Creativity and Innovation in an Organized Anarchy

Abstract

Organizations can respond to change in their environments in a variety of planned and unplanned ways. In complex organizations, when the environment is unstable, managers need to examine their assumptions about how organizations function in order to develop effective strategies for introducing creativity and change. This essay reviews the assumptions behind theories of organizational decision making, explores how those assumptions affect how managers decide strategies for introducing change, and offers some ideas an how to introduce creativity into organizations that face ambiguous internal and external environments.