Creativity, knowledge and human resource development: a conceptual framework

Although creativity has broadly been recognised an essential ingredient of KM for long-term organisational success, evidence suggests that much remains undiscovered in the current state of KM research due to lack of empirical information. For instance, it is unclear whether and how knowledge management can maximise the individual creative potential for growth and development and contribute to organisational knowledge share, effectiveness and development. The scant research to date highlights that certain HRD interventions can evoke an opportunity of personal (and organisational) growth, due to developing and unleashing untapped human expertise but there is a lack of empirical work in this area. The purpose of this paper is to rationalise the current complex and conceptual approaches to creativity and propose a simplified model that considers the developmental aspects of creativity. The scope of this paper lies within strategic role of human resource development (HRD) as a function of Knowledge Management (KM) and facilitator of creative behaviour amongst employees. In this paper, a systematic literature review guides the development of a model of creativity, grounded on the insights provided by system models of creativity. Person-context interactions and human resource development are the focus of the approach. The proposed model illustrates that HRD is well placed to encourage individual creativity through simultaneous influence on creativity-relevant processes and mechanisms at both individual and organisational levels. Specifically, it promotes individual awareness of each person's individual creativity by engaging employees in creative tasks and building on the inborn creative potential. Furthermore, it endorses the person-context relationship by developing a sense of a creativity favourable organisational climate and promoting individual commitment to creative, knowledge-based tasks. The contributions of this piece of work are twofold. First, it contributes to the creativity, HRD and KM literature by conceptualising creativity within KM research and outlines an agenda for future research. Second, it is provoking for practitioners who are struggling with the issues of employee creative development and flourishing.