Call for Action: Designing for Harmony in Creative Teams

Abstract

Competitive markets force diverse organizations to intensively manage innovation. Many of them set up multifunctional teams responsible for generating novel and original ideas. Such teams often face higher risk of conflicts and tensions, being an inherent part of creative processes. Impact of this phenomena on creative performance of teams, even though extensively addressed in research, remains unclarified. We approach this issue while providing a novel interpretation framework inspired by the concept of harmony in jazz improvisation. We apply it to observations made with project teams in an organizational setting, and use it to inform design of a supporting collaborative solution. We postulate the need for further work on team harmony and creativity. Abstract. Competitive markets force diverse organizations to intensively manage innovation. Many of them set up multifunctional teams responsible for generating novel and original ideas. Such teams often face higher risk of conflicts and tensions, being an inherent part of creative processes. Impact of this phenomena on creative performance of teams, even though extensively addressed in research, remains unclarified. We approach this issue while providing a novel interpretation framework inspired by the concept of harmony in jazz improvisation. We apply it to observations made with project teams in an organizational setting, and use it to inform design of a supporting collaborative solution. We postulate the need for further work on team harmony and creativity.

The marketing manager as a jazz musician

“…Widespread attention to this topic emerged at a symposium sponsored by the Academy of Management and represented by a special issue of Organization Science featuring a collection of papers by distinguished jazz musicians and organizational researchers (Meyer et al, 1998). Subsequent work along these lines has concerned issues related to innovation (Moorman and Miner, 1998a, b), leadership (Hasse, 2004;Newton, 2004), teamwork (Dolata and Schwabe, 2014;Jennings, 2007;Waltzer and Salcher, 2003), leading creative or entrepreneurial teams (Humphreys et al, 2011;Ucbasaran et al, 2011), negotiated collaborative coordination (Faulkner and Becker, 2009;Holbrook, 2010), organizational change (Leybourne, 2006), project management (Leybourne, 2009), strategic planning (Cunha et al, 2012), competitive advantage (Bingham and Eisenhardt, 2011), institutional adaptability (Hatch, 1998(Hatch, , 1999, networking (Pavlovich, 2003), empowerment as the freedom to be spontaneous within certain constraints or limitations (Oakes, 2009), marketing strategy Macaulay, 2003, 2007), new product development (Kamoche and Cunha, 2001;Kyriakopoulos, 2011), service performances ( John et al, 2006), complexity theory (Holbrook, 2003), the ethics of organizational leadership (Sorensen, 2013), teaching economics (Tinari and Khandke, 2000), teaching an integrated capstone strategic management course (Mills, 2009), teaching a marketingresearch course (Mills, 2010), management education (Meyer and Shambu, 2010), executive education (Gold and Hirshfeld, 2005), collaborative management research (Börjesson and Fredberg, 2004), and a variety of related topics of interest to organizational researchers and business scholars as encompassed by various collections…”