Creativity and Control: A Network Is Born

An international network of researchers exploring the link between creativity and control has been activated thanks to the workshop Debating the link between creativity and control, which took place in Barcelona on April 4th and 5th. The workshop, sponsored by IESE Business School, the Demattè Research Division of SDA Bocconi School of Management and the leading international journal Accounting, Organization and Society, was organized by Angelo Ditillo (Department of Accounting and SDA Bocconi), Tony Davila (IESE Business School) and Chris Chapman (the editor of the journal).

The aim of the workshop was to start an interdisciplinary debate on creativity, bringing together perspectives from psychology, sociology, management and accounting domains. Thirty-one papers were presented to the workshop, but only 12 were accepted, with contributors coming from a variety of countries, including Italy, UK, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium and Australia.

The initiative explored the link between creativity and control, seen as a promising stream of research. The discussion contributed to unveiling how the dialogue between different disciplinary perspectives may lead to a deeper understanding on how to control creativity processes, thanks to the potential synergies deriving from the study of this phenomenon from different theoretical angles.

Some important issues that emerged were: the key role of inspirational control mechanisms to stimulate creativity, the interactive use of management control systems to support creativity, the relevance of the creativity of controllers when acting as business partners, and the importance of emotions deriving from accounting to foster creativity.