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This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/eb017585. When citing the article, please cite: Tudor Rickards, Les Jones, (1987), “Creativity Audit: a Diagnostic Approach to Overcoming Blocks”, Managerial Auditing Journal, Vol. 2 Iss: 1, pp. 17 - 21.

The purpose of this research is to investigate creativity within the context of a more regulated accounting functional area (audit and tax) and a less regulated non‐accounting functional area (consulting). Accordingly, this research aims at developing insights into how current cultural assumptions may have to change, if professional challenges requiring more creative behaviours are to be successfully addressed.

Six literature‐derived hypotheses were formulated to be quantitatively tested using a self‐report inventory.

The findings showed that the less regulated functional area reported higher scores on creativity, intrinsic motivation, creative team factors and transformational leadership. The findings suggested that such differences could not be explained by personal education/aptitude variations, and could be a consequence of more support for creative behaviours, a significantly different form of transformational leadership, and also weaker structural constraints on creativity.

The work has examined constructs at the level of professional work groups, while it has raised issues at the far wider level or professional cultures. Researchers acknowledge that such broader findings are of an exploratory nature. The new scales were adequately reported to be reliable and valid, but further assessment is needed. Further studies and efforts are essential to raise awareness in professional bodies of the importance of the issues of creativity, motivation, and leadership.

The work has implications for tailored training and development of accounting professionals. Case evidence from “best‐practice” accounting departments would help challenge the beliefs that creative change is impossible.

The research suggested a new paradigm in which accounting professionals can be adaptively creative “within the task” and innovatively creative “around the task” as appropriate means of change and development of services in accounting offices, as this is theoretically feasible and empirically could be proved.

Training departments have tended to include in their general management courses some slot for problem‐solving techniques, or else to offer some such topic as “Creative Problem‐solving”. These courses tend to operate by discovery learning on real or model problems using techniques such as brainstorming or lateral thinking. In this article we argue that trainers involved in such courses should consider designing in more opportunities for personalised learning. This, in turn, will be linked via the real needs of the participants to significantly more creative behaviour in the long term.

An approach for thinking about, and intervening in, organizational change processes is developed which tries to achieve a balance between the naiveté of popular linear approaches to change and the complexity of metaphoric models that have been suggested in the recent academic literature. Two concepts, mind‐set and paradox, are advanced with the aim of encouraging reflective thinking among organizational members. An application of the concepts in a specific organizational setting is provided. This paper provides both researchers and managers with a renewed vocabulary, enabling them to better understand the processes that are set in motion by planned organizational change.

It has been recently argued that managers do not use creative problem‐solving techniques because of concerns about managing the ideas produced. This paper examines five different ways of “closing down” during creative problem solving, and suggests factors which influence the selection of a technique: voting is the preferred choice for consensus‐seeking; clustering is a means of transforming data qualitatively; hurdles provide a means of managing data arriving over disparate time periods; weighting is best reserved for standard and quantifiable data; while gut feel can deal best with decision making involving “fuzzy” data. A psychological rationale for the use of the various techniques is proposed, and a contingency model of decision making developed which may give managers confidence to experiment with the creative problem‐solving mechanisms for generating options, because of increased knowledge of effective mechanisms subsequently for closing down those options.

Conventional wisdom presumes that accounting professionals have little capability for creative thinking. An alternative view is that accountants display creativity when provided with organisational opportunities. This view has been tested in a comparative study of professionals drawn from similar educational backgrounds and allocated to consulting, audit and tax duties within the headquarters of a major international firm in Saudi Arabia. A benchmarking approach was adapted. Those professionals placed in the consulting department reported more positive climates and creative outputs. There was evidence that there was scope for increasing the creativity to organisational advantage within the audit, tax and related functions, through more transformational leadership interventions. In view of the educational similarities of the samples, it is concluded that any lack of creative performance within the audit and tax functions is not due to individual deficiencies. Team development and leadership interventions are suggested as promising means of addressing any “creativity gap” in audit and tax team processes.

The Kirton Adaption‐Innovation Inventory was introduced as a survey‐feedback instrument during a team development workshop. The instrument proved easy to apply and interpret. Furthermore, the intervention appeared to provide the participants with a powerful means of dealing with misunderstandings and in‐group conflicts. The instrument deserves further trials by organisational change agents and trainers.

Traditional audits play a powerful role in helping companies change. A “creativity audit” can play a similar role in helping a company overcome possible blocks to the creativity of its employees. The auditors now become change agents, and their method of data collection and feedback is the survey‐feedback technique. The principles and practical results achieved from such a method are described.

Feedback from a disinterested observer can be a powerful stimulus for change. In our everyday lives the new mirror in the bathroom can act as the disinterested observer reminding us of progress (or lack of progress) in the fight against middle‐aged flab. Similarly there are few more salutory experiences than the first time we see ourselves on film or in a video‐taped training excercise. “Do I really act like that?” we might ask incredulously, but rapidly there is acceptance that the answer is “probably yes”, followed by a resolve to do something about that mannerism that had been so disturbing to witness.