Dynamic capabilities, creative action, and poetics

• Main Author: Donald MacLean
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Fundação Getulio Vargas 2017-05-01
• Series: RAE: Revista de Administração de Empresas
• Subjects: Dynamic capabilities; creative action; poetics; strategic change; transformation.
• Online Access: http://bibliotecadigital.fgv.br/ojs/index.php/rae/article/view/68560/66297

Research on dynamic capabilities explores how businesses change enables enterprises to remain competitive. However, theory on dynamic capabilities still struggles to capture novelty, the essence of change. This study argues that a full understanding of strategic change requires us to sharpen our focus on real people and experiences; in turn, we must incorporate other faculties, which almost always operate alongside our logical ones, into our theory. We must pay more attention to the “non­-rational” sides of ourselves—including, but not limited to, our imaginations, intuitions, attractions, biographies, preferences, and aesthetic faculties and capabilities. We argue that all such faculties, on the one hand, are central to our abilities to comprehend and cope with complexity and, on the other hand, foster novel understandings, potential responses, and social creativity. This study intro­duces the possibility of an alternative form of inquiry that highlights the role of poetic faculties in strategic behavior and change.