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CONTENT
- INTRODUCTION
- 1.1. Notion of personnel. CHAPTER I. THEORETICAL NOTIONS
- 1.2. Notion of creativity..
- 1.3. Methods of stimulating staff creativity..
- 1.4. Optimizing methods to stimulate staff creativity..
- 2.1. The company's staff.. CHAPTER II. THE SITUATION IN THE RM REGARDING CREATIVITY
- 2.2. Stimulation methods used in domestic enterprises..
- 2.3. Refinement. Proposals.
- CONCLUSIONS.
- BIBLIOGRAPHY.
- APPENDICES.
Introduction
Stimulating the creative potential of employees is one of the main priorities in the world of top level managers. In the existing conditions in our country, it is necessary to develop the creativity of each personality, from the moment of recruitment in the organization, so that the future specialists can contribute to the progress of the organization and the state. The given process stimulates imagination and curiosity, initiative and confidence in one's own strength, independence in finding various solutions-attitudes so much in demand in contemporary society. The work includes general notions of personnel, creativity and their importance for enterprises. Also described are the factors that allow the stimulation of staff creativity, both at the time of recruitment and during the activity. The term creativity comes from the Latin "creare ", which means to "conceive", "to make", "to give birth". A broad definition of creativity is proposed in the work "Pedagogy" by I. Bontaş I.(33, p.12) ,, creativity is a complex and fundamental capacity of the personality, which, relying on previous data or products, in the combination with investigations and new data, produces something new, original of value and scientific and socially useful efficiency, as a result of the influences and relations of subjective and objective factors - that is, of the possibilities of the person and the environmental conditions, of the socio-cultural environment. The era in which we live requires each individual to adapt to ever-new situations, to solve numerous social and professional problems, to find varied, ingenious, original solutions. Global changes are taking place at an increasingly accelerated pace. Creativity is a phenomenon with many aspects, facets or dimensions, which reinforces the complexity and the necessity of approaching it from different angles. Nowadays, creativity has become an object of research for several sciences: sociology, psychology, education sciences, philosophy, economics, philology, aesthetics, art and more recently creation and invention. If at the beginning we tried to define the concept and identify with its meanings, today the need for research has become more acute, shifting the focus to other aspects of creativity, namely: "revealing its complex character, approaching creativity as a psychological dimension that engages the whole personality, deepening the functions and factors of creativity, studying the levels/steps and stages of creativity, studying ways of training and educating creative abilities, training those who train creators." M. Ionescu (37, p.128).
1.1. Personal. No tion.
" The most scarce resource of any organization is the personnel that determine the level of efficiency of the enterprise " ( P. Drucker) The organization's staff represents the total number of employees, in legal employment relationships based on an individual employment contract, who carry out their activity in the organization, falling exactly within the labor discipline according to the internal order regulation and benefiting from all monetary and other rights nature provided for in the Labor Code and additional legislation. If we refer to the importance of the staff for the organization, then we can list a series of elements that demonstrate its role: the staff (the workforce) is the only creative force of goods and services, not only from an economic and material aspect, but also spiritually, scientifically , by creating new ideas that are countered in new technologies, new products, new management methods, etc. How efficiently the organization's resources (material, financial, etc.) will be used depends on the staff. The same idea is also found by la N.BurlacuE. Graur (5, p.190): "Productivity depends on man. This value proclaims man as one of the most important assets of the organization. At the same time, the effectiveness of the organization is consumed by the satisfaction of its members. The belief that the attitude of respect and dignity towards people ensures success and is the basis of the culture of organizations of this type." The notion of personnel and its management, as well as the other elements of the organization, evolved over time and took shape in two theories:
- the traditional theory , which uses the notion of "work force", considers the staff as a mass of people capable of working, pays according to the work done, evaluates the performances in a formal and insignificant way, and practically, forbids the stimulation of the initiative, considering it a affecting the authority of the organization's management;
- the theory of human resources management gives greater importance to the quality of professional training and participation in the progress of the organization, considers employees as personalities with individual needs and visions, remunerates according to
the results obtained, considering the performance evaluation activity as an essential one, stimulating the initiative through promotion and increase salary. Managerial theory and practice in the field of human resources knows several categories of personnel. Al. Bîrcă (2, p.90) proposes the classification of personnel according to the following criteria:
1. according to the content of the work performed, we distinguish: workers. It is the category of personnel that, directly or indirectly, participates in the process of obtaining material goods or provides useful services for the smooth running of the organization's activity and that, by the nature of the work obligations and the activity performed, is responsible for the fulfillment of specific work tasks occupied jobs; technical, economic, other specialized and administrative personnel. It represents that category of employees who ensure, directly or indirectly, the management or even the realization of material goods recovery processes. 2. according to the role fulfilled in the economic-social activity we distinguish: directly productive workers. It refers to that category of employees who, directly or through the means of work, modify the shape, structure, dimensions or chemical composition of the object of work, adjust machines and installations to established technological parameters, carry out operations to introduce finished products or semi-finished products in packaging, directly ensures the movement of the object of work, within the production process, performs major repairs of machinery and installations, etc.; indirectly productive workers. It includes that category of personnel who perform the maintenance and control of tools and devices, the technical control of the quality of raw materials and materials. It also carries out internal transport, ensures the supply of jobs with raw materials and materials; service workers. Represents the category of employees who maintain buildings and related installations; performs and maintains cleaning in the production spaces, provides services for the entire organization, such as: the telephone exchange, the means of transport that serve the management staff, etc.; technical-productive staff. It is the category of personnel with higher or medium professional training who: directly participates in the management and organization of production and work (foremen), provides training and technical assistance for the application of specific technologies, performs highly complex operations that require higher level knowledge , ensures the technical control of product quality, as well as technical management of production sections, etc.;
The subject of creativity - personnel, is also explored by the well-known Romanian management authors Ov. Nicolescu and I. Verboncu (7, p.218). They affirm that the human resource is the only creator, not only from an economic aspect, but also from a spiritual, scientific aspect. The generation of new ideas materialized in products, technologies, management methods, new organizational solutions, etc. it is the exclusive prerogative of man. The human resources function was reluctant for a long time. Until recently, it invested more in maintaining positions than in valorizing resources and managing change. Due to the crisis, the situation has evolved considerably and the creative approach has acquired the title of nobility. Eventually, the general directorates began to detach and accept the necessity; after the triumph of computer science, distributed over centralized systems, the development of an organization founded on intelligence and creativity was also succeeded. We simply say that the model of thinking heads and executing members has shown its limits: today's enterprise and society need all talents, without exception. The problem of their coordination remains. Returning to the notion of personnel, we can say that " the personnel is a determining resource for the enterprise, which puts into operation all the means at its disposal: financial, technical, commercial, etc. The success of the enterprise, its degree of competitiveness depends to a great extent on the quality and motivation of its employees." C. Bărbulescu (1, p.308)
1.2. Creativity.
"The creative attitude presupposes that first you have the ability to be perplexed in the face of the new" (Erich Fromm) Creativity is undoubtedly the fundamental dimension of the human spirit. In the broadest sense, creativity is the ability of man to give birth to a new reality, to establish new values on the ground of the existing ones or on novel domains. Of Latin origin, but taken from French into Romanian, the concept of creativity has numerous definitions, sometimes convoluted and tautological. The simplest would be: "creativity is the ability to create" and "creating means producing original and useful ideas by combining elements that already existed". The defining element of creativity is therefore the generation of new ideas, while innovation also involves making changes based on them. The word "creativity" is relatively new, but interest in it began in antiquity: Plato, Heraclitus, Aristotle, etc. The French mathematician Jacques Hadamard is the one who describes for the first time the four phases of the invention process: preparation, incubation, illumination, verification. Some authors, A.Moles, R.Claude, (34, p. 52), considers the notion of creativity, introduced by Gordon Allport, in 1937, as not only a series of attributes and partial functions, but the set of qualities that generate the new; and other authors believe that the term creativity was used for the first time by Jacob Levi Moreno - "the father of sociometry" - to denote "the faculty of introducing something new into the world". The question has often been raised whether the ability to create is specific to the human being in general or characterizes only certain groups (the elites). It was concluded that the disposition to create exists in a potential state in all individuals, but this capacity varies from one person to another under the influence of many factors (intelligence, education, environment, curiosity, motivation, cultural level, etc.). Creativity has been approached in different ways and in the specialized literature there are a multitude of definitions of the term. We could refer to some of them:
- J. Moreno is the one who proposes the term creativity, thereby designating "the faculty to introduce something new into the world";
- innovative creativity - consists in the deep, essential modification of the foundations, laws, principles that govern a field of art, science, technique, etc., in the establishment of new ones and on this basis, in the development in new directions of the respective field. At this level, one works with abstractions, and as a consequence, a remarkable capacity for conceptualization is necessary. 6. emergent creativity - is the highest level of creativity and the rarest form of manifestation of creativity. It consists of completely new relationships that, even if they are based on previously acquired knowledge and experiences, represent such a profound transformation of them that they can even exceed their own general level of understanding and acceptance for a certain period. Here are the great creators who revolutionized fields of knowledge or human experience. The most valuable creations are awarded the Noble Prize. Creativity as a process is a complex act on which different factors act , which can be grouped into: 1. Factors intrinsic to the person, which in turn are divided into 3 large groups: a) biological factors: gender leaves its mark on creativity in that the number of creators is definitely higher among men than among women. The results of a large number of surveys show that, although boys are superior to girls in terms of spatial skills, arithmetic performance, mechanical understanding, girls instead surpass them in terms of verbal ease, numerical calculation, perceptive capacities, memory claims V. Feier (16, p. 58); The age. Without establishing a precise relationship between creativity and the age of each person, the researchers came to the conclusion that people are more creative between the ages of 25 and 45, this also depends on the fields: where more imagination than experience is required, the maximum creations are found at an age of 25-35 years, and where experience is important (for example, in management), the maximum of creations is between 35 and 45 years; The state of health, the level of relaxation and stress are also factors that will influence creativity and especially managerial creativity; Experience , accumulated knowledge. Important is not only the quantity, the richness of the experience, but also its variety. Many discoveries in one field have been suggested by solutions found in another discipline. It is no coincidence that pedagogy insists on the value of general culture. Two types of experiences are distinguished: a) a direct experience, accumulated through direct contact with
the phenomena or through personal discussions with specialists and b) an indirect experience, obtained by reading books or listening to presentations b) Intellectual factors the aptitude for creation (the ability to redefine, restructure, transform, change the function of an object), the ability to abstract, to synthesize, coherent organization, convergent thinking, memory, specific intellectual skills. Of example , Thomas Edison , the known inventor , held up _ what _ brilliant it is 99 % perspiration and 1 % inspiration. _ _ This point of view it justify by _ SPECIFIC FIELD yes , the inventions _ _ _ of order technically because _ A HAD to try it _ over 3,000 _ substances _ _ until _ _ _ _ _ get to _ the May resistant to _ TENSION FROM bulb electrical ( then A former I found it filament of good luck ). But Edison's thesis does not apply to Mozart, who was able to write a sonata in a few days. Work is needed, but not quite in the proportion expected by the famous inventor. general intelligence. Intelligence is determined not only genetically and, partially, by an adequate diet (quantitative and rich in animal proteins), but also by an education and training differentiated by age, but especially correlated with the child's intelligence quotient and later of the adult; divergent thinking (fluency, flexibility, originality); sensitivity to different problems, etc. "To achieve superior creative performances, a minimum level of intelligence is necessary, which varies depending on the field of activity, but a higher intelligence quotient does not guarantee a corresponding increase in creativity". Al. Redhead (15, p.51) c) Non-intellectual personality factors : motivation and will. Increasing the desire, the interest in creation, as well as the strength to overcome obstacles, obviously has a notable role in supporting the creative activity. temperament, character traits (attitude towards difficulties); attitude towards work;
3. Enlightenment – the complex action of associating and combining information that triggers the moment of inspiration, respectively of discovering the optimal solution to the problem; 4. Verification – the complex action of final evaluation of the previously adopted solution, achievable through assessment, validation, application, under conditions of amendment, finishing, adjustment, reorganization, permanent improvement. The creative process involves notifying and solving some problems, a complex action based on the following operations: defining and understanding the type of problem, advancing some virtual solutions, hypothetical probable solutions, (re)updating – activating the knowledge and abilities necessary to choose the optimal solution, choosing the solution optimal on the criteria of originality and efficiency, the application of the optimal solution within the specific framework defined by the existing problem; checking the way to solve the problem in a managerial sense (systematic – optimal – strategic approach). The artist reviews his creation, makes retouches; there are many cases when large parts of the opera are rewritten - that's what Leo Tolstoy did. The functions of creativity determine the three-dimensional structure of creativity, reflect the functional requirements of creativity at the level of product, process, personality: a) The social function of creativity determines the way of making the creative product by stimulating and directing those significant personality behaviors from the perspective of perfecting the assumed cognitive, affective, motivational relationship with the economic, political and cultural reality. In this sense, the creative product is all the more relevant the more extensive and deeper the structuring of the personality's possibilities for understanding social reality. The social function of creativity aims, however, not only at the immediate quality of the creative product, but also at its optimizing effects, which have an increasingly wide sphere of action, at a temporal and spatial level, even going up to the level of macrosystem relations. "Each society stimulates and reflects a particular type of creativity". M. Roco (28, p.29) b) The psychological function of creativity determines the way to carry out the creative process by employing all existing resources at the level of the human psychic system, with some obvious accents aimed at: intelligence as a general aptitude, which ensures the premise of sensing, solving, inventing problems and situations - problem; thinking, as a product of logical knowledge, designed multiphase, based on the informational-operational unit, achievable in a convergent, divergent sense; imagination - as a process of logical knowledge, specialized in (re)producing the new by (re)combining previously acquired information, special skills, as "vectors" of effective action, regulators in certain fields of activity; attitudes (affective, motivational, character), as "vectors" of efficient, self-regulating action in any field of activity.
Seen from the perspective of their creative functionality, all the elements of the human psychic system can evolve as general attributes of the creative personality involved throughout the entire creative process. c) The pedagogical function of creativity determines the behavior of the creative personality, engaged in the design of educational-didactic actions that can be achieved under conditions of continuous transformation of subject-object relationships. The definition of the concept of pedagogical creativity implies the full utilization of the structural-functional components, previously analyzed, interpretable and achievable in a formative priority sense. The structure of pedagogical creativity highlights certain specific characteristics, developed at the level of: creative product, creative process, creative personality.
1.3. Methods of stimulating creativity.
" The method defines the path, the itinerary, the order structure or the schedule after which regulates practical and intellectual actions in order to achieve a goal" (Golden Lamb) The word method comes from the Greek methodos, which means road, way to something. Thus, we can say that the method is the road or path that the researcher takes in his endeavors, but at the same time it is also the tool used to collect and verify data. In the "Dictionaire fundamental de la psychologie" we have the following wording: "method is the set of steps carried out by a researcher to discover and verify knowledge or by a practitioner to solve a concrete problem starting from existing knowledge." This definition does not mean that there are two categories of individuals, some who discover the knowledge and others who apply it, but it shows us the fact that a working individual does not use the same thinking approaches or the same techniques when establishing the knowledge and when applying it. "The method is the set of procedures, approaches or rules adopted in conducting a research or in a practical activity" says Marc Richelle. According to A. Lalande, the method is "a program regulating in advance a sequence of operations and signaling certain mistakes to avoid in order to achieve a determined result." In a general sense, method means the way to find the truth about a thing or a phenomenon, or to find and formulate truthful (verified) answers to questions like: "what?",
The aspiration towards the development of the creative spirit led to the conception of methods that, on the one hand, combat blockages, and on the other, favor the freest possible association of ideas, thus using the resources of the unconscious to the maximum. Given the very large number of methods (over 50), in addition to these very well-known ones, we will also mention a few frequently mentioned by those who dealt with the field of creativity:
- Brainstorming is the old type of associative technique, developed by Alex Osborn in 1935 and starts from two essential principles: postponing judgment in order to look for solutions; the greatest possible imaginative productivity is necessary to reach viable solutions. When Osborne was president of the New York advertising agency BBDO, he found that in brainstorming meetings, much of the time and energy was wasted on destructive criticism of other people's ideas. His "enlightenment" consisted in the introduction of separate judgment, the emission of ideas being separated from criticism (the analysis of ideas) into two parts. In order to free our spirit from educational conditioning and train us in an uncensored process of releasing ideas, it is necessary to observe the four mandatory rules of free expression, established by Alex Osborne: 1. It is forbidden to prohibit. Self-censorship is suppressed. Negative and positive evaluation of ideas is prohibited.
- The most bizarre ideas are received with enthusiasm.
- Quantity is privileged over quality.
- The association of ideas will be practiced systematically and without limits: each proposal of someone is a locomotive to which all others can attach their wagons. This first part was attended by six or seven people who were informed in advance about the researched topic and took place in an atmosphere of exuberance and good mood (within an interval of at most one hour). In the second part, the group includes or is reduced to those people directly involved in the problem and consists of a methodological and rigorous examination of the list of 50- 100 generated ideas. Sorting leads to the retention of the most pertinent ones, but also retaining the most original ones in order to develop and deepen them. Limits and dysfunctions of brainstorming:
- The application of the four rules is difficult, the liberation and free unleashing of the imagination is not achieved by a simple voluntary decision. Refraining from any judgment of the ideas of others, in our cultures dominated by a critical spirit, is a difficult attitude to integrate. Bizarre thinking and strange ideas are not within the reach of people who have been taught by school to "swirl the tongue seven times in the mouth" before expressing themselves (to think
seven times and say once). Listening to the other with openness, in order to move from the individual game to the team game, comes in deep contradiction with the values of individualism that characterize Latin societies.
- The second part is easy to turn into a massacre, a storm of criticism, but it must capitalize on the efforts sustained in the first part, recover and transform, and finally find a way to present the new ideas, so so that they are accepted by an often resistant (reluctant) public.
- The apparent ease of the technique is wrong; people are needed who, in addition to flexibility and natural fluidity, must have the experience of collective practices of the logic of invention. With all these difficulties encountered, brainstorming has developed a lot in world practice, being indicated in problems that require finding new ideas, such as: business management, production restructuring, commercial activities, etc. A series of derived brainstorming techniques were also developed , such as:
- Gordon's Little technique , in which no one knows the exact nature of the problem under discussion; the group meets several times and the meeting lasts longer;
- the "fresh eye" technique, in which case the participants have little experience, in order to eliminate the routine;
- the "organized research" technique, in which the problem is divided and analyzed each part in turn. These techniques are based on the same rules as brainstorming. Associative techniques are based on the brainstorming technique improved by using a checklist, including lists of stimulating verbs such as: Help/ Suppress/ Divide/ Multiply/ Reverse/ Hide etc. We can also practice forced associations. The procedure is as follows: first we establish a list of 12 free associations, starting from a key word of the problem; then we take words at random and check that they are far from the original theme; then we proceed to biassociates line by line , wanting to obtain unexpected solutions. Associative techniques are used especially in the improvement of some products, as well as in the organization of work in enterprises. They are also very old and essential to understanding and learning: our natural tendency is to relate all new reality to an already known reality. In order to invent, this approach must be reversed and - as proposed by Gordon and Prince, the inventors of the "synectic" method
- "to look at known (familiar) things as if they were foreign".
- Synectics was developed by WJ Gordon in 1944. The word synectics comes from Greek roots that mean "putting heterogeneous things together". Since a single solution has been developed that will be adjusted later, it is based on two essential principles: the transformation of the strange (unknown) into the familiar (known); transforming the familiar into the strange, allowing a distancing from the problem and approaching it from an unusual perspective. The method
remains up in the air and the citizens do not know what to believe! Moreover, there are no discussions following creation, but only information.
- The 6- 3 - 5 method. It is about dividing a meeting into groups of 6 people, in which each one proposes three ideas in a maximum time of 5 minutes. The first group discusses the problem and, on a card, three ideas are written, each one being the head of a column that will be completed by the other groups. After 5 minutes, the card is passed to another group that adds three more ideas in the columns, below the others, etc. until each card goes to all the groups. The leader collects the sheets, reads them in front of everyone and discusses to decide which of the proposals should be appropriated.
- The Delphi technique consists, in essence, in questioning a large number of experts and specialists (scientists, politicians, journalists) regarding the events (of a technical, economic, social, cultural nature) that could occur in a certain period of time. The information provided by the survey is tested and finally a picture of the future is obtained (it is used for formulating forecasts).
- Brainwriting is a method that involves a group of 6-12 people, sitting at a round table. Each will express in writing three ideas in approximately 5-15 minutes and let the paper circulate to the person next to him. The papers will always circulate in the same direction and the last three best ideas read or thought will be written on them. When all members have completed each sheet of paper, the last ideas considered to be the best are read and discussed within the group.
- The synthetic method tries to describe the route followed in the framework of creativity stimulation, a route in five stages followed in the case of most methods, each of them systematically involving a divergent phase where the four rules of free running are applied and a convergent phase intended for sorting , structuring and refining previously produced materials. The first stage, creative perception, aims to bring together the largest number of objective and subjective information, facts and figures, sensations and intuitions, statements and hypotheses on the issues addressed. The second, creative analysis - an in-depth multilogical exploration of the problem field is carried out, ending by breaking it down into elementary particles. Their restructuring, in the converging phase, allows the achievement of a true relief radiography, identifying the expected objective and indicating the critical areas that interest us as a priority. The third, creative production - aims to generate a maximum of magical ideas, of which the most promising ones are translated into creative ideas. The fourth, creative selection - aims to optimize the choice of the best idea, favoring, in the divergent phase, a benevolent examination and bringing closer the people who decide all the
proposals and, in particular, the disturbing ones. Fifth, creative application - serves to prepare the best possible conditions for action. An anti-sabotage technique is applied, in the divergent phase, which consists in making a census of the available means. Starting from the careful examination of the risks, it is much easier to build a detailed action plan and schedule success.
- The Frisco method has as its main characteristic the assignment of roles by the moderator (the traditional, the exuberant, the pessimistic, the optimist).
- Experimentation and simulation , also developed thanks to electronic computing capabilities and modeling techniques, are increasingly becoming a reliable aid to methods and techniques to stimulate creativity.
- Breakdown is the method by which the problem is divided into its component elements. Each component is enlarged, reduced, replaced, subjected to numerous questions, finally recomposing the whole and verifying its novelty and usefulness. It is used, in particular, for the improvement of existing products, including in the management of human resources. - The "zero-defects" method is a method that prevents the occurrence of defects instead of their subsequent elimination through product control. The method consists, in fact, in the successive decrease of the number of accepted defects, a number characterized by the AQL (Accepted Quality Level) parameter. The operation is not easy, especially as one moves towards lower levels of AQL. An important stage in the application of the method is the identification of the causes of the defects that appear, an operation that can present difficulties. One method that can facilitate the identification of the causes of defects is the construction of an ISHIKAWA diagram (or "fishtail diagram"). The diagram graphically presents the influence on quality of five basic elements – technology, machinery, raw materials, labor, manufacturing control. - The list method , developed by R. Crawford, in 1931 and involves breaking down each problem into its component elements and improving each component separately; - The method morphological analysis decomposes the main function into its basic parameters and generates all the solutions that can arise from their different combination. For example, in the case of a water faucet, the characteristics might be:
- the sense of action – pressing, pulling, pushing, rotating;
- mode of operation - by hand, foot, mechanical, electric;
- shape – cylindrical, with edges, rods, pedal, no visible shape. It results in a large number of solutions (80 in the given example), from which the most advantageous option is chosen from the point of view of technology, economy and the possibilities of accessing the market.
