoiding standard approaches
to problems; (2) challenging authority and avoiding
traditions; (3) creating conflict, competition and
stress; and (4) taking risks.
Writers apparently assume that employees will
understand that these four categories of behavior
should not include unethical or illegal behavior.
Some authors include a caveat to this effect. For
instance, von Oech’s footnote to his discussion of
breaking rules admonishes: ‘‘I’m not advocating you
to do anything that’s illegal, immoral, or unethical.
Most of the rules you follow, however, aren’t
written down in some manual or book of legal
statutes’’ (1998: 64). This caveat offers little concrete
guidance for recognizing or addressing ethical issues.
It also implies that employees should concern
themselves with adhering to codified rules and
standards rather than higher order, unwritten ethical
principles or virtues (e.g., respect, integrity, trust or
honesty). To be sure, some researchers suggest that
managers seeking creativity and innovation should
build trust, maintain accountability and establish
integrity with stakeholders in and outside the firm
(Gaynor, 2002). However, these ethical practices
seem to conflict with other prescriptions for devel-
oping creativity.
Discussions of rule-breaking and the other three
categories of recommendations for increasing crea-
tivity do not explore the ethical dilemmas and issues
with which managers and their employees must
wrestle to engage in creative and ethical endeavors.
Managers striving to implement recommendations
for improving creativity or employees attempting to
behave creatively may not know what ethical
questions to consider. Their efforts to foster and
engage in creativity may result in unethical behavior
or give rise to an organizational culture that
encourages and rewards misconduct.
Each of the following sections delves into one of
four categories of behavior for fostering creativity.
We review the rationale behind the prescription,
explain how it should enhance creativity and
discuss the ethical issues involved within that
rubric. Each category ends with a section styled as
Organizational Responses that reports organizational-
specific adaptations and offers prescriptions from the
literature.
Break rules and standard operating
procedures
How breaking the rules enhances creativity
Most organizations develop rules, procedures and
processes to provide consistency in and control over
decisions and behavior. MacKenzie (1998) describes
how these ‘‘hairballs’’ stifle creativity at Hallmark
Cards: employees become bogged down as they
attempt to generate new ideas and get worn down
by unnecessary steps and managerial approvals re-
quired to experiment with new ideas. A rigid,
bureaucratic structure and rigid norms can inhibit
creativity (Alencar and Bruno-Faria, 1997) to the
point where creative employees adhere to the
motto, ‘‘Better to ask forgiveness than permission’’
(Winslow and Solomon, 1993: 77). Often,
employees become discouraged as they try to acquire
resources to support their creative activities. Some
innovative organizations have successfully stream-
lined these processes, but most firms underestimate
the negative impact that extant rules and procedures
have on creativity. Bureaucratic rigidity has lead to
much advice aimed at encouraging employees to
break the rules and avoid standard operating proce-
dures.
Evidence suggests that organizations allowing or
enabling employees to break the rules may be more
creative. Winslow and Solomon (1993) suggest that
highly innovative individuals ‘‘break from accepted
practices’’ (p. 80) and adapt to develop new solutions
for conventional problems. Sutton’s (2001, 2002)
102 Melissa S. Baucus et al.
work shows that some highly creative firms con-
sciously hire employees who are ‘‘slow learners’’ of
the organizational code or set of rules; these
employees resist learning and following rules and
standard operational procedures within the firm.
These ‘‘slow learners’’ offer new perspectives, initi-
ate different solutions to problems and raise ques-
tions about why the organization operates as it does.
Arguably, these behaviors can enhance creativity,
but deviant actions may carry risk.
Creative organizations also may break from tra-
ditional human resource management protocols by
using job interviews to gather new ideas from
applicants, rather than as a mechanism to screen
candidates, or by hiring a job seeker judged to be
exemplary when no open position exists (Sutton,
2002). Breaking these human resource rules can
mean in the former case that a manager must find
new ways to use employees’ knowledge and talents;
an example might be rethinking the firm’s strategies
or product lines. The latter situation may encourage
managers to cast a wide net in the search for new
ideas and subsequently marginalize interviews as
screening tools.
Other researchers offer similar rule-breaking ad-
vice. Employees are told to break the firm’s rules and
look for ways to ‘‘change the game’’ (Gaynor, 2002;
Ricchiuto, 1997), play the role of a revolutionary
and challenge the rules (von Oech, 1998), or take
shortcuts and not follow directions they are given
(Kelley, 2001). Amabile (1996), a leading researcher
on creativity, advocates avoiding the status quo.
When viewed through the lens of creativity, status
quo is defined as the ways in which managers and
employees traditionally operate in an organization.
Rather, employees are urged to think about prob-
lems, processes and procedures in new ways, and
managers are obligated to reward new thinking
(Utterback, 1994).
Scholars who prescribe rule breaking recognize
that firms may have rules and procedures that no
longer apply and have become ‘‘frozen’’ into cor-
porate habits that limit creative behavior. Employees
may blindly follow these rules and procedures,
behaving in ways that worked in the past, have
become irrelevant, and when followed, can prevent
employees from considering novel, adaptive
behaviors. The central argument under this rubric is
that rule breaking has the potential to expose man-
agers and employees to new ways of thinking and
behaving, thus enhancing creativity and firm per-
formance. That may be true but there is a dark side.
Rule breaking can also expose an organization to the
consequences of unethical behavior as we discuss in
the next section.
Ethical issues associated with breaking the rules
Ethics researchers have argued for codes of conduct
or broad guidelines to which employees must adhere
in an effort to foster ethical organizations (Baucus
and Beck-Dudley, 2005; Trevino and Nelson,
2007). We know that a code of conduct alone does
not ensure ethical behavior (Mathews, 1988), but it
represents one component of the design of an ethical
organization. A code of conduct also serves to
moderate the practice of rule breaking found in the
creativity literature.
The call to ‘‘break rules’’ recognizes an obvious
limitation of all managers: they can neither anticipate
all possible problems nor can they establish rules or
procedures to guide all possible responses. Anomalies
occur and employees face situations for which rules
offer little guidance or, indeed, may elicit funda-
mentally flawed responses. Consider, for example,
an airline traveler who misses a connecting flight
because of a late departure and must overnight at an
enroute airport. The classic air carrier response is to
provide coupons for lodging, food and the like. This
response ignores the reality that people often choose
air travel because of a time critical event – a business
meeting, a child’s graduation ceremony or
bereavement. We muddy the water by setting rules
and then encouraging employees to break them, in
essence saying, ‘‘never mind’’ the rules. This rubric
of rule-breaking leaves employees to decide key
ethical issues on their own. Minimally, that set of
issues would include: (a) which rules to break; (b)
under what circumstances should rules be broken;
(c) how far to go in breaking the rules; and (d) who
gets to make or break the rules.
Employees regularly face difficult choices and a
break-the-rules recommendation that essentially says
‘‘you decide’’ does not help. Advising employees to
break rules explicitly to foster creativity thrusts them
into a decision-making quagmire, inviting unethical,
inappropriate and possibly illegal conduct. Recent
Fostering Creativity 103
corporate scandals (for example, fraudulent
accounting representations at Enron, Health South,
Tyco and WorldCom) illustrate the downside of
miscues associated with employees who failed to
adhere to critical rules. Employees face the same
conundrum when provided with underdeveloped
guidelines designed to permit greater flexibility. We
are reminded of Google’s terse standard: ‘‘Don’t be
evil.’’ Soft directives provide insufficient guidance so
employees may ignore ethics and default to the
standard of legality. Few would argue that the Law
represents society’s minimum standard of acceptable
behavior; to fall below that standard brings sanctions.
Regrettably, behavior that is legal may not be
broadly discerned as ethical. We present a proto-
typical example, followed by two legal options: a
customer asks a salesperson to expedite an order; an
accelerated delivery would compromise longstand-
ing corporate values by unfairly accommodating one
customer at the expense of others. Should the
salesperson refuse to expedite that order because it
conflicts with company policy or should she rec-
ognize a special circumstance and gain a loyal cus-
tomer for the firm? The employee’s actions could
enhance customer satisfaction and grow market
share. On the other hand, the decision to favor one
customer may push back preexisting orders and
create greater pressure to deliver or in the extreme,
compromise quality.
Organizational responses
It is improbable that any scholar would advocate
breaking rules for the sake of breaking rules. If true,
organizations could hire anarchists, lunatics and
criminals. Rather, employees should be empowered
to think for themselves in anomalous situations.
Autonomous behaviors require that employees must
work from a well-developed personal moral code
and a holistic understanding of the business – a keen
awareness of its corporate values, operations and
administrative mechanisms so that they can adapt,
improvise and exceed expectations. Commonly,
managers establish rules and procedures based on the
premise that they possess greater experience, supe-
rior judgment and a better grasp of functional
interrelationships, schedules and resource constraints
than their subordinates.
We do not confuse hierarchical decision-making
authority with hubris but observe that employees
may indeed require fewer rules and less structure if
they possess rich insights about a firm and its
operations. Southwest Airlines (SWA) may be an
exemplar in this regard. Southwest thrives in a
hypercompetitive environment; the domestic air-
line industry is capital intensive, heavily unionized,
highly regulated and provides undifferentiated ser-
vices to air travelers. While all other domestic flag
carriers hemorrhage billions of dollars in losses
annually, SWA has sustained profitability for 30
plus years. We are convinced that the firm’s cor-
porate culture represents its competitive weapon.
Its employees are well informed about SWA and its
competitive environment and probably share the
same core values. It is that collective passionate
commitment to excellence that distinguishes SWA
from its competitors. Southwest has a long-standing
solution to the natural tension between creativity
and ethicality. The company articulates a policy
that it calls the ‘‘freedom to fail’’ (Freiberg and
Freiberg, 1996). Explicitly, if an employee does the
wrong thing for the right reason, the act is for-
givable. SWA recognizes that perfection is an
unattainable state and that all humans may exercise
poor judgment. The company does not tolerate bad
behavior (doing the wrong things for the wrong
reasons) and holds all employees to high ethical
standards. Southwest may have found that much-
sought-after balance of creativity, autonomy and
accountability.
Rule breaking also represents a crude, unilaterally
executed form of process innovation with far
reaching impact across operating units. Assume that
an employee approves the delivery of new equip-
ment before completing required documentation
and receiving approval for the expenditure. The
employee may have thoughtfully considered the
ethical implications of this decision and he may have
acted on high order goals to capitalize on an
opportunity or neutralize a threat. Alternatively, an
employee engaging in rule breaking behavior may
display a cavalier attitude about violating rules,
squandering resources or failing to solicit competi-
tive bids. Decisions made and actions taken in a
vacuum may yield unethical and possibly illegal
conduct. At a minimum, unilateral actions have the
potential to adversely affect other operating units.
104 Melissa S. Baucus et al.
Rule breaking recommendations should be
augmented with discussions about impact across
operating units, full disclosure and refinements in
decision-making processes.
In sum, the creativity literature encourages orga-
nizations to advocate rule breaking to foster crea-
tivity. Our discussion of the ethical issues associated
with this practice does not condemn the essential
features of this rubric. Some firms establish rules
meant to be inviolate and create false comfort in the
habituation of organizational routines (McGregor,
1985), but this sort of mechanistic environment
typically suppresses or erodes employee spontaneity,
imagination and creativity. Other companies strive
to empower employees, leveraging the knowledge
of frontline employees to speed innovation but
offering too much freedom or vague standards (we
revisit ‘‘Don’t be evil’’) that lead to mistakes,
unethical behaviors or illegal actions. Doubtless,
most organizations struggle to provide a balance of
clear boundaries coupled with freedom that enables
employees to exercise independent thought, crea-
tivity and discretion.
The recommendation to ‘‘break the rules’’ rep-
resents one path to creativity but it does not elimi-
nate tough decisions. Empowering employees
without providing adequate training in ethical
decision-making and behavior represents an ap-
proach to fostering creativity that throws managers
and employees into ambiguous and uncertain situa-
tions (Gandz and Bird, 1996). Ongoing training in
ethics has been advocated for corporate entrepre-
neurs and highly creative middle managers to resolve
ethical issues that arise (Kuratko and Goldsby, 2004).
On balance, the practice of rule breaking constitutes
a vague, unilaterally executed, process innovation
that most managers would likely view as inadvisable.
It is equally unlikely that rule breaking could rec-
oncile potential conflicts of interest, whether intra-
organizational or extraorganizational. Moreover,
some rules should never be broken. Organizations
are exposed to liability in a wide variety of domains
– product safety, financial reporting, sexual harass-
ment, and discrimination. Break these rules and a
firm opens itself to public rebuke or legal action.
We believe numerous ethical issues require
attention before organizations encourage employees
to indiscriminately break the rules. Firms should
clearly communicate their desire to increase em-
ployee creativity. Then they need to arm employees
with a big-picture perspective of the business to
support independent thought (i.e., equipping them
to intelligently bend rules). Organizational leaders
need to develop a shared vision of the organization
and its purpose that can guide employees as they
engage in creative activities and face difficult deci-
sions (Weaver, 1993). They should develop an
ethical community resting on strong ethical values
and assumptions that support employees as respon-
sible, trustworthy individuals (Baucus and Beck-
Dudley, 2005). Finally, leaders should foster ‘‘good
conversation’’ about ethical issues (Waters, 1988),
conflicting interests and corporate values.
Challenge authority and avoid tradition
How challenging authority and avoiding tradition increases
creativity
A theoretical dichotomy used in the organizational
design literature depicts two vastly different orga-
nization structures-organic and mechanistic (Burns
and Stalker, 1961). An organic structure’s design
relies primarily on corporate culture, that is, systems
of shared values, norms and beliefs rather than on
formal rules and regulations. Employees at all levels
may work in teams or across functional areas, often
communicate through informal channels and are
empowered to make key decisions. These design
characteristics foster open exchange of ideas, fresh
perspectives and innovation, prompting the con-
comitant observation that organic corporate cul-
tures tend to be more intellectually fertile than
alternative forms. Mechanistic organizations rely on
traditional hierarchy with a relatively strict chain of
command in which managers at upper levels make
key decisions and rely on formal communication
channels and reporting relationships. Employees in
mechanistic organizations may struggle to innovate
because structural impedimenta make it difficult for
new ideas to be developed, presented and ap-
proved. To be sure, these two designs describe the
anchor points of a continuum. Most firms operate
somewhere between these two prototypical struc-
tures, so employees who wish to innovate must
deal with a certain amount of hierarchy, reliance on
formal authority and traditional management tech-
Fostering Creativity 105
niques. Creativity researchers address the reality of
organizational constraints by recommending that
innovation seekers challenge authority and avoid
traditions.
Employees can challenge authority by asking pro-
vocative questions (Ricchiuto, 1997) and repeatedly
asking ‘‘why’’ to push others’ thinking (Dundon,
2002; Michalko, 1991, 2001). They are told deliber-
ately to ignore lessons learned or solutions developed
by employees who faced similar problems (Sutton,
2002). In this literature stream, employees are coached
to ignore the past, including prior successes, since past
solutions presumably discourage new or innovative
thinking. At the entity level, researchers advise firms
to be unconcerned with the likelihood that creative
endeavors may disrupt the existing network of mutual
obligations and commonly understood boundaries of
their industry (Utterback, 1994). At the individual
level, this counsel is extended to suggest that
employees should pay little attention to how new
products or innovative processes may impact extant
expectations, assumptions and behaviors among
industry incumbents. Firms thus enhance employees’
creativity by loosening organizational controls (Ut-
terback, 1994) and by encouraging employees to ig-
nore (even defy) their superiors and coworkers
(Sutton, 2002). The rationale behind these recom-
mendations rests on encouraging employees to con-
tinually probe for better ways to provide value.
Arguably, employees will avoid getting stuck in ruts
and mindlessly relying on traditional approaches to
problems. They will avoid following a boss’s orders
without critical thought.
Ethical issues associated with challenging authority
and avoiding tradition
Organizations that encourage employees to chal-
lenge authority must take up the duality of
employees questioning authority and avoiding tra-
ditions by crafting structural mechanisms that em-
brace ethical decision-making and behavior.
Additionally, managers need to know how to re-
spond to employee challenges with ethical sensitiv-
ity, especially if they view the bases for the
challenges as illegitimate. Other ethical issues may
arise, but these two represent significant challenges
that organizations should address.
Calvin (1996) suggests that people learn in two
ways, and that these learning styles directly relate to
the prescription to challenge authority. Some people
are conditioned by the world, for example, accept-
ing a position in a company and assimilating
acceptable values and behaviors. Other people ven-
ture into and explore the world. They follow streams
of logic to see where they lead, strive to understand
the big picture, question, challenge assumptions and
put the pieces together for themselves. They incre-
mentally advance a logic that makes sense and
eventually articulate their own understanding of
how and why a business works as it does. They gain
a platform (a base of knowledge), an independent
voice and make contributions but they may also
present ethical challenges to the organization.
Organizational responses
The recommendation to challenge authority and
avoid traditions implicitly encourages employees to
adopt an exploratory style of learning (as opposed to
a conditioned style) and become confident thinkers.
A similar approach has been advocated by
researchers arguing for the creation of learning
organizations (Senge, 1990). This perspective pro-
motes a collegial relationship in which both man-
agers and employees are knowledgeable and advance
strong and often competing views. Every employee
is expected to take a leadership role in contributing
to a firm’s creativity and innovation (Mauzy and
Harriman, 2003). That said, problems with a chal-
lenge-authority-and-traditions recommendation
would likely occur if employees do not possess an
adequate grasp of the business, voice opinions
inappropriately or if managers respond hostilely to
challenges from an empowered colleague.
Employees and managers need to engage in a
‘‘due diligence’’ investigation of a problem, rule or
tradition before raising a challenge. Employees can
then step forward with viable solutions (often in the
form of innovations) rather than simply complaining
about or criticizing current practices. Fact-finding
activities (Basadur, 1995) may encourage each party
to engage in moral empathy, fairly and fully con-
sidering alternative viewpoints (Paul, 1993); both
fact-finding and moral empathy are essential for
ethical reasoning and creativity. Employees who
106 Melissa S. Baucus et al.
ethically challenge authority should treat others with
respect while raising questions, scrupulously avoid
ad hominem attacks and remain open-minded to new
information and alternative viewpoints. These
behaviors reflect moral virtues that help create an
ethical community (Solomon, 1992). Fundamen-
tally, this perspective advances cognitive conflict in
group decision-making and points out the destruc-
tive effects of social conflict in the same context
(Wagner and Hollenbeck, 2005).
When the challenge-authority approach is mod-
erated by fact finding and moral empathy, managers
and employees will likely work together to discern
which corporate traditions can be ignored, modified
or purged while simultaneously identifying those
firm-specific customs that seem critical for reinforc-
ing organizational culture. Senior management
should periodically initiate processes that revisit and
assess the enduring value, if any, that espoused values,
norms and traditions may have for an organization.
Traditions typically represent long-standing practices
earlier perceived to have enduring value to an
organization and its stakeholders; an abandonment of
tradition (conceptualized here as institutional practices
with continuity) could harm a firm’s legitimacy.
A difficult ethical challenge for managers speaks to
the manner in which they respond to direct challenges
of their authority. Managers often rely on hierarchical
authority and expect immediate responses to their
requests or demands, especially in fast-paced envi-
ronments in which speed of competitive response is
essential. The ‘‘challenge authority and traditions’’
recommendation requires managers to learn to listen,
encourage and reward employees who express a
willingness to slaughter a sacred cow or two. How-
ever, not all challenges have merit. Managers need to
know how to respond ethically to challenges that are
poorly timed, inappropriately delivered or lacking in
substance. Challenges to authority may range from
legitimate and beneficial to illegitimate and harmful.
Challenges may arise because employees possess do-
main expertise in a particular area of operations and see
a better process or discover an emergent market
opportunity. Other challenges may come from
employees who lack essential information on safety,
government regulations or other environmental
constraints. Employees may complicate a manager’s
life in a variety of ways. Examples might be:
challenging the manager in front of customers or
coworkers; engaging in various forms of catharsis;
insisting on the exploration of new ideas at time-
sensitive moments; pursuing a challenge long after the
company has decided on and implemented a course of
action. Similarly, employees may challenge authority
because they do not work well with peers, feel com-
pelled to dominate or otherwise lack interpersonal
skills. These examples simply illustrate types of prob-
lems that managers should anticipate and ethical sit-
uations that can arise as employees exercise new-
found rights to challenge authority, whether moti-
vated by creative inspiration or not.
The recommendation to challenge authority and
tradition may be difficult to implement in many
organizations. Research on employees fired for chal-
lenging authority (for example, wrongful firings in
violation of public policy) indicates that organizations
often have difficulty responding ethically to chal-
lenges to authority, even when they involve
employees acting ethically by blowing the whistle on
wrongdoing, legitimately refusing to engage in illegal
activities or adhering to a public policy such as
appearing for jury duty (Baucus and Dworkin, 1998).
Thus, the practice of challenging authority and
avoiding traditions begs a high standard of behavior
for employees, managers and organizations. Corpo-
rations need to remain diligent in training employees
so that they understand the ‘‘big picture’’ and the logic
behind existing practices. They must help employees
understand appropriate ways and times to challenge
managers. All managers will require training for
dealing constructively and ethically with empowered
employees who challenge authority or organizational
traditions (Gandz and Bird, 1996). Senior managers
should model irreproachable behaviors, support
lower-level managers who stand their ground against
poorly timed or inappropriately motivated challenges
and authentically signal that they welcome legitimate
challenges to authority and tradition.
Create conflict, competition and stress
How creating conflict, competition and stress can aid
creativity
Employees often conform to group pressure ex-
pressly to get along with one another and maintain
the status quo (von Oech, 1998). Consensus as both
Fostering Creativity 107
process and outcome may have great value. Cohesion
is a social construct that becomes manifest when
individuals subordinate self-interest for the good of
the group (Hogg, 1992). Indeed, most of us would
want to belong to cohesive groups. However, seri-
ous organizational problems may arise if employees
value group membership so highly that they place
higher priority on the absence of cognitive conflict
than on critical thinking, sound decision-making or
searching for more effective ways of operating.
Groupthink represents an extreme example of this
dysfunctional behavior. Definitionally, groupthink is
operative when a group cannot critically evaluate an
opportunity or threat, consider competing perspec-
tives, evaluate alternative options, or select the
optimal alternative (Janis, 1971). Prescriptive
frameworks for programmed conflict exist for
enhancing decision-quality and avoiding group-
think. Examples include devil’s advocacy, in which
group members (often peer selected) are assigned to
probe for flawed assumptions, incomplete or inac-
curate data, inconsistencies, illogical conclusions or
similar deficiencies (Boulding, 1964), or dialectic in-
quiry, in which group members are partitioned into
subgroups with the charge to evaluate and improve
upon solutions proposed by other subgroups
(Schweiger et al., 1989). However, we are aware of
no studies that report the frequency of use or
number of firms that employ these efficacious group
decision-making techniques.
The creativity literature encourages conflict, de-
bate and open competition in searching for the best
ideas or most novel approaches. At one extreme is
the recommendation that instructs managers to find
happy or contented employees and provoke them to
fight with one another (Sutton, 2002); the objective
involves shaking up overly agreeable or complacent
employees by engineering interactions that trigger
debate of opposing ideas or perspectives. At the
other extreme, managers and employees may view
conflict as a failure to find collaborative solutions as
they seek to enact ‘‘either-or’’ or ‘‘win-lose’’ solu-
tions (Ricchiuto, 1997). Clearly, conflict may be
used to foster creativity and innovation and could
result in novel solutions that benefit both a corpo-
ration and its stakeholders, but there is dissensus on
its value.
A number of scholars argue that creativity may be
enhanced when managers ensure that all organizational
actors form weak social ties intra- and inter-organiza-
tionally (Perry-Smith and Shalley, 2003). Arguably,
weak ties help employees and managers maintain
independence and objectivity. Moreover, fostering
interaction with other organizations may encourage
employees to search for creative solutions to problems
(Amabile, 1996). Finally, Sutton (2002) argues that
avoiding customers, critics or anyone who simply
wants to talk about money limits distractions and fosters
creativity as employees strive to keep focused on core
issues.
Another perspective holds that creativity may be
enhanced through ‘‘competitive play.’’ Researchers
argue that play can increase flexibility, new ideas,
and liveliness (Amabile, 1996; Ricchiuto, 1997),
something managers can accomplish by encouraging
gags, tricks, games, and one-upmanship between
employees (Kelley, 2001). Managers and employees
may also behave foolishly or do the opposite of that
which is expected (von Oech, 1998). Research
shows that some creative companies deliberately hire
people who seem disagreeable or objectionable in
the belief these new employees add conflict to
decision-making processes, spur competition for
fresh ideas, and force current employees to think and
behave differently (Sutton, 2001, 2002). These ap-
proaches, designed to introduce new viewpoints,
illustrate a variety of strategies that can be used to
enhance creativity by increasing conflict, competi-
tion and stress among employees. Unfortunately,
these same approaches elicit challenging ethical is-
sues.
Ethical issues associated with creating conflict, competition
and stress
Most researchers and managers would support ini-
tiatives that encourage employees to fully consider
alternative perspectives and avoid complacency.
However, apathy may not fully explain the absence
of creativity; accordingly, interventions designed to
shock employees into creative behavior may have a
dark side. The central ethical questions that arise
within this rubric address the means used to foster
creativity and ask to what extent, if any, managers
should create conflict, competition and stress.
Calvin (1996), LeDoux (2002) and Ackerman
(2004) argue that habits and routines represent an
108 Melissa S. Baucus et al.
important part of normal life. If we had to think
about every element of neuromuscular coordination
needed to walk, we could not take the first step. If
we needed to consciously control every facial, neck
and abdominal muscle necessary to speak, we would
not utter a single word. Similarly, if we had to think
about every nuance of a workday, we could not
perform any job. We rely on habits to eliminate the
need to cognitively process every stimulus and we
depend on routines to protect us from over-stimu-
lation. Calvin (1996) argues that environmental
incoherence (defined as the gap between what is
expected and what actually happens) is unpleasant.
People predictably react to the stress of gap phe-
nomena by reverting to routines. Adding stress to
employees’ lives may be nobly intended to increase
creativity. However, it may not have the desired
effect and, indeed, may have an unintended sec-
ondary effect of overstressing employees.
An ethical problem exists if managers assume that
uncreative employees simply lack motivation – the
implicit justification for introducing conflict, com-
petition and stress. We recognize that firms and
employees may settle into operational rhythms – a
stasis of sorts. Ackerman (2004) describes the
downside of working in comfortable corporate
routines. Lack of stimulation causes physical changes
in the brain: neurons recede and synaptic connec-
tions that permit creative associations are lost. We
lose the ability to create through neglect, just as we
lose fluency in an unused, second language. Crea-
tivity also requires that employees possess the skills to
use executive functions (for example, questioning,
challenging assumptions, shifting frames, and fol-
lowing patterns) in working memory. Employees
who work in comfortable routines may not possess
an extensive set of executive functions for crafting
ideas and may remain novices at using the available
tools. Alternatively, employees may wish to be
creative but have been discouraged from using that
skill set for so long that they experience a form of
creative atrophy. Gandz and Bird (1996) argue that
suddenly placing demands on employees to adopt
new ways of thinking and behaving without suffi-
cient training, support and new reward systems
represents an unethical approach to change.
Conflict, competition and stress could thrust
employees into truly developmental experiences.
For instance, Intel places new employees on
extremely challenging projects precisely because
early career employees have no biases about the
achievability or difficulty of a project, so they often
come up with completely new ways of doing things
(Anders, 2002). Another model of intraorganiza-
tional competition has teams develop new product
ideas; managers judge each venture idea to see which
has the greatest potential for commercialization.
Employees at IDEO play tricks on each another,
continually watching for opportunities to outsmart
colleagues (Kelley, 2001). IDEO founders and
managers believe this atmosphere of ‘‘competitive
playfulness’’ makes work enjoyable and fosters cre-
ativity. Organizations adopting this approach to
creativity engineer interactions and design experi-
ences for employees with the objectives of devel-
oping positive levels of conflict, competition and
stress. Some theorists and managers argue that these
interventions represent harmless and common
practices and employees voluntarily agree to partic-
ipate by virtue of accepting a position with an
organization. We argue that the ethical issues sur-
rounding this approach to creativity cannot be dis-
missed. These activities may have unintended
negative consequences that more closely approxi-
mate ‘‘hazing’’ rather than ‘‘growth experiences’’
when conflict and competition turn ugly, or when
stress levels become too high for individual
employees.
Organizational responses
Organizations must distinguish between those
activities that represent appropriate means for fos-
tering spirited, refreshing discussion among
employees and those that constitute unethical
behavior. For example, employees should not en-
gage in ad hominem attacks or premature criticism of
another’s ideas before fully understanding the ideas
being proposed. A legitimate, related concern arises
since ‘‘competitive playfulness’’ may morph into
physical danger, abuse or harm. Deliberate attempts
to foster creativity by generating conflict, competi-
tion and stress may be transformed into clearly
unacceptable activities. IDEO employees once glued
a manager’s office door closed while he was inside;
another ‘‘playful’’ activity took the form of hiding a
coworker’s critical electronic files in some obscure
Fostering Creativity 109
sector of the company’s computer system (Kelley,
2001). These pranks impede work, squander re-
sources and impose unnecessary stress. All organi-
zations should provide boundaries in the quest for
creativity. At the individual level, employees must
also have mechanisms of challenging the means used
to foster creativity if they judge stress levels to be
unacceptably high.
We acknowledge that organizations cannot
anticipate every possible situation, so specification of
absolute rules would be unachievable. Instead, firms
need to promote discussions of ethical virtues to
which all employees should adhere (for example,
trust, compassion, respect, and honesty). Prescrip-
tions for developing ethical organizations may apply
to this domain once researchers better understand
how organizations currently deal with the nexus of
ethical behavior and creativity (Baucus and Beck-
Dudley, 2005).
Take risks and risk failure
How risk taking increases creativity
Dollinger (1999) defines risk as variability in out-
comes. Many organizational actors are risk averse,
indeed, often articulating an aversion to failure. We
wish to distinguish between personological per-
spectives of risk and knowledge based perspectives of
risk as we explore this rubric. Sitkin and Pablo
(1992) define risk taking propensity as the tendency to
take or avoid risk. Risk taking propensity is a trait.
Each of us has an idiosyncratic risk profile, a pre-
disposition to engage in relatively stable behaviors
with respect to the acceptance or avoidance of risk.
Alternatively, risk assessment represents a knowl-
edge-based construct that flows from prospect the-
ory (Kahneman and Tversky, 1979), the
entrepreneurship literature on framing (Palich and
Bagby, 1995), and Bayesian probability. Risk assess-
ment is defined as a decision maker’s perception of
threat or opportunity with the attendant prospect for
gain or loss (Norton and Moore, 2006: 216). Bayes’
theorem helps to operationalize this construct; the
Bayesian view holds that decision-making is sub-
jective and derives from a decision maker’s personal
information about a task (Gardenfors and Sahlin,
1988). Informative, prior knowledge about a domain
leads to greater precision in assessing probabilistic
outcomes. What a casual observer might regard as
‘‘risky behavior’’ is often a well-informed decision;
the observer may lack domain knowledge and im-
pose his risk taking propensity on the phenomenon
of interest, while the decision maker relies on prior
specific knowledge.
Path breaking innovations are risky when gauged
by the likelihood for failure (Tushman and Smith,
2004), yet the commercialization of discontinuous
innovations often yields radically new technologies,
products or processes that generate major payoffs for
the sponsoring organizations. Creativity requires
experimentation and risk taking as employees test
new ideas and approaches. Regrettably, organiza-
tions may create a tension between stasis and inno-
vation by emphasizing activities that contribute to
short-term profitability; this myopia often makes
employees who exhibit high-risk tolerance reluctant
to engage in activities without quick and fairly cer-
tain payoffs. A short-term focus typically leads to
either a steady state devoid of innovation or a culture
that marginally improves existing products, services
and processes. Neither path facilitates creative
behaviors.
Creativity scholars advocate that organizations
provide ‘‘freedom to speculate and take risks’’
(Robinson, 2001: 184), support for risk taking,
decision-making freedom and autonomy (Alencar
and Bruno-Faria, 1997) and tolerance of mistakes or
failures (Caldwell and O’Reilly, 1995; Leonard and
Swap, 2002). Entrepreneurial employees tolerate
greater uncertainty and ambiguity, holding positive
fantasies of the future (Winslow and Solomon,
1993). Managers must encourage innovation among
employees and be willing to take risks themselves
(Nolan, 1989; Weaver, 1993). Sutton (2002) para-
doxically describes creative behavior as a decision to
pursue something that has a high probability of
failure, coupled with the conviction that success
appears certain. It may also entail forward-looking
activities that appear ridiculous and impractical
(Sutton, 2002; von Oech, 1998). Thus researchers
argue that organizations should recognize the
improbability of success and inherently difficult
processes associated with creativity by rewarding
employees who engage in entrepreneurial behavior
110 Melissa S. Baucus et al.
(Utterback, 1994). This structural change may be as
radical as rewarding an individual by placing
extrinsic value on an employee’s commitment and
contribution rather than evaluating outcomes or
work product (Amabile, 1996). A combination of
these approaches may generate ongoing creativity by
rewarding entrepreneurial behaviors.
Ethical issues associated with taking risks and risking
failure
The concept of encouraging employees to take risks
and try out new ideas has merit but contains some
inherent ethical issues. Employees will face questions
about the nature and scope of risks they should take,
as well as questions regarding the ethical conse-
quences and implications of those risks for all of
organizational stakeholders. We offer two examples
that demonstrate the dilemmas of nature and scope.
Nick Leeson provides an extreme example of an
employee willing to undertake major investment risks
because of the possible payoffs for Barings Bank and
its investors; unfortunately, his risks were too extreme
and resulted in major losses for the organization and
many of its stakeholders (Rawnsley and Leeson,
1995). A classic example that reinforces scope of risk
problems comes from the Polaroid corporation.
Historically, Polaroid’s culture embraced risk-taking
without fear of failure. Edwin Land, its founder and
early product champion, committed enormous re-
sources to develop an instant movie system called
Polavision; sadly, it was commercial disaster that lost
millions of dollars. If time adjusted to today’s dollar, a
failure of equal proportion would seriously threaten
the firm’s survival, given the pace of technological
change and intense competition in the photography
industry. These examples show that employees need
to understand ethical (and financial) implications
associated with risk taking.
Organizational responses
Employees and managers who become caught up in
cycles of risk-taking, experimentation and creativity
without the benefit of ethical parameters may take
substantial and unwarranted risks. They may exper-
iment outside of domains in which they possess
competence, blissfully ignoring downside risks;
employees with diffuse or uninformed prior
knowledge in children’s products may not grasp
dangers associated with choking hazards or fire
retardant issues; they may lack expertise in designing
healthy food products; they may fail to understand
standards for compatibility across software platforms;
they may underestimate the regulatory and clinical
challenges of introducing products in the healthcare
industry. The results for the firm could be far
reaching and devastating. The potential for damage
ranges from impairment of a firm’s reputation,
through litigation, loss of market value or share or
both, to governmental sanctions.
Firms must reconcile employees’ risk-taking
propensity with the organizational need for crea-
tivity. The literature offers a set of prescriptions.
First, organizations can rely on measures of risk-
taking propensity that have been validated in prior
research (see, for example, Gomez-Mejia and Bal-
kin, 1989). Assessments of individuals’ predisposition
to take risks can facilitate formation of teams charged
with creativity and innovation; individuals can self
select based on low- or high-risk tolerance. Sepa-
rately, simulations represent a useful technique to
measure risk assessment. Norton and Moore (2006)
report a study in which employees participate in a
role-play. The subjects’ task involves making launch
or growth decisions based on a fact set; the results
suggest that those who assess risk favorably tend to
be entrepreneurial. Finally, the literature on dialectic
inquiry offers meaning guidance. It provides a
template for systematic evaluation of ideas and em-
beds critical thinking in group processes (Schweiger
et al., 1989).
The literature on creativity advocates risk taking
but pays scant attention to the essential balance be-
tween risk-taking behavior and ethical behavior.
Employees need to understand the types of risks they
can take, the scope of risk undertaken, and the po-
tential negative consequences for the organization’s
stakeholders.
A preliminary research agenda
Our article explores the relative lack of attention to
ethical issues within the creativity literature. This gap
creates an opportunity for scholars to build a bridge
Fostering Creativity 111
between creativity and ethical behavior. We suggest
that a research project launching this inquiry should
focus on better understanding how organizations
implement the four categories of creativity recom-
mendations we review, and how organizations deal
with the ethical issues that arise when encouraging
creativity. We describe central features of this pro-
posed study and follow with logical extensions.
An appropriate research design for the first stage
of investigation would be in-depth, comparative case
studies of firms engaging in these four categories of
creative behavior. We see merit in selecting firms
with varying ethical reputations for this early
investigation (a topic we shall revisit). Researchers
should start by examining any codified guidelines
intended to help employees consider and address
ethical issues, as well as any committees or processes
required for approval of new venture ideas.
Researchers should examine performance appraisal
and reward systems to see how firms assess each
category of behavior in the four rubrics to specify
outcomes when creativity clashes with ethical deci-
sion-making. Next, aspects of corporate culture such
as shared values, beliefs, and norms that relate to
rule-breaking, challenges to authority, creating
conflict/competition and risk taking will likely in-
form researchers about articulated standards of
behaviors and the presence or absence of safeguards
designed to discourage unethical conduct. Another
key dimension for study would be organizational
responses to employees who engage in unethical
activities while cloaked in the noble pursuit of cre-
ativity and innovation.
A sample size for this initial study might be six to
eight innovative firms. In the quest to capture var-
iability, approximately half of the firms should enjoy
solid reputations as ethical companies and the other
half could be selected based on reputations for
unethical or questionable conduct. Reputation is
neither an asset possessed by a firm nor a form of
self-ordination; it is a perception broadly held by
others (Itami, 1987), so this dichotomy should not
be difficult to operationalize. Researchers should
attempt to match each of the ‘‘ethical’’ firms with an
‘‘unethical’’ firm in terms of industry, markets
served, size and performance metrics. (Our recom-
mendation would achieve roughly equal cell sizes;
we do not seek the statistical elegance of matched
pairs analytics). If the sample frame contains publicly
held companies, archival data could be used for some
aspects of the study. However, primary data are
crucial for rich insight; interviews with employees,
managers, external constituents, reviews of company
documents and other information will be needed.
There is superb guidance for qualitative analysis that
results in rigorous theory building and theory testing
(Eisenhardt, 1989; Miles and Huberman, 1994; Yin,
1994). This foundational study logically leads to
follow on studies expanded to other industry con-
texts with larger samples and more variables.
Moreover, this evolving line of inquiry should per-
mit comparisons of corporate entrepreneurs with
traditional middle managers to investigate differ-
ences, if any, at the nexus of ethical behavior and
creativity imperatives.
Implications for theory and practice
We believe that the arguments presented in this article
have important implications for research on creativity
and ethics. Prior research in creativity has not inves-
tigated the impact that efforts to increase creativity may
have on ethical behavior. One of our goals involves
identifying key ethical issues related to the four rubrics
of behaviors used to enhance creativity. A second
objective encompasses generating interest in research
aimed at investigating these issues. The next step
involves studying relationships among ethics and cre-
ativity to learn more about how they interact. Subse-
quently, we urge scholars to consider factors that may
improve ethics, creativity or both of them. Finally,
practitioners should reflect on the consequences for
organizations that maximize creativity and marginalize
ethics. We suggest that ethics researchers should
consider relationships between creativity and ethics
since many of the practices intended to develop ethical
behavior may prove useful in generating creativity.
Organizational designs and protocols that simulta-
neously foster ethics and creativity may be more
readily adopted by firms than restricted designs aimed
at addressing only one of these goals.
We believe that managers can benefit from this
inquiry since we explore the duality of the four
categories of recommendations for improving crea-
tivity with the companion ethical issues. Our over-
arching objective is to encourage managers to
recognize problems hindering employees’ creativity,
112 Melissa S. Baucus et al.
identify assumptions that underlie the creativity
recommendations and create paths to achieve
innovative solutions that answer to unimpeachable
ethical standards. Managers should consider the dark
side – the undesirable and potentially unethical
consequences of encouraging employees to break
rules or abruptly creating stress among employees
who may want to innovate but lack the ability. A
manager’s attempt to shock employees into seeing
the need for creativity or to engineer a situation that
forces employees to think and behave creatively can
raise serious ethical issues;
1
for instance, a manager
might pass out fake termination notices to employees
as a way of illustrating the dire consequences of not
developing creative solutions to problems without
fully considering the negative impact this has on
employees. A company trying to foster ethical
behavior and creativity by placing employees in sit-
uations that call for breaking the rules, such as having
someone pretend to be a customer and request a
major exception to see how employees handle the
request, should consider the ethical implications of
such a practice. These approaches may harm trust
between managers and employees, leave employees
feeling deceived or ‘‘tricked’’ by management and
raise issues of honest and authentic managerial
behavior. Managers need to consider the means they
use to accomplish their end of encouraging creative
behavior among employees and ensure that they
model ethical behavior as leaders.
Employees at all levels should discuss the potential
dangers of unintentionally engaging in or encour-
aging unethical conduct. Managers can use these four
rubrics and the ethical issues listed in Table I as a basis
for ongoing discussions with employees about how
to achieve a balance between creativity and ethics.
New situations will continually arise so managers
need to encourage ‘‘good conversation’’ with a long
view toward the interrelationships between ethics
and creativity. Ultimately, such a developmental
process should yield organizations in which neither
vitally important goal is compromised.
Note
1.
We wish to thank an anonymous reviewer for rais-
ing this issue about the means managers use to foster
creativity among employees.
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Melissa S. Baucus and William I. Norton
Department of Management,
University of Louisville,
Louisville, KY 40292, U.S.A.
E-mail: m.baucus@louisville.edu
David A. Baucus
Baucus Consulting, 720 Talon Drive,
Louisville, KY 40223,
U.S.A.
Sherrie E. Human
Department of Management
Xavier University,
Cincinnati, OH 45207,
U.S.A.
Fostering Creativity 115
