Organisational barriers to creativity in South African higher education institutions - A Garnett and T Pelser

It is critical for higher education institutions to examine their performance measures (such as throughput and research output rates) to improve their competitive advantage. The article proposes that creativity is the key to obtaining that competitive advantage. However, there may be certain barriers to creativity within the organisational climate which might inhibit this. The article documents findings regarding the empirically derived barriers to creativity within selected higher education institutions in South Africa. These were correlated with the institutional performance measures to ascertain whether there were any significant observable relationships between the barriers to creativity and performance output measures of the institutions. The findings indicate that there is a positive correlation between a high prevalence of barriers and lower performance outputs. Finally, the article outlines a model that could be implemented within higher education institutions to eliminate the barriers to creativity identified by the research.
From: SAJHE 21 (1) 2007, pp. 50-67