Innovation and Creativity versus Control - Assessing the Paradox in IT Organizations

As a result of the increasingly more turbulent environment of today IT organizations face an important problem: on the one hand they have to control their activities, which requiresa certain stability,on the otherhand, they need to be creative and innovative, requiringa certain amount of autonomy, which in turn may result in instability. In this paper it is shown that control and creativity/innovation do not necessarily oppose each other. A model is presented that shows how the need for control and the need for creativity/innovation can be matched. Results from empirical research on the diffusion of CASE-technology are used to support and flesh out the model. 1. Introduction Due to changing environmental conditions, organizations have to act in other ways than they used to act. In a description of the change in strategie issues, Ansoff shows that the critical issue for organizations has changed from control to managing 'weak signals' emerging from the environment [3]. In order to survive and gain strategie advantage over other companies in the turbulent environment of today, organizations can respond to these weak signals by way of innovation. Viewed from this perspective, its seems as though organizations have moved from 'control' to 'innovation' as a guiding principle. This change in emphasis from control to innovation has an important impact on the management of (IT) organizations '. Technology, especially IT, plays an important role in achieving innovations in organizations. For example, IT is often regarded as an important facilitator for business reengineering, which results in large scale innovations [11]. The pressure for organizations to innovate thus forces its IT organization to act innovative as well. This IT organization can act as a prime stimulus for innovation towards the whole organization by acting innovative itself. However, IT organizations can not be innovative at all costs. Given the competitive environment, a high burden is placed on control as well in order for organizations to be cost efficiënt and to increase the