Does Polish Post-Communist Cultural Burden Influence the Perception of Creative Identities?

Abstract

Objective: Post-communist countries, affected by decades of one of the most repressive political systems, are perceived as a particular area of gaps in social capital. These gaps influence the whole spectrum of behaviors of individuals, groups, and society. Countries that changed their political system start a journey of external (economic, social) and internal (personal, interpersonal, group) changes. The post-communist burden determines human behavior, so leaders and managers should pay attention to these consequences. The research deals with the differences in perception of creative identities (a creator, artist, manager, entrepreneur, and leader) by Polish society compared to other countries without communist history. Methodology: Quantitative research (n = 160) in the form of a survey among people from Poland and other countries. Verification of hypotheses by chisquare test of independence used (SPSS, MS Excel). Next, a qualitative analysis of discrepancies was undertaken (NVivo). Findings: There are no statistical differences in the perception of creative identities of a creator, artist, manager, entrepreneur, and leader between citizens of Poland and citizens of other countries. The additional qualitative analysis exposed that differences in perception of the creative identities between investigated societies might have necessary consequences while managing or leading groups (and organizations) dominated by creative individuals. These differences are shown in detail, and links between our research results and the literature are built. Value Added: It looks like a post-communist burden in current Poland has a minimal impact on the perception of creative individuals. Thus, it can be said that communism disappears from the social capital during one generation (ca. 30 years). Recommendations: Further research exploring the perception of creative identities by different analogical groups of compared societies would be valuable.

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“…Being a framework for cross-cultural communication, Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory indicates the impact of a society's culture on its members' values and how these values relate to members' behaviour (Hofstede, 2011). Following this theory, communist and post-communist societies equipped with different values structures should assess participation in arts differently compared to societies without communist history; this statement is based on the research about cultural differences in perception of creative identities like artists, creators, managers, leaders and entrepreneurs (Szostak, 2021b(Szostak, , 2021c. We cannot forget that the communism burden had (or still has) been having diverse shapes and powers; also, the length of the influence plays a vital role: the Chinese society will be differently influenced by its version of communism compared to Polish or Czech ones after 30+ years of freedom (Bartlová, 2019;Kozieł, 2019;Tan, 2012).…”

“…It is worth asking what may be the reasons for differences between communist and post-communist citizens compared to non-communist citizens in the assessment of the receiving process of arts. The first trace may lead to political system transformation theory focusing on time perspective for changes in culture and identity of society; more extended period and power of communist burden, more significant changes and a more extended period of forgetting about the past and achieving free perspective of non-communist societies (Pavlica & Thorpe, 1998;Szostak, 2021bSzostak, , 2021c. These results were observed by researchers of many European post-communistic countries like the Czech Republic (Hornat, 2019), Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania (Kreuzer & Pettai, 2003), Slovakia (Mikloš, 2021), and currently communist countries like China (Xue et al, 2021).…”

Perception of Creative Identities by Artistic and Non-Artistic Individuals: Consequences for Management

“…However, because of the small size of the sample (n = 160), complex statistics were not conducted. Therefore, this article exhibits only a fragment of the assumptions from the broad research (Szostak, 2020b(Szostak, , 2021a(Szostak, , 2021b(Szostak, , 2021c(Szostak, , 2021d.…”

Perception of Creative Identities by Leaders and Non-leaders: Consequences for Theory and Practice of Manage-ment

“…However, developed statistics were not performed due to the relatively small sample size (n = 160). Therefore, this article displays only a fragment of the results from the research (Szostak, 2020b;2021b;2021d;2021c;2021a;Szostak and Sułkowski, 2021a).…”