La llegada a la ciudad.

Before exploring whether these meta-theories are sustainable for conducting research within the social sciences (in Chapter Four) the rest of this chapter will explore the effect of some of the presuppositions of postmodernism and scientism on theory building within the existing conceptual framework. It will be argued there are two importance consequences for creativity theory: (i) an understanding of creative potential, unrecognised and un-actualised creativity (all currently regarded as unobservable) is inevitably restricted (ii) an understanding of emergence"4 is lacking, leading to issues dealing with the complexity of cross-contextual research. The emphasis on empirical data for theory building necessarily leads to limited conceptions of potential and difficulties explaining emergence. The areas of research interest and the proposed method of enquiry have already been shown to be incompatible with the existing conceptual framework and the conventional definition and this means they offer the perfect starting point for exploring these issues. By examining existing theory o f creative potential, unrecognised creativity and un-actualised creativity, the limitations of the meta- theoretical presuppositions can be identified.

3.2.1 Creative potential

A potential is defined by the Universal Dictionary as something that is ‘possible but not yet realised, or capable of being, but not yet in existence’, The concept of creative potential has a long history in creativity research. For example, Stein (1974: 5) asked ‘Can a person who has never manifested creativity be taught or stimulated to be creative?’ Cummings and Oldham

(1997) offered advice for people in organisations on how to enhance innovation through tapping into creative potential. Mumford (2003b) argued that discussing creative potential is necessary for an overall definition of creativity. Therefore, understanding how creative potential develops into creative performance, and is subsequently utilised by an individual or organisation, is perhaps one of the most important objectives for researchers of creativity. However, attempts to understand and utilise creative potential aie blocked because the meta- theoretical presuppositions of the existing conceptual framework appear to be inconsistent with the very notion of potential. Put simply, a potential can exist without manifesting itself, and exist without manifesting itself as something observable.

24 Further explanation o f this will follow in Chapter Four where its importance to theory building will be developed.

Mumford (2003b. 110) notes the existence of this problem when studying creative potential. He argues that researchers should concern themselves with performance and seek to explore performance empirically. He claims it would be difficult to study potential, and have validity and reliability, as the phenomena is unobservable and therefore the methods of empirical science which enable validity and reliability to be assessed cannot be used. He recognises that researchers normally circumvent this problem by studying people who are doing creative work already and inferring from them what a potential must look like, but his argument shows that this approach, with its emphasis on the empirical, can lead to an inability to conceive of creative potential.

He sees understanding potential as one of the emerging issues of creativity research, so recognises the need for understanding creative potential. Yet absent from previous and current research is a consistent and sustainable definition of creative potential. This suggests there are limits to what can be researched, theorised and explained about creative potential within the existing conceptual framework. Mumford’s (2003a) view is also that we can study potential but only when we are sure we have adequate markers. By this he means there is a need to identify what skills and abilities ‘already creative’ people have in order to infer what is necessary for creativity to occur, and argues markers gained from the already creative can also be regarded as markers for creative potential in others. However, by limiting the conception of potential to that of the skills and abilities of already creative people, one is actually emphasising the centrality of the empirical when the object of enquiry is not always capable of empirical existence, as it is with potential.

In spite of this, plenty of research has been conducted that infers the existence of creative potential. For example, Moger and Richards (1999) examined structural barriers to creativity in teams and proposed that creative teams need to go through development phases in order to perform. They asked the question what differentiates a normally performing team from a creatively performing team and argued that leadership plays a role. Underlying this claim is the notion that a team has to go through a development phase to reach creative performance. This means creative performance, in their model, begins in a latent or potential phase and moves through subsequent phases until ‘peak performance’ is reached.

They conclude that training can help teams pass through constraining structures, preventing performance peaking, and leads therefore to increased creativity. They do not discuss the concept of creative potential within their work, although it is implicit. Their argument contains two ontological presuppositions: that potential exists in both individuals and teams, and that training can help potential to be realised. Such claims are not considered

controversial and indeed much of the human resource management project is predicated upon such presuppositions. The controversy therefore remains hidden as there is little recognition that the meta-theoretical presuppositions used to inform research, which is inconsistent with the notion of a potential, lay behind the inability to develop sustainable theory. That is to say, their research which stresses the importance of the empirical and observable does not facilitate theorising about potentials, as potentials are often not observable.

Cummings and Oldham s (1997) argument that organisations need to innovate in order to survive the additional competition arising from increased globalisation provides further evidence of the limitations of the meta-theoretical constructs held within the existing conceptual paradigm. When discussing how to improve innovation in organisations they suggest that managers ‘must hire people with the potential for creativity, and then they must structure the employee’s environment in order to bring out this creativity’ (Ibid: 22, emphasis

added). They therefore argue that some people have characteristics that make them more likely to be creative (they have potential), and the environment must be suitable for them to succeed (inferring environments have potential also). Yet their argument contains no sufficient

explanation of how to define or identify creative potential.

Runco (2005: 22) explores these issues in more detail. He claims if everyone is creative there should be ‘identifiable universals’. He recognises that some of the issues discussed in Chapter Two25 might cause problems when attempting to explain potential, as the conventional definition starts with the already produced creative product and works backwards to infer potential in others. This he maintains cannot tell us much about people with current potential as ‘products are not psychological and psychology is merely inferred from the study of products’. His position is to accept that creative potential exists but that it is only after it is manifest that we can discover whether the potential existed in the first place. W hilst this may or may not be plausible-^* when considering howr we come to know potential, his statement is in contradiction with his meta-theory which dictates he can only theorise about the observable. He recognises these tensions when writing specifically on the problems of potential:

I am fully aware that my position on potential does not lend itself to an entirely objective science. However, it may be that we have to modify out methods such that they aren’t maximally objective but are as objective as possible and still cover the topic at hand, namely, creativity. (Runco 2003:

] 38)

25 He specifically refers to the reliance of creativity definitions on the recognised production o f appropriate novelty.