The Temporal Structuring of Creative Projects: Organizing Creativity through (Dis-) Entrainment

• Applicants: Professor Dr.-Ing. Gernot Grabher; Professor Dr. Jörg Sydow
• Subject Area: Accounting and Finance
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 443714951

Creativity is not a linear process. Rather, as research has corroborated, complexity, non-linearity and indeterminacy are key features of creative processes. Especially, research has shown that creative processes involve temporal complexity, such as the tension between “chronos” and “kairos”, and multiple temporal orientations among the different actors involved. Pertinent research so far has focused on one particular organizational practice to meet the challenges imposed by the temporal multicontextuality of creative projects: entrainment. Practices of entrainment are geared towards the synchronization of multiple temporal structures in complex project ecologies. This rather mechanistic conceptualization of entrainment has been criticized more recently for neglecting the potential benefits of asynchronicity for organizations. Moreover, entrainment cannot be reduced to a one-dimensional, functionalist optimization effort. Rather, organizational actors have to perform a “dance of entrainment”, i.e. they have to navigate simultaneously across endogenous and exogenous pacers and they may occasionally be left with no alternative other than to deliberately uncouple activities temporarily. Although previous research has increasingly appreciated multiple practices of entrainment, the chief concern of the respective research was with classic performance. So far, the inter¬dependence between entrainment and, importantly, disentrainment on the one hand, and creativity on the other, has not been explored in a systematic fashion. Entrainment might induce productive friction that stimulates creativity; conversely, creative ideas may require tempo or phase “misfit” in order to germinate and flourish. In order to conceptualize further the role of entrainment and disentrainment in organizing creativity, by investigating practices in the fields of music and pharmaceutical research we seek to advance research on temporal structuring in at least four directions. First, we aim to systematize the variety of relevant temporal structures influencing creative processes on different levels of analysis in both fields. Second, we aim to foreground the role of dis¬entrainment as an important practice by which creativity is organized. Third, we aim to unpack the role of materiality in creative projects in the two fields. Fourth, we aim to go beyond a description of different temporal structures and practices playing a role in creative processes by applying a comparative design that helps us to develop propositions regarding which practices of (dis-)entrainment foster creativity in which field contexts and in different stages of the creative process. Overall, the project intends to develop testable propositions regarding the relationship between temporal structures, practices of temporal structuring, and creativity in order to theorize entrainment as a form of organizing creativity.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Austria
• Partner Organisation: Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung (FWF)
• Cooperation Partner: Professorin Dr. Elke Schüßler