TysonSxM
PROMPT AND INSTRUCTIONS: Review your classmates’ posts and…
PROMPT AND INSTRUCTIONS:
Review your classmates’ posts and provide two of them with your feedback (consider replying to a peer whose post has not been replied to yet). Address the following points:
1 .Review the posts by your peers about Ekvall’s ten dimensions and provide your feedback by answering the following questions:
1A. Do you agree or disagree with the need for additional dimensions?
Were you surprised that Ekvall included only one dimension that is negatively correlated? What conclusions can you draw from that fact?
1B. Do you agree or disagree with the post about the dimension that is the most difficult to assess?
2. Review the creative climate assessments posted by your peers and provide your feedback by answering the following questions:
2A. Based on the notes, did you disagree with any of the ten ratings in the assessments?
2B. Do you think it would be more beneficial for organizations to try to strengthen the aspects of their creative climate that are the strongest or to improve the aspects that are the weakest?
2C. What recommendations would you make to the organization to improve their creative climate? For example, think about how established organizations with existing structures designed for efficient and effective use of resources can relax some of their restrictions to allow playfulness, freedom, and risk-taking without losing control of the things that allow it to be currently successful.
Classmates post:
Were you surprised by the inclusion of any of Ekvall’s ten dimensions? Are there any additional dimensions that you think should have been included?
The dimensions of creative climate have many factors that include challenge, dynamism, and liveliness, playfulness and humor, freedom, risk taking, idea time, idea support, trust and openness, debate, and conflict. The dimension I was most surprised about is playfulness and humor because it involves jokes and laughter. When I think about an organization or work environment, I don’t initially think of laughter and jokes because those types of things come after work or during leisure time. I think a dimension of creative climate that could be included would be management. This is more focused look at how leadership or managers cause an open environment or cause tension with fellow workers or subordinates. Leadership should be displaying supportive activities such as team building exercises to get people more familiar with each other and feel the need to challenge themselves.
Which dimension of creative climate was hardest to evaluate?
I believe risk taking was the hardest to evaluate because there are many moments in the day that can be considered a risk that may have positive or negative consequences. Decision making, planning, working, testing, and communicating can be risks depending on how they are executed or perceived. There is no risk without reward though and taking risks is something that organizations execute daily in order to be successful in their endeavors.
Share any insights or thoughts about the creative climate for the organization you evaluated. Discuss the one to two dimensions that received the highest and lowest scores.
In my evaluation, my organization the highest scores in Challenge and Trust and openness. This is because employees of the organization are committed and motivated to contribute to their work in order to be successful. Trust and Openness is important because it allows for new ideas to be shared amongst different members of the team. For instance, employees with years of experience can share and help support those with little experience.
The dimension that received the lowest scores include Humor and Risk Taking. I think my organization scored low on humor and playfulness because workers are extremely focused on their jobs and don’t want to joke around too much considering the government is our customer. The organization also scored low in risk taking because while there may be new ideas, the employees don’t always want to take certain risks because there has always been and always will be a specific processes and procedures that need to be followed in order to complete the work.
Use this scale for your ratings:
0 (Not at all applicable)
1 (Applicable to some extent)
2 (Fairly applicable)
3 (Applicable to a high degree)
Dimension
Notes
Rating
Challenge
Being a safety engineer at a government contract company, there is an emphasis on challenging work where my team members and I contribute to the safety of our navy, army, and airforce pilots. Most job titles in my organization are challenging for the sole purpose of making sure the aircraft that the service men and women use on a daily basis work correctly, safely, and efficiently.
3
Dynamism and Liveliness
The eventfulness of my company varies depending on your job title. As a safety engineer, the job is fairly dynamic. There are several different programs that are to be worked on and within those programs, different analysis and tests need to be done.
2
Playfulness and Humor
I would say that there is not an emphasis on ease or spontaneity. The workplace is fairly serious due to the difficulty of the tasks and the customers high demand of products that we produce.
0
Freedom
As a government contract organization, there is little to no freedom. For every test, analysis, etc that is done by the company, there are procedures that are followed precisely.
1
Risk Taking
There is not too much risk-taking in the work place. Most of all the documents and analyses that are completed are following specific guidelines that the government (customer) has put into place so that the engineers are able to comply with safety procedures and requirements.
0
Idea Time
There is no time anyone could designate to having ideas, we are placed in our roles and work until the next break.
0
Idea Support
Based on past analyses and tests that employees have done do impact the way in which ideas are used in upcoming analyses. If there are processes that work well, then those processes/ideas are used in upcoming work.
1
Trust and Openness
Our team is generally open with each other and trusts one another to do the job correctly. When team members have questions, there are always teammates there to support.
2
Debate
Our functionality is authoritarian, most “debates” are brought up with senior managers, where their authority always has the final say.
0
Conflict (negatively correlated)
In my current workplace, it does not seem that the level of conflict is high. Granted, I work from home permanently so I am not too versed in the workplace conflict. However, from my little experience all team members get along and I have not heard anything negative towards teammates.
0
Summary: The overall specific work that we do as safety engineers leaves very little room for overall creativity in the workplace. There is a chance to improve in areas such as debate, playfulness and humor, and idea time but I am not confident that it will be perceived positively. The job I do as a safety engineer is more or less “by the book” and needs to follow specific requirements and procedures.
