The pitfalls of managing intellectual work in engineering and technology

Abstract

Summary form only given. It is contended that despite persistent beliefs to the contrary, the management of innovation in most organizations, including firms in engineering and technology, appears to violate the fundamental requirements of a critical process in innovation, the creative process. That is, although it has been established that for many intellectual workers, creative activities and projects are best undertaken in settings free of many traditional organizational restrictions, actual policies and practices in the majority of organizations in the United States appear to produce rigid and inhibitive work environments. Aspects of these environments include relatively inflexible official and operative work hours and work location requirements, various forms of inappropriate deadline pressures, and too-vigilant supervision. It is argued that work hours and work location expectations are inextricably linked and produce the most suffocating of the effects on creativity. Abundant evidence of managerial policies and practices inimical to creativity and ultimately to innovation, particularly in the form of temporal locational requirements, has been found. A theory and research-based blueprint for change has been developed.<>