The objective need for the formation of a qualitatively new labor force in a post-industrial society is explained by a number of objective circumstances.
Such circumstances are primarily due to the fact that in a post-industrial society, the material needs of the majority of people are increasingly most fully met due to relatively short working hours; science and knowledge become a direct productive force, which creates objective prerequisites and opportunities for a significant increase in the level of education and a wide spread of intellectual activity; creativity is an integral part of the vast majority of activities, both in material and non-material production, and becomes an incentive, an internal need of a person, determining his desire for development, increasing knowledge, opportunities for effective self-realization.
As a result, an employee in a post-industrial society is characterized by fundamentally new distinctive features, in the vast majority of cases, unusual for workers of the industrial era[1, p.469]. This is manifested, first of all, in the formation of new common values, among which education, high intelligence, and creativity take the first place.
At the same time, the post-industrial society is characterized by an increase in the share of intellectual class workers with a high level of education, highly qualified workers with a decrease in the share of workers engaged in non-intellectual work; intellectual labor workers are becoming the main factor of socio-economic and technical and technological development, and their value as the main productive force is characterized by the scale of their mastery of modern knowledge; the development of a new type of workers in a post-industrial society is characterized by a continuous increase in their educational level, which becomes a prerequisite for the use of the acquired knowledge and information for the production of new knowledge and their use in practical activities.
Today, an employee is required not only to perform his job functions carefully, but also to be able to solve new tasks that arise, even if they are not provided for by the job description, but are necessary for the functioning of the organization at the moment. Of particular importance is the presence of the employee’s versatile professional skills and the ability to develop and acquire new ones. Modern production reveals an increasing dependence on the creative potential of a person.
The intelligence and creative activity of workers in the post-industrial era significantly determine the innovative development of all spheres of activity based on highly qualified labor in science, education, and high-tech industries. It is the creative potential of employees that is a key element in accelerating the socio-economic development of post-industrial society, serves as an important factor in the dynamics of the development of industries and sectors of the economy based on high technologies and producing innovations.
Thus, the formation of an innovative economy means the transformation of human intelligence and creative potential into a leading factor of economic growth and national competitiveness.
Developing creative abilities in teams
Creativity as the ability to create new ideas is one of the most important aspects of the effective work of the company. Thanks to the creative approach, non-standard solutions for various problems are generated. But from time to time, creativity in teams needs to be “fueled”. What is the best way to do this?
Office life often turns into a torture for employees and a battlefield for managers. This is partly due to the fact that the daily work of most employees becomes too monotonous and routine[2, p.4]. People get used to doing the same thing and treat the performance of their professional tasks as mechanical work, while almost any job can become interesting if you treat it from the point of view of the outside the box principle (that is, do not think in stereotypes, go beyond the usual).
A few years ago, the company IPA Databank conducted a study trying to determine the relationship between creativity and efficiency. It turned out that the effectiveness of companies that encouraged creativity increased 12 times in 7 years (from 2003 to 2010)!
By efficiency, the experts of IPA Databank meant specific business indicators, in particular, an increase in profit and sales indicators. It turns out that by stimulating creativity in teams, you can get specific monetary benefits.
Leadership in some companies sometimes takes on manic features. The staff, being under constant pressure from the management, is “paralyzed” and lives in fear of losing their jobs. Such companies have no future, because, in fact, they are static, and therefore weak in front of competitors. Of course, you can’t do without control in business, but there must be a measure in everything.
The right atmosphere is necessary for the development of creativity: “You can not set too strict limits, employees should have the opportunity to express themselves. It is necessary to hold creative contests, choose the authors of the best ideas on a monthly basis. People should know the success stories of their colleagues, for example, who came up with the best scenario for a corporate event. There should always be a positive example before your eyes, which you need to look up to. After all, many are simply afraid to offer ideas.”
It is important that employees feel that any attempt to improve the work of the company will be perceived positively. But this attitude is formed only within the framework of the appropriate corporate culture.
The manager should help employees to properly allocate working time. Of course, most of it will be devoted to the main work, but let there still be time for employees ‘ own projects[3, p.371]. By devoting only a few hours a week to their ideas, employees will eventually help the company make a strong leap forward.
This method of developing creativity is used in the 3M company and is expressed in the”fifteen percent rule”. The staff can devote part of their working time to their own developments, which are subsequently refined into innovative products. Thanks to the introduction of such a rule, well-known Scotch and Post-in products appeared.
Leadership and creativity
In the modern world of competition, there is an urgent need for two important qualities everywhere: creativity and leadership. Those organizations that practice more creative approaches to solving their problems retain their leadership in business. Even small companies that have the foresight and leadership to choose a new course at the right time can quickly become global giants. Microsoft and Apple were also once small firms, but now their names do not leave our tongue — they have a combination of creativity and leadership. However, this combination is very rare. Should it always be like this?
They say,”leaders are born, not become”. It is believed that few people are endowed with creative abilities from birth. However, every person has a creative potential, and those who are least expected to do so can prove themselves as leaders at the right time. Who would have dared to predict that Lech Walesa would become a world-famous Polish leader? But his willingness to meet the challenge of time has unleashed his exceptional leadership qualities. Just as each of us is a creator in some ways, so everyone is a leader in some ways.
Many large companies in recent years have been trying to introduce this kind of dispersed leadership, in order to build flatter organizations in which teams with cross-functional take responsibility for the rapid and effective management of specific projects. Leadership transfer is designed to empower people, and thereby release their natural creativity, so often suppressed by traditional hierarchical structures.
This shows that creativity and leadership are closely related to each other. The organization and style of leadership in the system will have a significant effect on the degree of creativity displayed in this system. For creativity to flourish, it needs freedom.
The leader is perceived as a creative person. Creativity is manifested not only in where and what he acts, not only in how he acts, but in the very nature of this leader. Richard Branson, the leader of British business and the founder of the Virgin brand, has such a creative aura. His participation in intercontinental balloon flights is perceived according to his personality as a whole, and this creative quality is something that he tries to feed his companies — even in traditional industries that are not famous for creative innovations, such as railways.
Fortunately, it is much easier to develop creative leadership than one might expect, because both creativity and leadership have a common structure at their core. In particular, they depend on the ability to balance homogeneous additional qualities[4, p.52].
For example: both creativity and leadership need the ability to be proactive, accept and maintain direction, complemented by sensitivity and a subtle perception of the context and allowing a person to catch trends, notice opportunities and establish connections.
In the same spirit, creativity and leadership need the ability to focus attention on a certain point, sometimes on the point of obsession or tunnel vision, while keeping the field of perception completely open.
Both creativity and leadership require the ability to stay close to internal sources of inspiration and at the same time the willingness to transform internal insight into action.
Thanks to this similar basic structure, it becomes possible to synergistically stimulate the development of creativity and leadership. By developing creativity, we can unlock the potential of leadership, and when we work with the basic qualities of leadership, we can get a more creative approach to solving problems.
Organizational structure
Studying the information about the state of creativity in business structures, we came to the conclusion that they are characterized by common problems:
- lack of a training system for the development of creativity;
- difficulties in implementing interesting proposals and innovations;
- difficulties in the interaction of strategy and creative teams;
- lack of work experience within self-learning organizations;
- lack of habit of sharing experience and know-how (in a crisis).
These problems need to be solved by changing the internal organizational behavior and including an intellectual capital management component in it.
The most important way to increase the creativity of the staff is the use of motivation. From our point of view, there are two types of creativity from the point of view of an entrepreneur: productive and unproductive. This model allows you to predict the reaction of staff to various ways of motivation.
Productive creativity is a positive feedback when positive motivation affects the staff and is associated with self-realization and an increase in the level of needs in accordance with the A. Maslow pyramid.
Unproductive creativity manifests itself under the influence of negative motivation (limited resources (time, wages, materials, premises, tools), limited communication, fines) and manifests itself in the form of an employee’s desire to maintain the current level of needs, to compensate for the negative impact through violations of the working regime.
Communication
When building communication between a manager and employees, it is necessary to use various methods of managing the creative potential of employees. These methods are presented below.
Activation of creative potential. Solving a problem situation in the organization. Changes in environmental factors that create problems for the company in the absence of motivation among employees [6, p.73].
Disclosure of creative potential. Development of internal motivation of employees to apply a creative approach in their activities.
Stimulating creative potential. Stimulating the creative activity of employees generated by both internal and external factors.
Compensation of creative potential. Maintaining employee motivation, and compensating for their creative efforts.
Resistance to change
If employees resist changes and innovations, the manager may have difficulties helping employees to realize their creative potential. Several methods can be used to solve the problem. [7, p.145].
Employees are informed about the reorganization in advance so that they become participants in the process. As a result, the possibility of inaccuracy of incoming information is prevented. Working with accurate data is accompanied by training and other types of training. In this case, the staff will better understand the purpose of the changes and will be more inclined to cooperate.
Where employees ‘ involvement in the process increases, or if they perform a specific task, people’s resistance to the proposed innovations decreases. As a result, they will be more loyal, focused on teamwork, contacts from various departments of the enterprise will be closer, and the desired reorganization will be completed.
Employees who have problems with adaptation during the change of their usual work will benefit from cooperation with the administration that supports them. Assistance from management structures helps them cope with various fears during the transition period, for example, with the fear of losing their job or with other experiences during the reorganization. Such fears are eliminated to a large extent if the company’s management still conducts spirit-supporting and helping trainings and consultations.
The creative process
The main point of creative activity is an intuitive understanding of the desired result, which in the process of transformation will be analyzed and formed into a cycle of actions to give a tangible form [8, p.12]. This process can include several components: the formulation of a problem or a problematic situation, the use of personal experience or theoretical knowledge, the formulation of an assumption, a plan for solving the task or problem, empirical observations and conclusions, summing up, depending on the goal set.
It is based not only on clear algorithms of actions, there are also intuitive assumptions that may arise in connection with a vivid imagination, emotional uplift or mental stress. Thus, the staff is the only factor that has a creative component. Therefore, the success of a modern organization largely depends on the ability to activate this factor, stimulate the creative activity of the staff.
Organizational culture.
The formation and development of creative abilities of employees is largely influenced by the organizational culture, in particular, the following aspects are of the greatest importance:
– Organizational values. They are closely connected with organizational mythology, and act as the 9 connecting element between the spiritual world of the individual and the culture of the organization[10, p.778];
– Norms;
– Worldview
– Psychological climate.
The psychological climate is a fairly stable spiritual atmosphere that determines the interpersonal relationships of the team members.
Conclusion
In modern times, people work more with their heads than with their hands. In addition, the human attitude to employees is more important than the production organization.
Describing the ongoing changes in the content of labor, E. Toffler notes that the usual division of labor into agricultural, industrial and service loses its meaning. Today, we can talk about mental labor as work in the higher sector – work on collecting and transmitting information, work in the middle sector, combining physical work with the use of information on a computer and a service, and manual labor located at the lower level, which will gradually disappear [9, p.24].
Work becomes primarily an intellectual, mental activity. The thesis about amaterial labor is formulated. In the most radical form, these views are reflected in the thesis on the elimination of labor (“the end of labor”). The proponents of this thesis proceed from the fact that in the new economy there is a sharp reduction in the necessary labor and its gradual transformation into a far from the main type of activity; labor ceases to be considered by a person as the main business of life.
Thus, for employees, the priority is not organizational issues, but the atmosphere that is created in the organization by the head. The degree of realization of the creative potential of employees depends on the psychological climate in the organization and on the ability of the manager to manage personnel.
References
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