Organisational Creativity Barriers: Implications for Information Systems Design
Purpose: To examine organisational barriers to employee creativity and develop a framework linking these barriers with information-system functions, managerial conditions and expected process outcomes. Design/Methodology/Approach: The study combines a descriptive analysis of existing aggregate survey results with a literature-based conceptual synthesis. The survey covered 125 respondents (62 non-managerial employees and 63 managerial respondents) from 89 purposively selected creative-sector enterprises in the West Pomeranian Voivodeship, Poland, and was administered using CAWI and PAPI. The analysis focuses on open-ended questions about barriers to creativity and a separate yes/no item on monitoring the outcomes of employees’ creativity development. Findings: Inadequate management (44%) and insufficient time, excessive duties and pressing deadlines (42%) were the most frequently reported barriers, followed by routines and rigid rules (24%), workplace atmosphere (22%) and stress (12%); the categories are not mutually exclusive. On the separate monitoring item, 97 of the 125 respondents (77.6%) reported no monitoring of outcomes associated with the development of employees’ creativity. Practical Implications: The framework links managerial diagnosis with transparent idea evaluation, structured feedback, knowledge sharing and workflow integration, and identifies the responsibilities and resources that these functions require. Originality/Value: The study proposes a barrier–function–outcome framework that brings organisational diagnosis into information systems design. The framework makes the rationale for each proposed function explicit and sets out criteria for its future evaluation in organisational settings.