Relationship Between Human Cultural Extensions, Creativity, and Innovation, Outline Example

Outline

Organizations exist with the sole objective of achieving a particular goal. In an effort to accomplish this, most of these organizations have devised cultures that define their principles, ideologies, and rule of engagements. Nevertheless, the work environment is relatively dynamic and triggering the need for organization to periodically revise its culture by managing their cultural extensions. Edward Hall, an anthropologist, asserts that cultural extensions happen when human extensions exceed their current knowledge and come up with new cultural forms. This could be in form of social and/or technological transformation. This outline seeks to show that creativity and innovation in any organization is directly related to the human cultural extensions.

Creativity and innovation, as depicted in life via organizations, plays a crucial role in society. Creativity is revealed differently depending on the nature of an organization. For instance, business bring their creativity to life through innovating products and services that customers desire, hence partially satisfying the customers’ needs, generates jobs, and adds up the country’s economy. Similarly, a local government can use creative ideas to satisfy the desires of a community, therefore increasing the quality of life. Whichever the way, creativity and innovation play an indispensable role in serving the society.

In as much as most people would love to bury their heads in the sand and assume that all is well, we cannot run away from the fact that the world faces population and environmental crisis. In addition, there is also a crisis of human relationship with its extensions, thoughts, and ideologies as well as an individual with a group of people. Hall argues out that there is no technical solution to these challenges. Instead, the solutions depend on the ability to transcend the limits of the human culture. In order for this to be a reality, it is imperative for people to recognize and acknowledge the hidden perspective of the unconscious culture.

Humans who have freed themselves from the confines of normal cultural dimensions to cultural extensions have experienced tremendous outcome as far as creativity and innovation is concerned. This is because they allow their minds and attitudes to focus on the untapped potential of their human nature. Social and technological aspects are most critical component of this new cultural dimension.

Meta-Analysis

People in the United States of America have a variety of jobs, hence implying significant variation in the work culture and office environment. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that majority of Americans prefer an environment that is flexible in regards to both causal and professional outlook. For instance, it is not a big shock to see some people come along with their pets at the work place. In addition, the work culture and code of dressing is considerably different in U.S. People are inclined to causal dressing (not unless the company’s code of code dressing stipulate otherwise), working schedules are relatively flexible, and the general work environment is informal.

Americans value corporate social lifestyle. It is a common phenomenon for offices and other work environments to organize social events, which include picnics, Christmas celebration, birthday parties, or farewell party to an employee living the company in good terms. At some of these events, co-workers may be requested to carry along with them small items to out into a “grab bag” to serve as a surprise present for someone else. It is always crucial to fully corporate and participates in such social events as they serve to consolidate the workplace relationships. Furthermore, most of work environments root for coffee and lunch breaks. Some of the opportunities exist where workers capitalize on to get to know each other (Schein, 2009).

Organizations that believe that they are the most powerful in the world strive to ensure that their products and services are the best. In view of this, most American organizations believe in work place competence. It is common for most organizations to recruit or higher employees with high levels of proficiency in a particular subject area. This goes to the extent of outsourcing skilled and knowledgeable workforce from abroad. As such, most employees insist on doing work to perfection to maintain the image of the nation as the very best in the whole world. This culture is best exhibited in the portable electronic devices industry where Apple and Microsoft companies are competing head on to remain at the top of the world in terms of production of these devices.

Annotated bibliography

Andriopoulos, C., and Dawson, P. (2008). Managing Change, Creativity, and Innovation. New York, NY: SAGE

The book asserts that organizational leaders acknowledge the fact that the next competitive level in the world of work is anchored on innovation. This refers to the ability to be creative and innovate repeatedly within the same operational environment. As regards to the education, then this implies that innovation and creativity are indispensable for the future prospects in both life and work. In addition, this is an indispensable component of the curriculum of the 21^st century.

The author further argues that some experts agree that organizational system can be made and deployed to generate innovation whereas others insist that systems impede innovation thus giving a false impression instead of promoting a culture that boosts and supports innovation at its core.

Davila, T., et al. (2007). The Creative Enterprise: Culture. Sydney: Greenwood Publishing Group.

Davila et al (2007) presents case scenarios of organizations that have managed to create successful innovation and creative culture insists that the critical aspect is to let go of efficiency as the main working strategy and instead adopt teamwork, collaboration, networking, and participation. However, this does not imply that the discipline, focus, and process are dispensable. Instead it means that culture of innovation and creativity calls for freedom, disagreement and probably a little of confusion-more so in the initial stages.

Ashkanasy, N.M., et al. (2010). The Handbook of Organizational Culture and Climate. New York, NY: SAGE.

In this manner, prioritizing on innovation and creativity is mostly counterintuitive to the ideologies and practices of business managers who are focused on efficiency. Richard Sutton, a professor at Stanford University, argues out that ‘weird’ but creative ideas produce positive results because of the following three reasons: first, they boost by increasing the diversity of the organizational knowledge. Secondly, they provide an avenue for people to perceive old challenges in newer ways. Finally, they provide an opportunity to break loose from the historical chains. However, he is quick to note that creative environments in most cases are substantially inefficient and irritating at work places.

References

Andriopoulos, C., and Dawson, P. (2008). Managing Change, Creativity and Innovation. New York, NY: SAGE.

Ashkanasy, N.M., et al. (2010). The Handbook of Organizational Culture and Climate. New York, NY: SAGE.

Davila, T., et al. (2007). The Creative Enterprise: Culture. Sydney: Greenwood Publishing Group.

Navaresse, D.O. (2008). The Effects of Organizational Culture, Rewards, and Individual Creativity on the Creative Performance of Technical Workgroups. London: ProQuest