Can creativity be learned? The knowledge integration role of Management Control Systems during the creative process

Organizations need an intensive knowledge integration mechanism that supports creativity within all the phases of its process in order to analyze, understand, select, and integrate ideas in a business model. Management Control Systems, as a part of the structural capital, can be utilized as knowledge integration mechanisms that provide: i) a dialog among internal or external actors of the creative process; ii) a knowledge repository for data and other information required in the selecting process; iii) representation of the new ideas into a business model. Using a multi-method case study, this article tries to analyze the role of knowledge integration played by Management Control Systems (MCS). With the perspective of the Levers of Control (Simons, 1995), MCS are recognized as the sum of belief, boundary, diagnostic and interactive systems that could be used to manage the creative process. We apply the Appreciative Inquiry model on creativity (Cooperrider, Srivastva, 1987) which recognizes four steps: Discovery, Dream, Design, and Destiny. Creativity is then classified based on the problem's characteristic using Unsworth's model (2001) which separates closed and open problems. Results show that in the early phases of the creativity process more structured problems are faced using diagnostic and boundary tools, while problems that are more open are faced using interactive and belief approaches. In the design phase, a dynamic tension between interactive and diagnostic systems is always preferred. The final phase (Destiny) requires diagnostic approaches in all cases. On this foundation, the paper aims to contribute to the literature on innovation and intangible assets. It is our opinion that the results could also be used by managers and entrepreneurs involved in the creative process in order to improve a companies’ ability to face change