HOW ORGANIZATIONS FOSTER THE CREATIVE USE OF … · provide slack resources (Woodman, Sawyer, &...

HOW ORGANIZATIONS FOSTER THE CREATIVEUSE OF RESOURCES

SCOTT SONENSHEIN*Rice University

Using a multi-year qualitative study, I explain how employees at a fast-growing retailorganization used creative resourcing—that is, the manipulation and recombination ofobjects in novel and useful ways to solve problems. I induce two core organizationalprocesses (autonomous resourcing and directed resourcing) that explain how organi-zations foster ongoing creative activities in response to different perceived resourceendowments. In doing so, I add clarity to a mixed literature that argues on the onehand that limited resources foster creativity, and on the other, that abundant resourcesfoster creativity. Instead, I reorient the questions that scholars ask by shifting theconversation away from variance-explanation models and towards understandingorganizational processes, specifically around how employees use resources in dy-namic ways and how managers enable them to do so. My study unpacks how the linkbetween resources and creativity is rooted deeply in the actions of managers andemployees embedded in organizations over time. In elaborating theory around theseactions, I contribute to scholarly and practitioner understanding around how organi-zations foster creativity in a variety of resource environments.

Apple, Limited Resources: “Apple’s longstandingproblem is that it hasn’t come up with enough inno-vative products . . . But a company that is shrinking asfast as Apple loses talent and research funds to de-velop those very innovations.” (Gomez, 1997: A3)

Apple, Abundant Resources: “With quarterly reve-nue growth of 83 percent and profit growth of 95percent, we’re firing on all cylinders . . . We willcontinue to innovate on all fronts.” (Apple, 2011)

Google, Limited Resources: “As the database anduser base grew, Brin and Page needed more comput-ers. Short of cash, they saved money by buyingparts, building their own machines, and scroungingaround the loading dock looking for unclaimedcomputers.” (Vise & Malseed, 2008: 40)

Google, Abundant Resources: “Last month, Googlewas hailed as the third most innovative business in theworld by US magazine Fast Company. But its size andstructure can mean that creativity is stifled and em-ployees become bored.” (Marketing Week, 2012)

Is necessity the mother of all creativity or do anabundance of resources lead to creative outputs?Scholars and practitioners have wrestled with thisquestion for decades. The Apple and Google exam-ples quoted—two organizations hailed as amongthe most creative and innovative in the world(Walters, 2008) —exemplify the contrasting viewsaround the relationship between resources and cre-ativity. The Apple quotes illustrate the view thatlimited resources impede creativity and abundantresources foster widespread creativity as an organ-ization expands its access to resources. Conversely,the Google quotes exemplify how resource-poor or-ganizations can become highly creative to surviveas a new venture but may lose that creative edge asthey grow and acquire more resources.

While resources are unquestionably important inshaping creative outputs, scholars too have pre-sented contrasting viewpoints. On the one hand,some scholars suggest that more abundant re-sources are a prerequisite to creative action throughthe direct effect of providing individuals with whatthey need for creative action and through the sym-bolic effect of demonstrating an organization’s

* I am grateful to Erik Dane, Jane Dutton, JenniferGeorge, Adam Grant, Mary Ann Glynn, Balaji Koka, DougLepisto, Andy Molinsky, Ryan Quinn and Jing Zhou forfeedback on a previous draft. I also thank Kristen Naultfor her research assistance as well as Tina Borja for hereditorial suggestions. I also thank attendees at seminarsat the 2012 May Meaning Meeting hosted by Yale Uni-versity, 2011 May Meaning Meeting hosted by BYU andYale University, the Management and Organizations De-partment at the Ross School of Business, University ofMichigan, and the Organizational Behaviour and HumanResource Management area at the Rotman School of Man-agement, University of Toronto.

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� Academy of Management Journal2014, Vol. 57, No. 3, 814–848.http://dx.doi.org/10.5465/amj.2012.0048

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commitment to a project (e.g., Amabile, Conti,Coon, Lazenby, & Herron, 1996); furthermore, afirm’s slack resources allow for learning and exper-imentation (Cohen & Levinthal, 1990). On the otherhand, some scholars argue that limited resourcesfoster creativity though enhancing task challenge(Ohly & Fritz, 2010). Scholars have also argued thatexternal resource constraints can foster creative be-haviors through generating urgency (e.g., Baker &Nelson, 2005). Conversely, better-endowed organi-zations may struggle with creativity because toomany resources can lead to wasteful spending anda lack of urgency (Nohria & Gulati, 1996).

What makes adjudicating between these diverg-ing perspectives on resources and creativity diffi-cult is that scholars rarely study the creative activ-ities of individuals embedded in organizations overtime. Instead, they focus on either new organiza-tions with limited resources (e.g., Baker & Nelson,2005; Katila & Shane, 2005) or mature organiza-tions with abundant resources (e.g., Brown & Dug-uid, 1991; Danneels, 2002; Hargadon & Bechky,2006), but rarely on the transformation of theseorganizations as they evolve over time. As a result,scholars have limited knowledge about what ex-plains ongoing creative activity (or its absence) asaccess to resources change—something exacer-bated by scholars’ surprisingly scant knowledgeabout the organizational processes of creativity(Ford, 1996). Instead, scholars have a strong biastowards theorizing creativity as an outcome or in-dividual difference (Drazin, Glynn, & Kazanjian,1999; Zhou & Shalley, 2010).

As I conducted research at a retail companytransforming itself from a small, resource-con-strained family business into a large public corpo-ration, the competing perspectives on resourcesand creativity provided incomplete insights intomy data. The organization, despite lacking re-sources in its infancy, engaged in widespread cre-ative activities but also maintained these wide-spread creative activities as it grew substantially.As I canvassed creativity research to make sense ofthese findings, I found that extant studies rarelyfollowed the historical evolution of an organizationto understand how creative activities, and the re-source mechanisms that foster them, unfold overtime. Thus, I sought to add clarity to the competingperspectives in scholarly and practitioner workaround the role of resources in fostering creativityby focusing on critical organizational processesthat connect resources and creativity over time. I doso through a theory elaboration study that asks:

How do resources shape creative activities insideorganizations over time? In addressing this ques-tion, I draw from and build on research in resourc-ing (e.g., Dutton, Worline, Frost, & Lilius, 2006;Feldman, 2004; Feldman & Worline, 2012; Glynn &Wrobel, 2006), which theorizes resources as arisingfrom malleable objects shaped by individuals. Thisperspective contrasts with how creativity scholars(e.g., Amabile et al., 1996), and other organizationaltheorists (e.g., Barney, 1991; Pfeffer & Salancik,1978), have historically theorized resources asfixed entities. Instead of viewing a resource as hav-ing a single use, a resourcing perspective makes acritical distinction between an object (i.e., a tangi-ble and intangible asset that employees must acton) and a resource (an object that has been acted onto make it useful) (Feldman, 2004; Feldman & Wor-line, 2012). While an object is anything with innatequalities that may make it useful, until individualstake action on those qualities the object does notfulfill its potential as a resource. In revising howscholars theorize resources in the context of cre-ativity, I move the conversation in the literatureaway from simply examining the relationship be-tween resource quantity and creativity; rather, Iadvance research around how actions shape andgenerate the very resources that both constitute andfacilitate creative activities.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Scholars define “creativity” as the production ofnovel and useful ideas by individuals (Amabile,1988). They explain creative activity using interac-tionist models that examine characteristics of theperson and the situation (Shalley, Zhou, & Oldham,2004), pointing to a host of individual traits such aspersonality (e.g., Gough, 1979) and cognitive style(e.g., Amabile, 1996), intrinsic motivation (e.g.,Grant & Berry, 2011) and key situational factorssuch as job characteristics (Hackman & Oldham,1976), leader–member exchange (Basu & Green,1997) and rewards (Amabile, 1996). These re-searchers frequently adopt a variance-explanationapproach in which they seek to explain creativityas an outcome based on these personal and situa-tional factors. While this research accounts for sit-uational variables, this focus is usually on the im-mediate situation as opposed to the broaderorganizational context (George, 2007; Sutton & Har-gadon, 1996). Hargadon and Bechky (2006) offerone important exception, in which they examineongoing creativity in a group and theorize that four

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behavioral patterns—help seeking, help giving,collective reframing and reinforcing—foster groupcreativity. Nevertheless, existing creativity researchfocuses largely on individuals divorced from thelarger group, let alone broader organizationalcontexts.

Diving into the relationship between resourcesand creativity, some scholars propose that abun-dant resources are necessary for creativity, and theydefine resources as everything an organization canaccess for creativity in a specific domain (Amabile,1997; Amabile et al., 1996). It is important to notethat this definition of resources does not focus onthe importance of action in transforming objectsinto resources. Consequently, existing research em-phasizes the fixed use of resources. Synthesizingprevious research (e.g., Cohen & Levinthal, 1990;Farr & Ford, 1990), Amabile et al. (1996) arguedthat resources mitigate the chance of restrictions onwhat people can accomplish with their work andmay influence individuals’ beliefs about the intrin-sic value of the project, although they found weakempirical results for this argument. Furthermore,scholars argue that a particular type of resource,namely slack resources, fosters creativity by allow-ing for experimentation, responding to uncertainty,and freeing management’s attention to innovate(Cyert & March, 1963). Resources, especially capi-tal, are critical to allow firms to be creative (Katila& Shane, 2005) and gain a sustainable advantage(Barney, 1991). Lacking in existing firm knowledge(e.g., Cohen & Levinthal, 1990) and resources(Teece, 1986), newer firms struggle to generate andimplement creative ideas. According to these per-spectives, an abundance of resources enables organ-izations to afford to make mistakes (Bourgeois,1981) and provides key managerial attentional re-sources (Ocasio, 1997), both of which may supportcreative activities. Some scholars place an impor-tant boundary condition on this argument, arguingthat too many slack resources may undermine cre-ativity owing to wasteful spending on pet projects(Nohria & Gulati, 1996). But more generally, thisresearch assumes that abundant resources providemanagers with the cover to experiment and takerisks. For example, scholars claim that leaders whoprovide slack resources (Woodman, Sawyer, & Grif-fin, 1993), including information and expertise, en-hance creativity among their employees (Mumford,Hunter, Eubanks, Bedell, & Murphy, 2007; Mum-ford, Scott, Gaddis, & Strange, 2002). Other re-search has empirically demonstrated support forthis prediction, particularly around time (Andrews

& Smith, 1996; Elsbach & Hargadon, 2006; Kelly &McGrath, 1985; Madjar & Oldham, 2006). As a re-sult, many scholars endorse the view that “creativ-ity functions best in a resource-rich environment”(Marion, 2012: 473).

While many scholars have historically viewedabundant resources as a prerequisite for creativeactivity, other research offers a contrasting perspec-tive, positing that limited resources foster creativitybecause resource-constrained organizations are nim-bler (Kanter, 1985). Additionally, resource con-straints can lead to an elevated sense of challenge thatmotivates creativity (Ohly & Fritz, 2010; cf. Baer &Oldham, 2006) and may suggest a crisis in perfor-mance, which creates urgency around creativity toallow firms to survive (Bolton, 1993). But theseviews obscure how individuals act on objects toturn them into resources, instead theorizing thatresources primarily act on individuals (e.g., by el-evating a sense of challenge or invoking a sense ofa crisis).

Of the literature that examines creativity and re-sources, work on “bricolage” offers the most action-oriented theory (Baker, 2007; Baker & Nelson, 2005;Garud & Karnøe, 2003). Scholars define bricolage as“making do by applying combinations of the re-sources at hand to new problems and opportuni-ties” (Baker & Nelson, 2005: 333; Duymedjian &Rüling, 2010). The literature often portrays brico-lage as a last resort because organizations haveresource constraints or, put in the language of aresourcing lens, they lack access to a large reservoirof objects to transform into resources. To cope withthese limitations, individuals devise creative solu-tions by transforming into resources objects thatothers do not value (Baker, 2007).

While bricolage helps nascent firms survive,scholars claim that organizations must eventuallyreject widespread bricolage in order to grow intomature companies (Baker & Nelson, 2005; cf Brown& Duguid, 1991). Otherwise, they run the risk of“stalled growth” and an inability to take advantageof profitable opportunities (Baker & Nelson, 2005:354). This suggests that while limited resources (or,more precisely, limited access to objects) may fos-ter creativity in an organization’s infancy, creativ-ity may dissipate as organizations grow and acquireaccess to more objects to transform into resources.

In summary, extant research offers a mixed pic-ture about the quantity of resources and creativity,with either limited or abundant resources (i.e., ob-jects) predicted to lead to creativity. One reason forthis is that creativity scholars usually focus on in-

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dividuals and overlook organizational processesthat explain creativity (Ford, 1996). As a result,scholars emphasize static, variance-explanation ap-proaches, rather than dynamic processes aroundhow creativity unfolds over time (Drazin et al.,1999). In fact, scholars largely assume that creativ-ity is a stable characteristic of a firm, dependent onsize, structure and leadership (Bolton, 1993). Byfocusing on variance-explanation approaches,scholars have overlooked how resources are mal-leable and shaped by organizational processes andindividuals’ actions. Consequently, a greater em-phasis on the development of process theory, andthe crucial actions that undergird such processes,may offer an important complement to the vari-ance-explanation research on creativity by identi-fying how organizations create and shape resourcesover time to foster creative activities.

METHODS

Case Selection

I employed a single-site case study design, whichis common in examining processes that require in-depth data collection (Yin, 1994). I collected datafrom BoutiqueCo,1 a fast-growing retailer that ownsand operates stores in lifestyle centers, malls, andurban areas of the United States and sells productssuch as clothing, jewelry, accessories, and giftitems to predominantly female customers. This re-search examined BoutiqueCo as it grew from asmall, family business into a large, public chain ofretail stores valued at approximately $1 billion.

My initial research question focused on under-standing how organizational cultures are trans-formed as a result of dramatic change. I initiallyselected BoutiqueCo because I learned it wouldlikely go through major changes—particularly, rapidgrowth. I wondered how its culture, which empha-sized creativity, might change because of thisgrowth. While the organization’s growth was atyp-ical, I reasoned that this extreme case might helpelaborate theory (Lee, Mitchell, & Sablynski, 1999)by compressing the time for growth and allowing areal-time investigation of it. I also received unusu-ally strong access facilitated by a personal contact.This allowed me to build an information-rich casein a detailed but still realistic manner (Miles &Huberman, 1994).

As my data collection and analysis unfolded, Iwas surprised to learn that creative acts persistedover time, but that the underlying processes to ex-plain these acts differed (and were not necessarilyrelated to culture). My data and analysis led meaway from more stable views of culture and, in-stead, towards actions around the creative use ofresources. In fact, two experiences during my ob-servations proved critical in helping me reorientmy research. First, at a field observation a teamleader asked me to join her team and help open anew store. In reflecting on this experience, I wasrepurposed from a scholar to an employee, suggest-ing that employees treat resources (i.e., a scholarlyobserver) as malleable. Second, while working on anew store opening, I unexpectedly found myselfengaging in actions I would later understand myinformants to be doing. My field notes provideinsight into a critical example when I was workingwith moldable jewelry:

I molded one bracelet and made it the fixture—thatis, I hung the others on one piece so customers couldsee that, as I had molded one into a fixture, theycould all be molded. I made two of these . . . [Theteam leader] remarked how creative the idea was.Again, this was something I, a researcher, inventedand it was allowed to become part of the store.(Midwest field notes)

As I explain below in the Findings section, manip-ulating an object as I did by turning a product intoa display fixture is a key creative action I ultimatelysought to explain. Reflecting on this critical expe-rience sparked my reading of research on resourc-ing and creativity to help make sense of my emer-gent findings. As a result, my research focus shiftedto examine how resourcing (i.e., turning objectsinto resources) shapes creative activities over time.I reasoned that BoutiqueCo remained an appropri-ate setting because it allowed for examining cre-ative acts across different contexts and the pro-cesses used to facilitate them as the organizationchanged.

Case Overview

To unfold the case, I separate the organizationinto two periods: family and investor ownership.This reflects not only differences in how infor-mants interpreted the organization, but also followsresearch which posits that different capital struc-tures have dramatic impacts on how organizations op-erate (e.g., Gomez-Mejia, Larraza-Kintana, & Makri,2003).

1 All names of organizations and individuals arepseudonyms.

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During the family era (1999 to February 2010),three siblings and a family friend founded Bou-tiqueCo as a means to offload extra merchandisefrom a family wholesale manufacturing business.BoutiqueCo opened its first store in 1999 and grewslowly for the next 8 years. In mid-2007, the found-ers initiated their first capital transaction, selling asmall minority stake to a private equity firm. At theend of 2007, the organization had about 80 storesand opened up about another 30 stores in 2008 andin 2009.

In February 2010, the founders relinquished con-trol by selling most of the organization to anotherprivate equity firm, ushering in the investor period(February 2010 to the present). During the investorperiod, BoutiqueCo hired professional manage-ment and sought to become a large chain of bou-tiques. The Current CEO, a part-time advisor andfounder in the family period, joined full time andbegan hiring seasoned, home office retail profes-sionals to fill key functional areas. The new ownerspushed for even faster growth (opening up approx-imately 75 stores per year) and eventually com-pleted a successful IPO in 2011. At the mid-point in2012, the organization operated more than 350stores in over 40 U.S. states, with plans to expandto 900 stores.

Data

I conducted 60 interviews with a range of Bou-tiqueCo home office employees and regional man-agers (19), including most of the top managementteam, and some of the store employees (41), includ-ing store managers and sales associates (see Appen-dix A for the interview protocol). Interviews typi-cally lasted between 30 and 60 minutes. I recordedmost of them and had those professionally tran-scribed. Interview questions broadly focused onemployees’ roles at BoutiqueCo and the work theydid, the organization’s culture (which emphasizedcreativity), and the consequences of the organiza-tion’s growth. However, the questions changedsomewhat as my informants guided my inquiriesthrough the stories they told (Charmaz, 2006). Table1a contains an overview of the interview data.

I started sampling by selecting accessible topmanagers who could provide an overview of theorganization, as well as field employees located instores close to where I was based (Morse, 2007).From these initial interviews, I started to learnabout the organization’s culture and the role ofcreativity. After generating initial ideas about the

organization, I shifted to purposeful sampling, trac-ing the organization’s history from its founding toits current stage. For example, I sought out inter-views with the founders and early employees. Inext interviewed informants in all key departmentsof the organization to understand whether theemerging patterns were isolated to certain groups.As my data collection and analysis unfolded, I usedpurposeful sampling to seek out additional infor-mants (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). Direction for theadditional sampling was provided through analy-ses of the existing data that I had collected, becauseI engaged in constant comparison of data acrossparticipants while at the same time allowing myemerging analysis to benefit from my own interpre-tations (Charmaz, 2006).

For store employees, I used purposeful samplingthat maximized variation of conditions such as re-cently opened versus longtime stores and high- ver-sus low-performing stores. I was particularly inter-ested in whether patterns from my initial interviewswould remain consistent across a range of stores. Ateach location, given the small number of employeesworking at any one time, I interviewed all availableand consenting employees at the time of my visit.

Finally, as I started to develop provisional mod-els of the data, I used theoretical sampling to seekout cases that could fill in any remaining blanksand refine my provisional ideas (Dey, 2007). Thisled me to visit several informants again as well asseek out new informants who might shed light onmy findings. For example, when the early impor-tance of creativity during family ownership becameapparent, I interviewed the organization’s firststore manager.

In addition to interviews, I conducted 62½ hoursof observation (see Table 1b), mostly participant-observation during the investor period. My initialintention was to observe teams tasked with openingnew stores and training new employees; however, Iwas unexpectedly viewed as an available resourceand my role shifted to participant–observer—anexperience that helped me understand that storeemployees did not treat resources as fixed entitiesbut instead as malleable objects (e.g., Feldman,2004). During my observations both as a researcherand a participant, I recorded notes that served asthe foundation of my field notes, written each eve-ning after leaving a research site (Emerson, Fretz, &Shaw, 1995).

I also collected 151 documents (see Table 1c),including proprietary communications betweenthe home office and field organization, and key


TABLE 1aOverview of Interview Data

Informant Name Work Location Position Joined # Interviews

1 Dana Home Office Director Investor 22 Sue Home Office Director Investor 13 Alexis Home Office Vice President Family 14 Christi Multiple Locations Regional Manager Family 15 Meghan Store, S. Central Store Manager Family 16 Lacy Store, S. Central Store Employee Investor 17 Brianna Home Office Corporate Employee Investor 18 Zack Home Office Vice President Family 19 Erika Store, Midwest Store Manager Family 1

10 Erin Store, Midwest P/T Store Employee Investor 111 Alicia Store, Midwest P/T Store Employee Investor 112 Than Store, Midwest Keyholder Investor 113 Abby Store, Midwest Store Manager Family 114 Elizabeth Store, Midwest Asst Store Manager Family 115 Ethan Store, Midwest Store Manager Family 116 Bethany Store, Midwest Store Manager Family 117 Ricky Store, Midwest Keyholder Family 118 Deanna Store, Midwest Keyholder Family 119 Ali Store, Midwest Store Employee Family 120 Wendy Store, Midwest Asst Store Manager Family 121 Lola Multiple Locations Regional Manager Family 222 Paige Store, Midwest Keyholder Investor 123 Candy Store, Midwest Store Employee Investor 124 Tracy Store, West Store Manager Investor 125 Jill Home Office Corporate Employee Family 226 Jessica Store, West Store Manager Family 127 Tamara Store, West Store Manager Family 128 Rachel Store, West Store Manager Family 129 Nora Store, West Store Manager Family 130 Jake Multiple Locations Regional Manager Family 131 Jollie Store, East Store Manager Investor 132 Katrina Store, East Keyholder Family 133 Veronica Home Office C-Level Executive Family 334 Patty Home Office Founder Family 135 Krystal Home Office Vice President Family 136 Evan Home Office Founder Family 137 Becca Home Office Corporate Employee Family 138 Peter Home Office Founder/CEO Family 139 Agatha Home Office Vice President Family 140 Nicky Multiple Locations Regional Manager Family 141 Catherine Store, S. Central Store Manager Family 142 Lily Store, S. Central Asst Store Manager Investor 143 Marcy Store, S. Central Store Manager Family 144 Felicia Store, S. Central Keyholder Investor 145 Waverly Store, S. Central Store Manager Family 146 Penelope Store, S. Central Asst Store Manager Family 147 Pheobe Store, S. Central Store Employee Investor 148 Willa Store, West Store Manager Family 149 Carmen Store, West Keyholder Family 150 Jocelyn Store, West Asst Store Manager Family 151 Jackie Store, Midwest Store Manager Family 152 Nancy Home Office Corporate Employee Family 153 Ella Multiple Locations Regional Manager Family 154 Pam Store, Midwest Asst Store Manager Family 155 Amber Store, Midwest Asst Store Manager Family 1

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strategy and operational documents from both thefamily and investor ownership periods. These doc-uments provided a running history of the organiza-tion (Pondy, 1983) and helped triangulate some ofmy findings. For example, some documents pro-vided evidence in support of managerial interpre-tations of actions they took. I obtained these docu-ments from key informants, the company’s intranetand public sources.

Finally, I relied on a personal contact who intro-duced me to the organization and served as my keyinformant. We held frequent, in-depth updates, of-ten lasting several hours, that helped me learn moreabout BoutiqueCo. Although relying on a key infor-mant risks a partial interpretation of an organiza-tion, I reduced this risk by using the multiple datasources previously described and limiting the useof my key informant to providing a context for myobservations from other data sources.

Analysis

I used a grounded theory approach (Charmaz,2006; Glaser & Strauss, 1967) that involved threeprimary steps. First, with interview and observa-tion data, I used open coding or in-vivo coding(Strauss & Corbin, 1998) to capture informants’meanings about the organization. As with manyqualitative projects, my analysis at this stage wasvery iterative (Locke, 2001). I started searching forcodes based on my initial interest around culture,while also allowing new themes and categories toemerge from the data. Some of these new themesrequired that I return to the literature to make senseof my findings and thus prompted intensive read-ing of research around resourcing. With a morefocused sense of my data, I recoded my interviewtranscripts and field notes in search of new codesthat either supported or challenged my emergingfindings, eventually reaching a saturation of first-order codes (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) where contin-ued reading of data did not yield substantially newinsights. I then used second-order or axial coding tosearch for relationships within and between theinitial codes to convert them into higher-order cat-egories. This required a constant dialogue betweenmy data and existing literature to ground constructsthat were true to my data but abstracted from theparticular context (Gioia, Corley, & Hamilton,2013). I eventually settled on five aggregate theo-retical dimensions: perceived resource endow-ment, resourcing identity, regulating objects, cre-ative resourcing, and problem solving (see Figure 1for an overview of the data structure).

Second, using the five aggregate theoretical di-mensions as a foundation, I used memo writing tohelp organize my emerging thoughts in the data(Lempert, 2007) as I cycled through multiple reflec-tions on the data to link codes in different ways.

TABLE 1bOverview of Observational Data

Date Location Description Number of Minutes

July 2008 Restaurant 100th Store Opening Celebration 120December 2008 Hotel Company Holiday Event 120December 2009 Restaurant Company Holiday Event 120January 2010 Central Region Observation at Existing Store 240April 2010 Midwest Region Participant Observation at New Store 1620April 2010 West Region Participant Observation at New Store 1410December 2010 Private Residence Team Event 120

TOTAL TIME OBSERVING 3750

TABLE 1cOverview of Document Data Referenced*

DocumentNumber Description

28 Email from Veronica (33) to store employees (2/10)34 October Daily Hot List (2010)72 Get Inspired Intranet Post (5/10)78 Intranet memo (2/10)80 Spring Trend Alert (2/10)

126 Regional Manager Notes (6/10)140 Visual Merchandising Manual (3/2010)148 SEC Filing (3/12)149 SEC Filing (7/11)150 Newspaper story (7/12)151 Annual Report 2011 (5/12)

* Reflects only document data referenced in texts and tables.A more comprehensive overview of document data is availablefrom the author.


This step eventually formed the basis of the find-ings section and proved a critical step in seeing theconnections across the aggregate theoretical dimen-sions. Eventually, I used these devices to develop a

provisional model that connected my aggregate the-oretical dimensions and illuminated important nu-ances within the aggregate theoretical dimensions.Again reflecting the iterative nature of my project

FIGURE 1Data Structure

Perceived

Resource

Endowment

Problem

Solving

Creative

Resourcing

Regulating

Objects

Resourcing

Identity

Capital Resources

Knowledge Resources

Cultivating OwnershipSchemas

Cultivating Creator Schemas

Withholding Fixed Objects

Provisioning Dynamic Objects

Manipulating

Recombining

Original Solutions

Heterogeneous Solutions

• Retail experience • Company operational knowledge

• Taking ownership of store• Opportunities to be owners• Responsibilities of an owner

• Not a single right answer• Encourage experimentation

• Not providing typical resources such as planograms

• Not providing fully structured rules and regulations

• Providing concepts that employees need to alter or elaborate on

• Broad guidelines that need to be interpreted

• Using products in novel ways• Using fixtures in novel ways

• Solutions not shaped by corporate managers

• Solutions outside the purview of management

• Rearranging relationships between merchandise and fixtures

• General statements about arranging the store

• Stores appear different from each other• Stores operate different from each other• Store manager's influence on location• Sense of different customer base for

each store

• Money for infrastructure and growth• Staffing levels

First-Order Categories Second-Order Themes Aggregate Dimensions

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(Strauss & Corbin, 1998), I went back and forthbetween my developing model and the data, mak-ing several refinements along the way.

Third, to ensure the credibility of my data, Icarefully managed data collection using Nvivo 8.0to store interview transcripts, field notes, and doc-uments (e.g., Corley & Gioia, 2004). As my theoret-ical account formed, I tested my interpretations byreviewing all of the data again, looking for bothconfirming and disconfirming evidence (Miles &Huberman, 1994). After reaching provisional con-clusions about the data, I used member checkingwith key informants, asking for feedback aboutwhether my interpretations of the organizationwere consistent with theirs. Furthermore, I usedmultiple data sources to corroborate my interpreta-tions and only included findings present in severaldata sources. Finally, I relied on peer debriefingand discussed my emerging theory with colleaguesnot involved in the study (Lincoln & Guba, 1985).

FINDINGS

To unpack my findings, I start with the familyperiod, describing the perceived resource con-straints of BoutiqueCo. Next, I explain how corpo-rate managers responded to these conditions byfacilitating creative resourcing among the organiza-tion’s field employees, whereby employees manip-ulated and recombined objects in novel and usefulways to devise solutions to problems. To facilitatethe development of objects into resources, manag-ers fostered a resourcing identity, in which employ-ees enacted themselves as owners and creators oftheir stores through creative resourcing. As a resultof creative resourcing, employees solved problemswith original solutions that were not imaginable bycorporate managers.

During the investor era, outsiders infused cap-ital into the organization and seasoned managersjoined the firm—something that led corporate man-agers to perceive a more abundant resource endow-ment. However, managers still sought to facilitatecreative resourcing but shifted how they did so.They focused on withholding objects that employ-ees would likely interpret as fixed (i.e., having asingle meaning and use) and provisioning objectsthat employees would likely interpret as dynamic(i.e., having multiple meanings and uses). In doingso, managers regulated the flow of objects toemployees, which stimulated and shaped how em-ployees used creative resourcing. As a result, em-

ployees continued to creatively resource to solveproblems.2

Perceived Resource Endowment (Family Period)

Similar to other startup organizations, the found-ers describe the family ownership era as one inwhich the organization lacked access to capital re-sources and knowledge resources—something thatultimately shaped how they decided to operatetheir business, which focused on minimal invest-ments outside of growing the store base.

Capital resources. With limited capital duringthe family era, the founders used available cashfrom operations to fund expansion in the form ofnew store openings instead of investing in infra-structure. As Patty (34),3 a founder, notes: “Youneed to have the capital to open stores . . . Youdon’t really have a lot of money left to do otherthings . . . It makes sense to me to just run reallyleanly and grow the operations.” Left with limitedfunds to invest, the organization nestled its homeoffice in the headquarters of the family’s wholesalebusiness to save on rent. When BoutiqueCo out-grew that space, it moved to a small buildingmostly occupied by merchandise (i.e., a ware-house) with relatively little office space for corpo-rate employees. Peter (38), the CEO and a founder,recalls:

Everything was kind of a hand-me-down from thebig brother, big sister [wholesale business]. We hada little tiny space that wasn’t being used over at the[wholesale company] office . . . That’s where Bou-tiqueCo’s one, two employees would work. Thenwhen we moved . . . there was a little corner spot.That’s where the four or five employees would work.

As Peter points out, the organization scraped bythrough making use of another organization’s spaceand employing limited corporate staff, both ofwhich helped the organization at a time when itperceived limited resources.

Knowledge resources. During the family era, thefounders also considered that they had limitedknowledge resources. These limited knowledge re-

2 Consistent with accepted practice in qualitative re-search (Pratt, 2008), I provide illustrative examples in thetext but also use tables (see Table 2) to provide supple-mentary support for my interpretations.

3 The number after a name is the informant number(Table 1a) and the number after a “D�” is a documentnumber (Table 1c).


sources focused primarily on the perceived lack ofexperience in retail of the founding managementteam, coupled with the inability to hire seasonedexecutives to run the business. Both of these per-ceived resource constraints hampered the develop-ment of a blueprint to operate their business—something that afforded BoutiqueCo the opportunityto deviate from established practices. Patty (34) notes:

Because we didn’t have retail experience, we justdid things based on what we knew and what madesense, so we were unconventional in a way . . . Wedidn’t really know what other retailers did, sowe improvised and we did what made sense. . . . Wedidn’t have a planogram.4 We didn’t have it—becausewe just didn’t know . . . We didn’t have any experi-ence, and we didn’t model after—we didn’t ask Chi-co’s or White House because we didn’t have anycontacts . . . we really didn’t know how other retail-ers operated, so we just did what we think [sic] wasright. I mean that’s how we operated. We did itbased on what we knew.

As Patty points out, the founders lacked directknowledge about how to run a retail business aswell as connections to garner knowledge from otherretailers. As outsiders and novices to retail, theyrelied on what they thought “was right” as opposedto standard operating protocols, and this was some-thing that proved to be significant as I examinedthe actions of top managers and rank-and-fileemployees.

Resourcing Identity (Family Period)

Lacking knowledge and capital, top managersturned to their geographically dispersed workforcefor help. More specifically, managers fostered em-ployees’ construction of a “resourcing identity”—that is, as individuals who can creatively work withavailable objects in their organizational contexts. Aresourcing identity suggests that employees viewthemselves as willing and able to take availableobjects in their stores and transform them intosomething of value. Managers developed a resourc-ing identity among employees through two means:cultivating ownership schemas and cultivating cre-

ator schemas.5 This approach was echoed by Jill(25), who noted that, “we’ve allowed our [storemanagers] to own their store and be creative withwhat goes on in their store.”

Cultivating ownership schemas. Corporate man-agers did not literally turn store employees intoowners—the company did not provide an equitystake to store employees—but, rather, engaged inactions (and inactions) that helped store employeesenact a schema as if they were owners of theirstores. Peter (38) notes that ownership came about:

out of necessity . . . because we were very frugalminded. That we couldn’t afford . . . the infrastruc-ture to put in the people and/or the processes nec-essary to have that amount of control over thestores . . . We didn’t have the staff to do it. We didn’thave the resources to do it. We didn’t have theprocesses to control it.

Peter points out that, given the perceived resourceconstraints, the founders could not afford infra-structure and personnel to manage stores, resultingin store employees taking on responsibilities tradi-tionally not performed by this category of worker.At the same time, the organization explicitly en-couraged employees to view themselves as owners.For example, Jake (30) interpreted how store man-agers “really do own that building . . . That’s theway we present it and I think that it kind of givesthem that ownership right from the beginning . . .That’s the piece that I love the most about thiscompany, [that] you really give ownership to theindividual that’s running the store, so that theycan . . . do things that they necessarily weren’t ableto do before.”

In taking on some of these responsibilities, em-ployees further interpreted themselves as owners.For example, Ethan (15), one of the longest-tenuredstore managers, explained how he came to enact anownership schema:

It kind of happened because [the founders] couldn’tmanage everyone . . . it was obvious the originalintent was that they wanted us all to be—everyonein the field to be very much so a business owner,because that’s always been ingrained in my headsince the get-go, and that’s come out of everyone’s

4 A “planogram” dictates how employees should mer-chandise a store. As Peter (38) put it, a “planogram isessentially a map of ‘how do you merchandise this store?Where do these purses go in the store? Where does thisjewelry go? Where do these candles go?’” Peter notes thatnot having a planogram is “very counterintuitive forretailers.”

5 These schemas refer to how employees constructtheir role identities from their cognitions and actions.Thus, a schema is not only a cognitive framework (e.g.,Gioia, 1986) but also based on how individuals act outtheir identities (e.g., Pratt & Foreman, 2000) in ways thatmake them owners and creators of their stores.

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mouth . . . They’ve always encouraged us to justreally own it and take responsibility for what wewere doing.

Ethan interprets that managers lacked the resourcesto manage everyone, which afforded him the op-portunity to act like an owner. Additionally, man-agers explicitly ingrained in Ethan’s mindset thathe is an owner of the business, directly introducingthe schema of ownership. Ethan then enacted thisschema by taking ownership of his store, and this issomething I return to when I unpack creative re-sourcing below. As another example, Bethany (16)describes how the opportunity to take charge at herstore led her to construct an ownership schema:

I’m able to do a ton of different things in the store . . .When I’m at my store and I’m hiring my staff and I’mcreating the feeling and I’m training them and basi-cally showing them what I think customer service is,in that sense, I am teaching them what I would hopethey would do if they had worked in a store thatI owned.

Cultivating creator schemas. While ownershipschemas emphasize employees’ responsibility forkey actions in their stores, creator schemas empha-size how employees embrace that responsibility.More specifically, cultivating creator schemas in-volves employees interpreting themselves as indi-viduals who engage in creative activities. To graspthe significance of this in retail settings, I found ithelpful to contrast this approach with how manag-ers interpreted typical retail organizations. In mak-ing this contrast, Veronica (33) noted that, “That isso not retail, because there are people whose . . . jobdepends on being the ones with all of the answers,and they would never let that out; it just wouldn’thappen.” Veronica interpreted how BoutiqueCodoes not embrace a role in which a centralizedcorporate management team has “all of the an-swers.” In fact, one reason for this is that the organ-ization embraces the idea that there are many pos-sible answers, thereby obviating the need for acentralized and uniform answer. Erika (9) notedthat, “For the most part, we’re free to do whatworks for our store,” suggesting that there is not asingle right answer and that store employees needto experiment to reach an answer that works forthem. Echoing this viewpoint, Jake (30) noted thathis employees were “going out and experiencingand trying to figure out how to do it. And eachmarket . . . is different.” As a result, as Becca (37)interprets, each store might have its own answers,

so store employees experiment to find the answerthat works best for them.

No one ever like tells you no, that’s wrong, or likeslaps your hand, or like why are you stepping out ofyour box . . . What I mean by a sense of wrong orright, is that everything—we can try everything. If itdoesn’t work out, we can always change it . . . Thething is nothing is necessarily permanent.

Given several potential answers, and that even ifthere were a bad answer it could be changed, em-ployees enacted schemas around being creators tosolve their problems through experimentation.

Since employees worked at other retail organiza-tions that inhibited the formation of a creatorschema, BoutiqueCo would often have to explicitlymessage employees to allow them to embrace thisschema. Lola (21) pointed out that she affordedstore employees with the ability to experiment, not-ing “if it’s not technically okay, we have the abilityto see how it plays out . . . I’m sure if you walkedinto Banana Republic and they had tried somethingdifferent, that would not be okay, no matter howgood it was working for that store.” Jill (25) re-counted training from her mentor in the organiza-tion about how to merchandise products: “She letme know that it was okay to be creative.” She hasthen taken this experience and helped others de-velop a creator schema: “There are just some peo-ple there that just don’t . . . know how to be cre-ative—or it’s not really they don’t know how to becreative, they’re scared to be creative because theywanna look at a planogram . . . They want you totell them how to do it, and you just kind of have towork with them.” Or as Veronica put it, “We’resaying to the [store] managers, ‘Feel free to takechances’ . . . People are free to make mistakes.”

At the store level, employees such as Marcy (43)interpreted how they get “more freedom.” As aresult, she stated, “I think for somebody that wantsto be creative, it’s a little bit easier to do that andembrace that . . . as opposed to other retailers thathave planograms.” Absent a single answer encap-sulated in a planogram often typical of retail organ-izations, Marcy elaborates: “I kind of experimentand see kind of how much I can push the envelopeon my creativity.”

Creative Resourcing (Family Period)

Creative resourcing refers to how employees acton objects available to them to solve problems.Available objects in the family era primarily in-


cluded merchandise and display fixtures. I foundtwo types of creative resourcing: (a) manipulating,which involves altering a single object; and (b)recombining, which involves altering the relation-ship between a set of objects. Both types of creativeresourcing call attention to the skill that individu-als have in creatively transforming available objectsin ways that solve problems. While these types ofcreative resourcing are not mutually exclusive, I un-pack examples that emphasize a particular type forclarity of exposition.

Manipulating. “Manipulating” involves creativeacts as individuals work with an object and changeit in ways that creatively render it more useful tosolve a problem. Accordingly, employees did nottreat objects as having fixed properties but insteadas mutable objects they could shape with their ac-tions. Returning to Ethan (15), he describes how hetransformed a poorly selling dress into beachwear:

We got these ridiculously inferior tube dresses thatwere completely sheer; you couldn’t wear themwith anything and the straps were falling off of themon the hangers. We couldn’t sell them and we hadordered tons and tons and tons and tons of them forthe company, and so I look at them and think, “Crap.We need to sell these. Otherwise, they’re gonna besitting here forever.” So I cut all the straps off ofthem. I rolled them up and I merchandised them ona mannequin. I made a sign for it: “Beach Cover-Ups.” And I marked them all down $10 or some-thing. I took a very small percentage off of them sothat they were kind of like a promotion, like on sale.And we blew through 50, 60, 70 of them really,really fast . . . So sometimes when I get stuff that Ithink is personally garbage, I have to look at it as achallenge: “How am I gonna make it work?”

Instead of treating the dress as a fixed object inhis store, Ethan viewed it as an object with severalpotential uses. To act on this object, he first rela-beled the dress as beachwear, thereby changing itsmeaning for both him and his customers. In fact,this action was critical as Ethan initially inter-preted the object to be of limited use, as “strapswere falling off them.” Instead of unquestionablyaccepting “inferior tube dresses,” Ethan altered itsmeaning through making a sign for it with a newlabel: “Beach Cover-Ups.” Furthermore, Ethanphysically transformed the object by cutting offpart of it.

One question that arises is why Ethan engaged increative resourcing. After all, he could have simplylet the dress not sell or left the organization. In-stead, he explains his actions around enacting him-

self as an owner and creator (what he refers to asflexibility):

[The founders] couldn’t manage everyone . . . That’swhat they’ve always encouraged us to do is to justreally own it and take responsibility for what wewere doing, and I think that the best way they wereable to get us to do that and to be very self-sufficientis to also give us a lot of flexibility [with] visuals andstuff . . . There was no other alternative because wedidn’t have enough people to train and to help eachother out, and it forced a lot of us to be very, veryself-sufficient though, and to really just figureit [out].

As Ethan notes, taking ownership led him to wantto solve the problem and to seeing himself as anexperimenter (having to “just figure it [out]”), pro-viding the creative license to craft a solution thatthose in the home office could not envision.

Recombining. “Recombining” involves an em-ployee taking several objects and infusing themwith new meanings through how the objects relateto each other. This form of creative resourcing em-phasizes the relationship among several objectswhose meanings change as employees act on themas a set. Consider an example from when Krystal(35) was a store manager at one of the organiza-tion’s first locations:

At the time, we had a really big bath and candlesection, and home décor section, so I would justmerchandise things the way I would want thempresented—or how, maybe, I might display them inmy home . . . I thought, “Okay, if I’m at home andI’m gonna take a bath, and this is supposed to be arelaxing time for me, I would probably first light mycandle. Then I would take my bath. So, then I’d havethe candle, the bath salts, then I’d have the bath gel.Then, after I take a bath and I wanna put my lotionon, then I’d have the lotion. Then I’m gonna put onmy perfume.”

As Krystal pointed out, she did not view the rela-tionship among objects as fixed by the founders.Instead, Krystal recombined the same objects (mer-chandise and fixtures) in ways that organized per-fume, candles and bath products to create some-thing more akin to a home. Instead of treating therelationship among these objects as fixed, she al-tered them in ways to create a more compellingstore. When asked why she took this action, Krystalresponded by highlighting both her ownership ofthe store (what she refers to as freedom) and herability to be a creator because of the lack of knowl-edge of the founders:

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[The founders] were just like, you know, ‘You pres-ent the product the way you need to . . . I knew moreabout it than [the founders] . . . it allowed me to becreative and [the founders] trusted that I would . . .take care of things properly . . . I was given a lot offreedom.

Problem Solving (Family Period):Original Solutions

During the family period, creative resourcing al-lowed employees to solve important problems,whether reinvigorating a poorly selling product(Ethan’s example) or altering a store’s look and feel(Krystal’s example). In both cases, creative resourc-ing resulted in original solutions that corporatemanagers had not envisioned (i.e., that were novel)but that nonetheless served a vital purpose for theorganization (i.e., that were useful). For example,Ethan (15) recalls that Patty (34) called him after hesold all of his “dresses” and asked, “How did yousell all those, because they’re all gone in your store,but no one else has sold them?” Ethan was able tosell down his own inventory, which solved hisimmediate problem, but also may have helped theorganization avoid an inventory write down, whichmight be costly to a cash-poor organization. Krys-tal’s (35) recombining led to a solution that was“much different . . . than the way [the founders] didit.” She altered the look and feel of her store tobetter merchandise a product area but she alsomore generally helped the organization learn aboutnew ways of merchandising products.

Both examples of creative resourcing also illus-trate how the organization coped with perceivedresource limitations by pushing critical problemsolving downward to employees. Jill (25), a long-time employee, noted that by solving problems lo-cally in stores it “made the responsibilities of theowners a little less.” Thus, instead of investing ininfrastructure to centralize control and decisionmaking, the founders used cash to open stores tohelp the organization achieve enough scale to be-come a viable business. This left store employeeson their own to create original solutions to prob-lems they encountered through how they resourcedavailable objects.

Perceived Resource Endowment (Investor Period)

While the family period involved corporate man-agers perceiving a limited resource endowment, inwhich they responded by helping foster a resourc-

ing identity around creative ownership, the inves-tor period ushered in the perception of a muchmore substantial resource endowment. As I de-scribe below, this resulted in an important shift inhow managers fostered creative resourcing amongemployees.

Capital resources. In contrast to the family pe-riod, during the investor period corporate man-agers perceived more abundant resources. In fact,soon after BoutiqueCo sold a majority stake to aprivate equity firm, corporate managers declaredto employees: “The best thing about this transac-tion is that BoutiqueCo now has some additionalresources” (D-28). Patty (38) also interpreted theimportance of “financial flexibility” of the organ-ization during the investor period. With the ad-ditional capital, the organization expanded itsgrowth rate by opening up stores at a muchquicker pace (about 75 per year). Consistent withmanagerial interpretations, BoutiqueCo gener-ated an almost fourfold increase in profits from2008 to 2010. The company also generated morethan $46 million in cash from operations in 2011(D-151) and reached a market capitalization ofmore than $1 billion in 2012.

Knowledge resources. In addition to capital re-sources, corporate managers also interpreted en-hanced knowledge resources during the investorperiod, such as by noting the management team’s“extensive experience across a broad range of dis-ciplines in the retail industry,” (D-148) somethingin contrast to the family ownership era in whichthe founders declared they had limited knowledgeabout running a retail organization. Peter (38) notedthat, “All of my senior management team are betterat what they do than I would ever be able to do.They’re smarter. They’re brighter than I am.They’re more experienced. They’re more sophisti-cated in each of their respective fields.”

Regulating Objects (Investor Period)

As corporate managers interpreted a shift in theirresource endowment, they sought to continue tostimulate creative resourcing while exerting somemore control over this process. However, unlikeduring the family period, the impetus for creativeresourcing was no longer a perceived limited re-source endowment. Zack (8) acknowledges thatemployee creativity was initially

borne out of a lack of human resource internally toinstruct others . . . But I think, over time . . . it


encourages people to think on their own and theylike that, and they’re encouraged to merchandise thestore and tend to the customer in a way that theythink is most appropriate.

As Zack points out, the organization came to realizethat the creative behaviors, while first needed as aresult of a perceived limited resource endowment,nevertheless provided valuable outcomes for theorganization as it grew. As corporate managers in-terpreted their resource endowment as abundant,they moved their focus to regulating objects. Theydid this because the organization no longer neededto scrape by as a small startup and wanted to exertsome more control over the creative resourcing pro-cess without compromising it.

Put simply, regulating objects refers to the pro-cesses by which corporate managers make or do notmake available objects that employees can resourceas a way of influencing a creative process. Morespecifically, managers make available importantdynamic objects that employees can use in a varietyof ways (what I call “provisioning” dynamic ob-jects) and do not make available typical fixed ob-jects that employees would likely interpret as hav-ing a singular use and/or meaning (what I call“withholding” fixed objects). Often, these two pro-cesses are opposite sides of the same coin, withmanagers not making available a fixed object andinstead provisioning a dynamic one. The most im-portant, and most prominent example, of these twoprocesses at work occurred in the area of merchan-dising, which was the central domain in whichemployees creatively resourced in both the familyand investor periods. Accordingly, I will unpackregulating objects in detail for this domain but Ioffer additional examples around new store open-ings and store upkeep/remodels in Table 3.

Withholding fixed objects. As defined above,withholding of fixed objects refers to managerialactions that deprive employees of a typical objectlikely to be used in limited ways by employees. Themost important typical object corporate that man-agers withheld in BoutiqueCo was a planogram. Aplanogram is widely used in retail organizationsbecause it influences the products sold, their place-ment, and the overall look and feel of the store. Itprovides a management tool that allows design pro-fessionals coupled with data (such as which prod-ucts sell best in what location) to provide detailedstore plans, thereby centralizing creativity in ahome office staffed with trained designers and mer-chandisers armed with data. When asked whether

BoutiqueCo would implement the typical plano-gram now that it had perceived a more abundantresource endowment that could support designingone, Peter (38) responded emphatically:

Never, never, never . . . That would be over my deadbody . . . Could we afford to put more [capital ex-penditure] into a store? Absolutely! . . . And whenI get proposed ideas that take us more in that direc-tion, I say “No way.” It’s not about me being frugal.It’s . . . to allow that freedom at the store level. Allowthat ability of that gal in the store to exercise hercreativity. If I give her a planogram, that all goes outthe window.

Peter interpreted how a planogram would threatencreative resourcing in stores. One reason for thiswas that employees interpret a planogram as a fixedobject that limits their ability to resource other ob-jects. Paige (22) explained how employees custom-arily view planograms by contrasting her job atBoutiqueCo with other retailers:

At other jobs . . . there are planograms or very spe-cific maps or blueprints on how to do everything.And Banana Republic, if the jewelry case wasn’tdone exactly right and the regional merchandisingmanager walked in it would be . . . a big deal if acoral bracelet was on the far left instead of thefar right.

By withholding a planogram, BoutiqueCo was reg-ulating creative resourcing by avoiding objects thatemployees would likely interpret as fixed thatwould obviate the need for them to work with otheravailable objects to creatively resource.

Provisioning dynamic objects. While, during thefamily era, corporate managers offered little guid-ance, direction, or supporting infrastructure to em-ployees, during the investor era this changedthrough the provisioning of dynamic objects. Whilethese objects did not dictate solutions to problems,they nevertheless provided a foundation fromwhich employees could act to solve their problems.One example is the “story” that employees use tocreate a store’s overall look and feel. This storyprovides a coherent theme that permeates acrossthe store—including its display and placement ofmerchandise and its customer experience. But thisstory was not supplied by corporate management.For example, corporate managers instructed em-ployees to develop a story for their window with-out providing a set plan for what the windowshould look like and what products it shouldfeature:

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The theme of your window display is the unifyingsubject or idea of your presentation. This includesthe style of product and the colors being featured.Begin brainstorming a theme based on the season,the new trends developing in fashion, new mer-chandise arriving in stores and, most importantly,consistent with the type of customer that shops inyour store. Once the theme has been established,begin to tell a story. The stories you create are lim-ited only by your imagination. (D-140)

In lieu of providing the “answer” in the form of afixed object such as a planogram, corporate manag-ers provided an array of objects that employeescould creatively resource to help create their story.One type of object was “trend alerts” that describedcurrent fashion trends and provided a vernacularfor accessing popular culture “to best understandwhat kind of stories to put together” (D-78). Forexample, the “Urban Boho” trend alert described a

TABLE 2Representative Quotes Underlying Second-Order Themes (Œ Family Period; � Investor Period)

First Order Categories Second-Order ThemesAggregate

Dimensions

Capital ResourcesŒ�

• Money for infrastructureand operations (LOW)

Peter (38): “That we couldn’t afford or didn’t want to afford the infrastructure to put in thepeople and/or the processes necessary to have that amount of control over the stores. So,organically, it would have been there. Even had we wanted all the control, we didn’t.We didn’t have the staff to do it. We didn’t have the resources to do it. We didn’t havethe processes to control it.”

PerceivedResourceEndowment

Patty (34): “None of us took pay for what we did. We just put everything into the business,so at some point we built enough reserve into our operations, our bank account.”

• Money for infrastructureand operations (HIGH)

Patty (34): “Now we have more space, more financial flexibility now, so we take on a littlemore space so that there is some back office for people to do their payrolls and use thatspace for back stock, management.”

Ethan (15): “I think one of the benefits of us getting bigger is that we have a largerinfrastructure to kind of stay on and to ensure success and to ensure that we couldweather some major financial disaster or some huge mistake.”

• Staffing levels (LOW) Zack (8): “I think, early on . . . I think people had to fend for themselves and I think thatthere was a lack of human resource. You had, you know, the IT guy who was helpingstuff boxes to be shipped out—merchandise to be shipped out of the store and you hadthe construction guy who was helping the IT guy install a server.”

Krystal (35): “We relied on the [wholesale company’s] employees to help us . . . load thetrucks for the [specific] stores. There really weren’t very many people; just a few of us.”

• Staffing levels (HIGH) Zack (8): “We are growing so rapidly and changing and . . . there are more bodies that arewithin the company”

Evan (36): “We did get a point where . . . we were able to get bigger facilities, add morepeople.”

Knowledge ResourcesŒ�

• Retail experience (LOW) Peter (38): “You had myself and Patty, who had corporate . . . big company, publiccompany experience. But we were relatively new in our careers . . . it was a you know,bootstrap by your—you know, by the skin of your teeth type operation.”

Evan (36): We “never had this type of retail experience.”• Retail Experience

(HIGH)Agatha (39): “We’ve hired all these people to do all these functions better, and more in

depth and more detailed.”D (150): BoutiqueCo has “added another very experienced executive with significant retail

background to the talent at the company.”• Company operational

knowledge (LOW)Nicky (40): “When I started [at] BoutiqueCo, I didn’t get no training; absolutely no training

at all. I got the key of the store and I got [good] luck at the time. We didn’t have nomanuals.”

Lola (21): “They all came with me and we knew how to work together . . . but yeah,visuals, hmm-mm, no training back then.”

• Company operationalknowledge (HIGH)

Patty (34): “Over time you know certain styles worked and you build that into your brain.”Peter (38): “So what we would do with [what we learn] is we would give that as guidance.

We’d say ‘Hey, stores, you know what? It’s called tips and tricks, and we have this blogthing that we put out merchandising ideas on.’”

Continued


focus on “soft pastels, plenty of prints, weightlessand feathery fabrics, delicate laces, sweet florals,and a hint of a ruffle” (D-80). Importantly, thesetrend alerts did not have instructions for how to usetrends in a store but only provided a brief defini-tion of a trend that could be incorporated (or dis-carded) into a store’s story to impact the merchan-

dise that was featured, how it was displayed, andhow employees might dress and approach customers.

Corporate managers also provided “inspiration”to store employees by providing them with dy-namic objects they could creatively resource. In thenotes below, a regional manager explains how sheprovided a struggling store manager with examples

TABLE 2(Continued)


Dimensions

Cultivating Ownership SchemasŒ

• Taking ownership oflocation

Erika (9): “I do pretend that this is my own shop”; “When I first started, it was kind oflike you were on your own, like they were still trying to figure things out. You weren’treally being checked [o]n.”

ResourcingIdentity

Meghan (5): “This is my store. I own this store. It’s mine, everything in it, the people thatwork here, they’re my girls, they’re my people, they’re my responsibility and the successof the store and of these young ladies is my responsibility. They’re like my children . . .I’m raising.”

• Opportunities to beowners

Peter (38): “They’re not franchisees, but franchisees are left to run their franchise—youknow, Subway—the way that they want to within certain boundaries. There’scorporate . . . restrictions on the signage and the box, and the food and the offerings . . .So what I’ve done or what I’ve hopefully done is I’ve created a situation where thismanager feels like this is her store. She doesn’t own it outright, but it’s her store.”

Nicky (40): “And what I call sink or swim . . . it’s almost throwing them in the fire andseeing what they’re gonna do next. And if they can survive that, and if they can get outof the fire not getting burned, and if they—or they can be innovative in the way thatthey jump out of the fryer. It’s about ownership, and that’s what is gonna spark theownership right away, you know, with the team.”

• Responsibilities of anowner

Willa (48): “I come to work and I feel like it’s my store. Obviously, I’m just the manager,but I take pride in it and I get excited about being able to do different things and makedifferent decisions. I mean, it feels like my store.”

Jake (30): “People here tend to become more business owners. They become more openminded, where there everything was planned out for you, so you were almostmicromanaged. Here you have more of that realm of responsibility where you truly arethe owner of this location . . . so therefore, they learn more like an owner because theyhave that responsibility to make more of the decisions for that location.”

Cultivating Creator SchemasŒ

• Not a single rightanswer

Jill (25): “When I started, I was not a visual merchandiser . . . The person that helped melearn how to merchandise was very open to things. She encouraged me to try differentthings. She let me know that, ‘Just because it doesn’t look exactly how I would do itdoesn’t necessarily mean that it’s wrong . . . you don’t have to color in the lines all thetime.’ You know, kind of like, ‘Branch out and try new things.’”

Peter (38): “But what we try to do is do things just good enough.”• Encourage

experimentationJessica (26): “And that’s how you learn. And you have to take that table—and it takes

somebody who’s I guess gonna critique you without putting you down. . . . that storemanager or that trainer or whoever it is needs to be really positive about what they’redoing because the moment you feel like you just failed and fell on your face is themoment you don’t wanna do it again. You don’t wanna fall on your face again. I don’twanna try it again.”

Veronica (33): “I talk about [experimenting in] my messaging a lot. The regionals talkabout it a lot on their calls where they are—a lot of their call are for people coming inand saying, “How did you solve this problem? Let’s talk about it.” . . . I sent out abroadcast message to the company saying,�I need your great ideas . . . send me yourideas on how you grow the sales . . . and people sent in really great ideas.”

Continued

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of how to create a jewelry table to provide a foun-dation for the store manager’s own creative actions:

I worked closely with [store manager] on her mer-chandising opportunities to ensure that she wasmaking the most of her space in her boutique. Herstruggles with the jewelry tables showed and weworked on how to start fresh and re-work what shehad in the boutique. She was very optimistic on thefinal results and was excited to see how it pays off inher sales this week. We also talked about where toget inspiration for her visuals. I showed her my inspi-ration book and we created two different tables basedaround her inspiration (D-126, emphasis added).

Importantly, the regional manager did not provi-sion a fixed object, such as a specific answer to

create the store manager’s tables. Instead, she pro-vided an “inspiration book” of malleable ideas andthen used that inspiration book to help the storemanager create tables around her inspiration.

While I analytically separate withholding fixedobjects and provisioning dynamic objects, theyoften operate together since the absence of a fixedobject allows for acting on a dynamic object. Forexample, in the absence of a planogram, Jill (25)talked about BoutiqueCo’s guidelines that pro-vide a minimal structure but not a blueprint foraction:

We do have standards that they have to follow, butwe don’t use planograms. We don’t send them pic-tures or direction on, “This is how your store has to

TABLE 2(Continued)


Dimensions

Withholding Fixed Objects�

• Not providing typicalresources such asplanograms

Brianna (7): “A lot of the other [retailers], they give planograms or very specific, ‘This ishow this store needs to be set up, this is how this is going to run, this person’s going todo that.’”

RegulatingObjects

Nicky (40): “We don’t have the planograms that the majority of the companies have.”• Not providing fully

structured rules andregulations

Lily (42): “Barney’s had a lot of rules. Like you couldn’t go in and redo the store on yourown; you had to be told to redo it. Here you can just do whatever you want. You canmove the jewelry tables around, you can dress the mannequins. I mean anyone cando it. It’s the manager, the sales associates.”

Jake (30): “Most people are so used to more of a structured training, and a structured youknow, visual merchandising guy. Where here, we don’t have things like that. It’s reallyorganic in terms of that specific location . . . it’s really hiring them—hiring the rightindividual who can think outside the box and not have to have those planograms inspecific documentations to do their job.”

Provisioning Dynamic Objects�

• Providing concepts thatemployees need to alteror elaborate on

Nora (29): “Obviously the visual merchandise manual gives you hints and gives youthings like suggestions and if you look through it, a lot of the tables that are inthere, like you can see like different ideas.”

Nicky (40): “I think there is a lot of creativity [and] this is the biggest thing . . . I think thecore of [BoutiqueCo] is their visuals. . . . we have been giving them more standards . . .because it’s so different compared to other retailers. It is, again, the mom-and-popconcept, where everything is hands on, but we just brought some guidelines to helpthem understand how to do it, and how to break free from any past knowledge that theymight have had . . . So, it’s an easy way for them to be creative.”

• Broad guidelines thatneed to be interpreted

Veronica (33): “If you go to Ann Taylor on Wednesday, you’re gonna see them taping upthe planograms on all the fixtures . . . hey love that type of connect-the-dots retail. Weare sort of the opposite of that, so you have to really want to explore. The best manageris one who—I always say who bends the rules but doesn’t break—bends them as far asthey can go but doesn’t break them.

D (140): “Just because it’s December doesn’t mean you have to display your window witha decorated Christmas tree or red and green apparel and accessories. December is a timefor holiday parties, cool temperatures, friends and family, winter vacation, gift giving,and more. Think ‘variety of options.’”

Continued


TABLE 2(Continued)


Dimensions

ManipulatingŒ�

• Using products in novelways

Tamara (27): “We have this one shirt that looks better backward, and this customer tried iton that way, and I didn’t even realize it, and I actually owned it. And then I startedwearing it backward, and then everyone kind of started buying it to wear backwardand . . . we sold it as it could be forward or backward . . . So it’s a lot about seeing howthings influence people, I guess, over time. I mean, when somebody will wear a scarf acertain way, I’m like, ‘Oh, I never thought of doing it that way,’ and then I’ll think, ‘Ihave to do that sometime.’ And then we’ll put it on the mannequin.”

CreativeResourcing

Bethany (16): “They have set displays; corporate comes out with them and �I was atForever 21 and I was looking at this dress, and I was like, “Oh, is that dress—where isthat dress?” and she’s like, “Oh, that’s the last one,” and I was like, “Oh, can I have theone off the mannequin?” and she’s like,’ “No. We can’t take things off our mannequins.’And I was like, “Ew. That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. You have theopportunity to sell me that right there. Why wouldn’t you give me that?” I didn’t saythat, but I swear, if we become like that, that will be so disheartening. If we have to waitfor someone at corporate to be like, “OK, yes, now you can take that dress off of therebecause we’ve given you a new three ways to dress a mannequin,” that would just—Iwould feel like a child.”

• Using fixtures in novelways

Ricky (17): “Last time [Bethany] left, I think I threw a bunch of belts on one of our jewelryT’s [a fixture] that we have usually to hold jewelry, and I just looped them,‘cause wehad so many belts, and we threw them on the table with a bunch of stuff, and she cameback and she was like,‘Oh, my G-d, I never thought about doing that. That’s a reallygreat way to merchandise those.’”

West Coast Field Notes: Jill (25) used a trunk as a display item yesterday, e.g., nomerchandise in it. Jessica (26) had warned Jill yesterday about needing display pieces toput merchandise in as she can never have enough of these. Since today they neededanother place for merchandise, Jill had to unpack the box so she could fit shoes in therethat she had just found. So she had to move the trunk from display and make it afixture.

RecombiningŒ�

• Rearrangingrelationships betweenmerchandise andfixtures

Bethany (16): “Well, like this morning, I came in at 9 and from 9 until 12:30, when theother girl came in, I redid all my jewelry tables, so there’s no exact way of how to do ajewelry table, and I have a lot of freedom with how I set up jewelry table . . . I don’tknow if I even wanna say Forever 21. I don’t—like Gap or something—you can’t just goin and start changing things. You can’t just go in and say, ‘OK, this jean table is outtoday. We’re doing dresses here with jeans, and we’re putting this on it and we’re doingthat.’”

Ricky (17): “I have the freedom to grab the new stuff that comes in and create a table . . .[or] make sure the displays are working in the window. It’s just fun to do . . . put thingstogether. It’s almost like little girl; you play with your dolls. You dress up your dollsand you do that, and this is like real life, what we’re doing, and we’re trying to sell it topeople and make it appealing, but it also works with what we want. I mean, most of thetime . . . I look at our products, but I don’t go out and say, “Well, I’m just gonna useeverything we have a lot of,” . . . if I don’t like it. I use what I like, and I put togetherstuff that I like,‘cause I think other people are going to, and that’s what’s fun to me. If Ihad to use specific products to make it look a specific way that the company wanted, Idon’t think I’d have as much fun here.�

• General statementsabout arranging thestore

Tamara (27): “I redo almost my whole store just because I get inspired from it.”Nora (29): “I’m sure that you can find that in a table in the visual merchandise manual,

but it may not look the same in there, but you take bits and pieces and you put it alltogether into one table.”

Continued

2014 831Sonenshein

TABLE 2(Continued)


Dimensions

Original SolutionsŒ

• Solutions not shaped bycorporate managers

Marcy (43): “When I started, it was like if you wanted to—whatever you wanted to dowith the candles, then do it. So now it’s a little bit more structured, as opposed to justgo with it.”

ProblemSolving

Lola (21): “Everything we do involves our own level of creativity . . . each one of us havecome up with something that works for us.”

• Solutions outside thepurview of management

Ethan (15): “I feel like our responsibilities as managers and associates is . . . exploring newoptions and trying to do things differently and creating a sense of uniqueness . . .Bethany and I had been through so much kind of problem-solving, figuring out differentways to different kinds of people to hire, different ways to merchandise, different waysto approach the customer.”

Patty (34): “Because we’re so lean with staffing, we didn’t have anybody to kinda pushthat out and also that creates that boutique model we relied on the managers tomerchandise the store . . . the good managers really enjoyed that creativity and, youknow, it’s like their own store in a way, and they get to make a lot of decisions. Wedidn’t have all these rules and process pushed down.”

Heterogeneous Solutions�

• Stores appear differentfrom each other

Nicky (40): “Any customer can come here to this store and spend two hours shopping, andthey can put an item on a hold to the store that’s 15 minutes away, and they will spendanother additional hour shopping over there. It is absolutely the same product, butbecause it is displayed differently, it makes everything look new again.”

Abby (13): “I can have my mom or a friend or just a customer come in who just went to[specific store] or [different specific store] or whatever and they can walk in and be like,‘Wow, this store is completely different . . . I want to shop around and see what truly isdifferent.’”

• Stores operate differentfrom each other

Ethan (15): “Our stores in [specific city] are completely different . . . We have a very relaxedcustomer-service attitude and we’re very—you know, we make sure that our customerknows that we’re present and that we’re there for them, but we are so focused on salesas more of just making sure that our customers are having a good time in the store andhaving fun . . . Bethany’s store . . . she works with a neighborhood clientele, so it’s moreof a “I know your name” kind of shop, where they have the same people coming in overand over and over again. So their staff is able to develop more relationships with thecustomer and have the opportunity to possibly get on the phone and call them . . . Sothey have kind of more of a mom-and-pop feel of customer service . . . when you go tothe store in [different location], the store clearly looks very different from the otherstores here, and they have a very . . . commission-based sales approach.”

Alexis (3): “We have our standards, but at the end of the day it’s their personal touch. Youcan tell, as you walk into a store, that it’s that manager’s personal touch on thestore,‘cause they’re all so different.”

• Store Manager’sinfluence on location

Abby (13): “I think it’s a real reflection of not only myself but my staff. Whether or not Istand behind the quality of the product, I can at least stand behind the fact that my storeis visually stimulating, it’s interesting to look at and it’s, again, a reflection of me.”

Ethan (15): “OK, well, we’ll just kind of replicate what we did at [my store],’ and it didn’twork. So, it was a lot of trying to figure out what was gonna work differently, and Ithink the more of Bethany’s own personality that she puts into the way that shemanages, the way that she talks to her customers, the way that she merchandises, themore and more and more successful the store.”

• Sense of differentcustomer base for eachstore

Jessica (26): “The way I market towards my customer is not gonna be the way Rena [is]gonna market to her customer . . . I have an older clientele, but that older clientele bringsin their 13-year-old daughters to shop with them or their 13-year-old granddaughters.But you need to dress them that way . . . whereas when you’re in a younger mall . . . youcan do a little bit more with the little shorter skirts.”

Tracy (25): “Being able to really read what your customers are looking for and what sort ofcustomer you have and changing your store to really make it attractive for people likethat who are gonna be your regulars. At Loft or somewhere like that, you know, itdoesn’t matter what your customer is; there’s a certain structure that you follow.”


be.” We just basically kind of give them guidelinesand say, “Use these guidelines and kind of do yourown thing.”

These guidelines were important because as theorganization expanded, it needed to develop a wayto foster creative resourcing without employees devi-

ating from the organization’s vision. But at the sametime, providing an object as fixed as a planogramwould have impeded creative resourcing. Krystal (35)nicely captures this challenge of trying to exert somecontrol over creative resourcing without interruptingthis process or too strongly shaping it:

TABLE 3Additional Examples of Creative Resourcing during Investor Era

Core Process andImportance to the

Organization Creative Resourcing Example Withholding Fixed Objects Provisioning Dynamic Objects

New Store Openings (NSO):These teams are essentialfor helping the organiza-tion grow by adding to itsstore count. They unpackinventory, set up anddecide where to locatefixtures, and visuallymerchandise products.They also work with theincoming store managerto provide guidance onvisual displays, customerservice, and storeoperations.

Recombining fixtures across multiple locations:While I was working on an NSO team toopen up a store in the Midwest, Jackie, theNSO team leader, felt there were not enoughfixtures to display the merchandise. With thenew store scheduled to open in two days, myfield notes capture what came next as theteam tried to solve this problem:“Pam [a NSOteam member] chimed in that she had someextra fixtures at her store, so Jackie and Pamdrove the 15 minutes to Pam’s store andmoved extra fixtures from the back room atPam’s store to the new store. Upon returning,Jackie went to Target to purchase some bowlsto provide some additional fixtures to displayrings and other small merchandise.”(Midwest field notes)

Withholding fixed object of fixtureplan for store: Although the or-ganization had fixtures, therewere too few sent to the storebeing opened and no set planon how to use them. In fact,“The home office does not knowwhich fixtures are in whichstores, thereby leavingemployees to work with theavailable resources to create andmaintain a store.” Pam andJackie created a solution byrecombining spare fixtures froma neighboring store and someordinary bowls purchased fromTarget with other fixtures in thenew store (Midwest field notes).

Withholding dedicated new storeopeners: During myparticipation-observation on twoof these teams, membersincluded store managers whowere local to the area (to avoidpaying travel costs) for onestore, or, in the case of a newmarket where there were nopre-existing stores, onecorporate employee and threestore managers from nearbystores. By not having adedicated team open stores,there was not a fixed routine forhow to set up a store (Midwestand West Coast field notes).

Provisioning store managers to opennew stores: “I just get e-mails thatask if I wanna go, and I say yes orno, and most of the time I sayyes . . . have a nice little travelingexperience and meet new people,like meet other managers is a niceexperience and how they dothings, and how they might dealwith situations is alwaysinteresting to find out.”(Marcy, 43)

Provisioning a finished store for theincoming store manager as anillustration of how to set up astore, not a mandatory set-up forthem: “Take a mental snapshot allover the store. Embrace what thepossibilities are for this box thatyou’ve been given, and then youtake it and put your own creativetouch on it, and then we’ll comeback and make sure that you staywithin the boundaries.”(Veronica, 33)

Store upkeep and remodels:Employees update thestores by using capitalexpenditures to replacecarpentry, flooring, signsand other infrastructurein the store. This keepsolder stores fresh,something important tomaintain business.

Manipulating cabinets to fix and repurposethem: “In the cabinets in the old stores,they’re not all outfitted for the clothing. So, Irun to the Home Depot. I have the paint inmy house. I paint things, and I go ahead andfix the cabinet and make myself the cabinetbe a closet for clothing. Many times, like, thefloor would come out, and we had extrawood. I would saw the wood, glue the wood,and make the bottom part, if that wasneeded. I remember when we are doingremodeling . . . and we pulled the bigcabinets out of store . . . I asked [constructioncrews] to switch the counter to the sides sowe could add more tables into the store. Andwhen we pulled the cabinet out of the wall,there was not a wall, it was a hole, acomplete hole . . . if I pull the sheetrock thatis already painted from this side and put intothat side, it’s gonna cover, and we can makethe cabinet . . . It’s going to be perfect . . . Ipulled out the shelving and I put a bar on it,and I turned the two cabinets into a littlecloset for clothing.”(Nicky, 40)

Withholding “fixed” fixturestandards: “I would’ ve had tocall a handyman. The holes, Iknew they could not be fixedanymore, because it is like acheese cabinet already, so manyholes inside and the shelveswere not staying. So, I kind ofmeasure my risks right there . . .I knew what it was between thestandards they had, you know.”(Nicky, 40)

Provisioning dynamic fixtures:“What I do see is having a littlemore sophistication on thefixturing, have the fixturing be alittle more multipurpose andfunctional . . . fixtures that mask,that are modular.” (Krystal, 35)

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We’re not like the Gap, where everything is set up,where you follow this planogram and you put thered shirts here and the white shirts here, next to thejeans and the skirt . . . I have to make sure everyoneunderstands what the big picture is, so that they canthen interpret that to be able to present a productthat still maintains the brand and maintains brandintegrity, maintain the vision, but make it uniqueand creative for their store (emphasis added).

Krystal provided an object (“the big picture”) butthis object was dynamic because employees neededto interpret it on their own to “make it unique andcreative for their store.” Thus, corporate managerscan provide dynamic objects that are of limitedvalue until employees creatively resource them.While there is a uniform vision shaped by provi-sioning a “big picture,” this picture is incompleteand requires employee actions to make it useful forsolving problems around merchandising.

Creative Resourcing (Investor Period)

During the investor period, employees continuedto creatively resource. While the organization un-derwent dramatic change, “the discretion and thefreedom that [employees] have to be creative intheir store . . . That’s probably the one thing thathasn’t changed” (Jill, 25). But as suggested above,managers shifted how they encouraged creative re-sourcing. Managers withheld typical fixed objectsthat could have supplied solutions to a store’s prob-lems, thereby leaving employees to have to cre-atively resource available objects to solve prob-lems. In doing so, they maintained some of thecontextual conditions in stores that characterizedthe family era. However, unlike the family era,managers could have provided more typical andfixed objects to employees—but instead they pro-visioned dynamic objects that employees couldmore readily creatively resource. Put another way,managers used regulating objects to provide morestructure to employees without over-determiningtheir actions, thereby allowing creative resourcingto persist but in a more controlled fashion. I pro-vide an example of both manipulating and recom-bining creative resourcing during this period in thetext below specifically around one of the organiza-tion’s most essential processes: that of merchandis-ing (and I provide additional examples of creativeresourcing for new store openings and store up-keep/remodels in Table 3).

Manipulating. Deb is a store manager whowanted to increase jewelry sales. Deb creatively

resourced a necklace to find other uses for thisproduct category, boosting the category’s sales:

Deb and her team . . . have found a creative way topump up their jewelry sales while adding a bit of“Inspiration” to one of Spring and Summer’s hottesttrends. Deb and her team turned a floral necklaceinto a belt. They belted it around a floral dress andtopped the ensemble off with a solid cardigan, thingold chains, and a straw clutch. This is the perfectoutfit for a Sunday brunch with the girls (D-72).

In this example, Deb took what many might viewas a fixed object, a necklace, and turned it into abelt. Absent a fixed object that would have dic-tated how to use the necklace (e.g., a planogram,a directive from her supervisor, etc.), Deb had theability to act on the belt and transform it intosomething more useful. Furthermore, the “hottesttrend” provided a concept that Deb could workwith to repurpose the necklace in a compellingway, which provided “inspiration” but not afixed solution. Additionally, Deb’s creative re-sourcing was shared with other store employeesacross the organization, thereby becoming a pro-visioned object itself that other store employeescould subsequently creatively resource.

Recombining. Recombining, similar to the fam-ily period, involved changing the relationshipamong objects to create something of value. Lily(42) offered an illustrative example when she im-proved on a so-called Sex and the City table:

There was a table, a little “Sex and the City” table,and the clothes had been there for a while. So it wasjust like “I’m done looking at those” and so I grabbedanother keyholder and we just redid the table andput out new clothes . . . a different color scheme.[We] changed it all up so when people walked inthey wouldn’t see the same clothes over and overand it would look fresh and new. . . . No one wassaying, “Hey, you have to put pink tops up theretoday.” It was just, “All right, we like these, we’llput them up.” And if we didn’t like them, we didn’thave to put them up. . . . It’s nice to be able to havethat kind of freedom and control . . . We just did it.Because I knew that the table had been the same forlike maybe two weeks . . . Customers don’t want tosee the same stuff.

Lily’s account describes how she changed a tablethat appeared stale into something she thought wasof greater use. In explaining what facilitated heractions, Lily talks about learning how the organiza-tion “wanted it to look a certain way” while stillrecognizing that the stores should be “personal-ized.” She is pointing out that the organization has


a viewpoint (shaped by provisioned objects such astrend alerts) that require her to act on them to makethem useful, i.e., a broad description of a trend is ofno value until Lily acts on it, in combination withother objects such as merchandise and fixtures, tocreate a compelling display.

As I learned in talking with Veronica (33), theoriginal idea for a Sex and the City table came fromanother store manager. The organization then tookthis object (i.e., the concept of a Sex and the Citytable with accompanying pictures) and distributedit to other store employees, who would then sub-sequently act on this object like Lily did by recom-bining its different parts:

We have one manager . . . who . . . for example, theSex and the City [2] movie is coming out in a coupleof weeks. Took it upon herself. She put together fouror five versions of what people could be coming into look for if they’re going out with their girlfriendsto go to the movie, photographed them, put them ina little PowerPoint presentation, sent them out . . .Yesterday it was broadcast to everyone in the com-pany. You would never see that . . . We encouragethe sharing . . . because there are so many variationson a theme.

Thus, one store manager creatively resourced a Sexand the City table, the organization then provi-sioned this object to other stores, and Lily adoptedthis object for her own store. In doing so, she re-combined existing merchandise around a theme,which changed the look and feel of the store andpotentially broadened customers’ uses of products.As Lily noted:

We put [existing merchandise] back on the floor . . .So everything’s still on the floor, it’s just in differentlocations. And so maybe a customer will see a dressfolded and they won’t understand how to wear it,but once we put it up somewhere they’re like “Oh,that’s a unique idea.”

Problem Solving (Investor Period):Heterogeneous Solutions

Turning a jewelry fixture into a display for beltsand recombining objects around a Sex and the Citytheme were actions that not only solved a store’simmediate problems (i.e., how do we merchandiseour store?) but also played a role in helping Bou-tiqueCo solve some of its most critical problems,particularly around growing into a large chain ofboutiques. As a chain, the organization wanted toenjoy the benefits of scale economies and have a

unified vision. But as a boutique, the organizationsought uniqueness at each location that dependedon the ongoing creativity of employees. Creativeresourcing helped resolve these competing de-mands because even though employees had accessto similar objects (products, fixtures, trend alerts,etc.), the way employees creatively resourced theseobjects differed. This helped BoutiqueCo project tocustomers that each store was unique while stillrelated. Consequently, creative resourcing solvedproblems through heterogeneous solutions. Rela-tive to original solutions, heterogeneous solutionswere less novel because creative resourcing hada more common foundation, particularly provi-sioned objects. Nonetheless, this problem solvingremained a creative act because each store solvedproblems uniquely (i.e., heterogeneously) althoughin ways that might be more imaginable to corporatemanagers. Put another way, employees creativelyresourced in novel but somewhat more predictableways. As Veronica (33) put it:

For us to say that every boutique needs to look thesame, first of all, we don’t want that . . . We wantpeople to think that the one you’re shopping at is theonly one that exists, and so to have them all cookie-cutter would just, I think, be a death knell for us,because a customer walking in a door who seesthat—it’s just like going into a grocery store: Thebread’s gonna be here; the eggs are gonna be here . . .which is what you’ll find at, let’s say, an Ann Tay-lor . . . I couldn’t get them into the store and get themto browse and to discover. I can take two stores,send the exact same merchandise and have, for themost part, two different experiences with the sameproduct, both though, brand-appropriate, stayingwithin the idea of the brand [emphasis added].

As Veronica noted, BoutiqueCo was buying in scalefor the chain, but stores work with objects differ-ently. As a result, creative resourcing led to heter-ogeneity in solutions across the organization inways that affirmed the organization’s general visionwhile reflecting the unique creative activities in-side particular stores.

By solving problems at a local level, creativeresourcing also allowed stores to cater to nichemarkets as opposed to applying a one-size-fits-allapproach typical of retail chains. This allowed eachstore to market to and service customers akin tohow a traditional boutique would, while still main-taining some standardization as each store receivedsimilar objects. For example, Nicky (40) explainedhow employees should “customiz[e] your store toyour customer, customize your store, your market”

2014 835Sonenshein

and traced this customization to the “freedom ofthe visuals” that allow employees to creatively re-source, thus allowing each store to become “what’sbest for them.”

Meghan (5) provided a store employee’s perspec-tive. She talked about how she can creatively re-source her store and respond to customer needs,thereby creating a different store experience:

While we’re here in this store, we can move thingsaround, we can change our mannequins. I can watchthe traffic. I can watch the crowd. I can watch theage group. I know if spring break is coming, I reallyneed to set my tables, set my window for the vibrant,bright, youthful, young group. If we’re going intoholiday, various things like that. So, to be able to setmy store to what my traffic and what my clientele ishas been a lot of fun. It’s funny because we’ll set atable and we’ll put everything up and it sells great.Well, what is so odd is we’ve taken something out ofthe rack that’s been there for two weeks that nobodyhas bought one piece and we display it differentlyand it’s out the door, so just little things like thatthat we’ve been able to do. Whereas, at David’s

Bridal, it was very calm, very relaxed, very step-by-step. You bring the bride in for this process, she’s infor this process and everything is in exactly onecertain place and you don’t move it at all for anyreason.

As Meghan describes, she altered her store bywatching shoppers and adjusting her actions (suchas recombining objects) to meet their changingneeds. How Meghan creatively resourced will dif-fer from employees at other stores, in part becauseshe interprets her customers as different (a college-campus crowd) from other stores (such as momswith young children).

TOWARDS A PROCESS MODEL OFCREATIVE RESOURCING

While Figure 1 reports a data structure thatgrounds core constructs, Figure 2 displays the re-lationships among these constructs. Based on thefindings, I propose a process model of how manag-ers facilitate creative resourcing as perceived re-

FIGURE 2A Process Model of Creative Resourcing

Creative Resourcing

Resourcing Identity

Autonomous

Resourcing

Directed

Resourcing

Problem Solving

Perceived Resource Endowment (limited)

Creative Resourcing

Regulating Objects

Problem Solving

Perceived Resource Endowment (abundant)

Resourcing Identity

Creative Resourcing

Guidance

ResourcingIdentity

GuidanceCr

Res

RegulatingObjects

Permission and Guidance

Regulating Objects

Creative ResourcingPermission

Managerial control

Employee agency


source endowments increase over time. The modeldepicts two resourcing processes: autonomous re-sourcing and directed resourcing. The two resourc-ing processes explain the different ways that man-agers respond to perceived resource endowmentsto shape the creative acts of employees.

Autonomous Resourcing

Autonomous resourcing explains how managersfacilitate creative resourcing by shaping the identi-ties of employees. I label this process as “autono-mous” because once managers start shaping em-ployees’ identities as creative owners of theirstores, creative resourcing takes place with mini-mal managerial action. Instead, employees enact aresourcing identity (creative owners), interpretingthemselves as responsible for solutions in theirstores. In enacting a creative owner identity, em-ployees reinforce that identity, thereby fueling arecursive process among a resourcing identity, cre-ative resourcing and problem solving.

To initiate autonomous resourcing, managersshape employees’ identities with a resourcing iden-tity of being creative owners. The initiation of au-tonomous resourcing through the shaping of em-ployees’ identities unfolds as a result of threemechanisms. First, corporate managers directlyshape how employees interpret themselves, a typeof identity sense-giving (e.g., Corley & Gioia, 2004;Fiol, 2002; Pratt, 2000), such as through the intro-duction of the key vocabulary word of “owner-ship.” The introduction of this vocabulary wordprovides employees with language to make sense oftheir self and motivates action in identity-consis-tent ways (Swann, 1983). Second, corporate man-agers respond to their interpretation of a limitedresource endowment by relegating key problemsolving to store employees. As a result, store em-ployees interpret themselves as having to solveproblems independently, without substantial man-agerial capital and knowledge to assist them. Indoing so, employees interpret themselves as havingto take ownership of their stores in creative ways tocope with limited resources from top managers.Third, managers embrace equivocality by acknowl-edging that there is not a single right answer tomany problems the organization faces (Gioia et al.,2012; Sonenshein, 2010; Weick, 1995). This li-censes employees to view themselves as creatorswho experiment to respond to this equivocalitywithout fearing that they will reach the wrong an-swer. Managers, interpreting their own knowledge

deficiencies, create a psychologically safe environ-ment to experiment by embracing this equivocality(Edmondson, 1999; Lee, Edmondson, Thomke, &Worline, 2004), which allows employees to developtheir own interpretations (e.g., Sonenshein, 2009).

A “resourcing” identity refers to a self-conceptbased on an ownership schema that provides themotivation to resource and a creator schema thatprovides the means of how someone resources (i.e.,creatively). By shaping an employee’s self-conceptas owning their store, managers psychologically tieemployees to their workplace (Dittmar, 1992),which leads to a sense of responsibility for solvingproblems (e.g., Avey, Avolio, Crossley, & Luthans,2009; Pierce, Kostova, & Dirks, 2001). How employ-ees solve problems gets shaped by the creatorschema, in which employees view themselves ashaving a creative role identity (e.g., Farmer, Tier-ney, & Kung-McIntyre, 2003). When employees in-terpret and enact themselves as creators, such asthrough embracing the experimental nature of whatthey do, they test different ways of working withavailable objects, seeking new manipulations or re-combinations of those objects.

When individuals embrace an identity, they seekto perform behaviors consistent with that identity(Swann, 1983), such as through creative resourcing.Creative resourcing is an activity in which employ-ees manipulate and recombine available objects intheir stores in novel and useful ways. The resourc-ing is novel because employee manipulations andrecombinations are new; they are neither providedby managers nor any other source. The resourcingis useful in the sense that it creates value for theorganization by solving problems in original waysnot imaginable by managers. When employeessolve problems in original ways, they reinforcetheir identity as they make sense of their creativebehavior (Grube & Piliavin, 2000), and that is some-thing that explains why autonomous resourcingcan continue with minimal managerial interference(I depict this recursive process in the bottom part ofFigure 2 for autonomous resourcing).

An important aspect of autonomous resourcing isthat it depicts the creative process as paradoxicallyinvolving permission and guidance, somethingscholars have proposed as being important for thediscovery of new ideas (e.g., Locke, Golden-Biddle,& Feldman, 2008). Permission comes primarilyfrom individuals’ perceptions of a limited resourceendowment, in which individuals cannot accesstypical solutions and instead may feel permitted tocreate their own solutions (e.g., Baker & Nelson,

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2005). But this permission may nevertheless steerindividuals towards useful solutions as the organ-ization’s members perceived a limited resource en-dowment, thereby providing limited tolerance forimpractical solutions. I visually depict the permis-sion from the limited resource endowment byenveloping autonomous resourcing with a boxbounded by dashed lines. At the same time, man-agers provide guidance, or support, by helping em-ployees initially enact a resourcing identity (I de-pict this managerial guidance with a small shadedbox in the upper left-hand corner of Figure 2). Thisguidance may not only further motivate employeesto creatively resource but also shapes that creativitytowards experimenting with available objects. Thismay lead to novel solutions as the guidance of aresourcing identity encourages experimentation.Put another way, original solutions from autono-mous resourcing can map onto the classic dimen-sions of creativity (namely, novelty and useful)(Amabile, 1988): novelty generated by a resourcingidentity empowers employees towards new discov-eries while the lack of perceived resources dictatesthose solutions to be pragmatic to keep the organi-zation viable. Finally, the relative distribution ofthe shaded to unshaded box in Figure 2 (whichrepresents the sphere of employee agency) showsthat for autonomous resourcing, managers play aless involved role compared with directed resourc-ing (where the shaded box is substantially larger).

In my particular case, autonomous resourcingbest explains the early history of BoutiqueCo. Moregenerally, though, this type of resourcing mightunfold in not only new ventures but also whenevermanagers perceive limited resource endowments,such as due to a decline in revenues, an exogenousshock, or a crisis. What is important for autono-mous resourcing is that managers interpret a lim-ited resource endowment and attempt to cultivatewidespread creative action to cope with this en-dowment. But a consequence of this approach isthat, once started, managers have relatively littlecontrol over how creative resourcing unfolds—something that leads to original solutions often notimaginable by managers.

Directed Resourcing

In contrast to autonomous resourcing, directedresourcing involves greater ongoing managerialcontrol over creative resourcing. I visually depictthis using a larger shaded box for directed resourc-ing in Figure 2. The central mechanism in directed

resourcing is managers’ regulation of objects. Whenmanagers interpret an abundant resource endow-ment, they withhold objects as a means of motivat-ing employees to creatively resource by denyingfixed objects that would require limited employeeactions to create solutions to problems. Instead,managers provision dynamic objects that shape butdo not fully determine how creative resourcingunfolds.

The idea that managers withhold some objectsbut provision others necessitates a closer examina-tion of the type of objects managers regulate: fixedand dynamic. While any object can be put to use tomake it valuable (Feldman, 2004), fixed objectshave qualities less readily put to use in multipleways. The most prominent example of this from mydata was a planogram. Planograms can be valuableresources when they are put to use to set up a store,which is something many organizations do andsomething some BoutiqueCo informants did whenthey worked for other organizations. Even so, thenumber of ways that individuals can act to turn aplanogram into a resource is limited by its innatequalities as a specific plan for how to do things.And in contrast, employees can more readily put touse dynamic objects in multiple ways, such astrend alerts, stories, and broad guidelines. For ex-ample, two employees can differentially act on atrend alert and end up creatively resourcing theirstores in very different ways and solving problemsin novel ways (what I termed heterogeneous solu-tions). Lily’s Sex and the City table could be tracedback to an object that managers provisioned to her,but Lily acted to give the Sex and the City concepta new meaning. Lily’s Sex and the City concept wasdifferent from others in the organization (hence, itwas a heterogeneous solution even if it was not acompletely original one).

The fact that the central mechanism of directedresourcing emanates from how managers withholdand provision objects leads to greater managerialcontrol compared with autonomous resourcing.Managers provision objects to gently shape creativeresourcing by introducing objects that employeescan work from to solve problems. Objects such asloosely structured guidelines and broad conceptssuch as trend alerts are of limited value to employ-ees until they act on them, in conjunction withother objects (such as products and fixtures), tocreate something of value, such as a merchandisedisplay. Thus, employees still retain importantagency (represented by the unshaded box on theright-hand side of Figure 2 for directed resourcing)


in working with available objects, but managersplay a more direct role in providing objects forthem to work with that shape their resourcing(hence, the shaded box covers a portion of creativeresourcing).

Directed resourcing is also a recursive process. Itunfolds as employees solve problems that createnew objects that employees can subsequently cre-atively resource, thereby grounding an ampliativeresourcing cycle (Feldman & Worline, 2012). Re-turning to Lily’s Sex and the City example, hercreative resourcing of the table was initiated fromanother store manager’s creative resourcing thatfirst introduced the object, Sex and the City. Putmore generally, as employees creatively resource tosolve problems, their solutions also create objectsthat can then be subsequently creatively resourcedby employees and/or provisioned (or withheld) bymanagers to motivate and/or shape future creativeresourcing of other employees. Consequently, prob-lem solving creates subsequent objects that employ-ees can further resource to solve new problems.

In directed resourcing, the dynamic between per-mission and guidance is different from autonomousresourcing. In directed resourcing, the permissionto creatively resource comes from managerial ac-tions to withhold objects, which creates the need tocreatively resource (i.e., employees lack access totypical fixed objects). At the same time, by provi-sioning objects, managers guide how that creativeresourcing unfolds. This guidance prods employ-ees to reach useful solutions by having those solu-tions generated from a set of provisioned objects.Managers take this approach because, unlike forautonomous resourcing, directed resourcing in-volves an abundant perceived resource endow-ment. Without regulating objects, employees maycreatively resource in ways not useful to the organ-ization (or may even sense little need to creativelyresource because managers do not withhold fixedobjects). Put another way, under directed resourc-ing managers create urgency by withholding ob-jects (thereby permitting employees to creativelyresource) and focus creative resourcing on usefulsolutions by provisioning other objects (guidance).As a result, managerial control incorporates notonly the guidance found in autonomous resourcingbut also permission.

In my case, directed resourcing explains howemployees continued to act creatively as the organ-ization perceived a more abundant resource en-dowment. But this type of resourcing may also helpexplain creative activities when organizations are

large but need to engage in continuous creativity(e.g., Hargadon & Sutton, 1997) or ground a differ-entiated culture or strategy around creativity (e.g.,Harrison & Corley, 2011). It does so by positing thatmanagers’ key action—regulating objects—shapesthe repertoire of objects that employees likely per-ceive as fixed or dynamic, which both encouragesand shapes creative resourcing.

The Relationship between Autonomous andDirected Resourcing

While the data are only suggestive here, I findthat by solving problems in autonomous resourc-ing, employees create original solutions that helpthe organization increase its perceived resource en-dowment. The arrow in Figure 2 connecting thetwo types of resourcing depicts that problem solv-ing can shift resourcing from the autonomousform to the directed form. Problem solving canimprove the perceptions that corporate managershave about their resource endowment, includingthe organization’s collective knowledge to oper-ate its business and its capital resources. As per-ceptions of the resource endowment improve,managers shift to directed resourcing. Threemechanisms explain this transition from autono-mous to directed resourcing.

First, when employees solve problems throughcreative resourcing in autonomous resourcing, theyallow the organization to get by with limited infra-structure investment (e.g., Baker & Nelson, 2005).Instead of investing in infrastructure, managers ex-pand the repertoire of employee activities throughshaping their identities. This capital can instead beused to grow as BoutiqueCo did, or invest in market-ing, recruitment and other aspects that overcome anorganization’s liability of newness (Stinchcombe,1965). This resource conservation explanation (e.g.,Voss, Sirdeshmukh, & Voss, 2008) emphasizes howorganizations can use objects such as capital andknowledge to pursue opportunities to grow instead offor current operations, until the organization per-ceives it has enough of a resource endowment to turnto operations.

Second, fostering a resourcing identity may en-dogenously create psychological resources (e.g.,Sonenshein & Dholakia, 2012), such as motivation(Amabile, 1988), which helps an organization over-come a perceived limited-resource environment asemployees feel empowered to do their job and haveincreased task significance, variety and identity(Hackman & Oldham, 1976). This endogenous re-

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sourcefulness explanation (Dutton et al., 2006;Glynn & Wrobel, 2006; Spreitzer, Sutcliffe, Dutton,Sonenshein, & Grant, 2005) suggests that employ-ees generate new resources within the organization,and these resources in turn help to propel furtheraction (e.g., Quinn & Worline, 2008). Thus, the veryact of engaging in creative resourcing may createpsychological resources that continue to foster thisactivity, and in turn help the organization enhanceits perceived resource endowment.

Third, creative resourcing may help employeesdevelop a repertoire of actions to solve subsequentproblems, grounding a strategic advantage in trans-forming common objects into something distinctive(e.g., Nag & Gioia, 2012). This knowledge-basedexplanation (e.g., Kogut & Zander, 1992) proposesthat creative resourcing can help enhance an organ-ization’s perceived resource endowment throughemployees’ development of knowledge aroundhow to creatively resource. More specifically, asemployees develop procedural knowledge (Ander-son, 1996) about how to manipulate and recombineobjects, they solve problems that help a nascentorganization grow. But this problem solving canalso create objects that can then be further re-sourced, which is what happened with Lily’s Sexand the City example. This suggests that directedresourcing may depend on autonomous resourcingfirst, which helps build a repertoire of objects tosubsequently creatively resource. Absent these ob-jects, managers may not have a sufficient repertoireof objects to regulate.

DISCUSSION

By providing a rare examination of an organiza-tion’s creative activities as it grew into a publiccompany, I elaborated theory around the relation-ship between resources and creativity over time.This clarifies competing perspectives in the cre-ativity literature by integrating creativity and re-sourcing research. In doing so, I infuse creativityresearch with an important emphasis on action thathighlights how organizational processes are shapedby managerial action and influence the creative ac-tions of employees. I now describe how my findingscontribute to research on creativity and resourcing.

Contributions to Research on Creativity

Scholars present competing perspectives on therole of resources in fostering creativity, with someclaiming that limited resources stimulate creative

action (Baker & Nelson, 2005; Ohly & Fritz, 2010)and others claiming that abundant resources stim-ulate creative action (Amabile et al., 1996; Cyert &March, 1963). The findings from this article suggestthat focusing solely on the quantity of resourcesobscures how individuals use and alter resources(or more precisely, objects). Individuals creativelyact on objects that appear to have little value andtransform them into something more useful. Ex-plaining how individuals creatively act on objectsto turn them into resources, and how managersfacilitate this process, has four important implica-tions for creativity research.

First, the idea that certain resources might benecessary for creativity (e.g., Amabile et al., 1996)misses that a creative process itself involves trans-forming objects into the very resources needed forcreativity. While scholars have emphasized cre-ative outcomes, they have largely ignored creativeprocesses (Drazin et al., 1999; George, 2007; Shal-ley et al., 2004). Of the more process-based re-search, scholars have identified skills that fostercreativity, such as problem identification, resourcegathering, idea generation and evaluation, andmodifying and communicating ideas (Amabile,1996). Yet, this work assumes that when the re-source amount is not abundant, creativity becomeshindered (e.g., Amabile et al., 1996). But the find-ings from the current study show an importantelement of the creative process is resourcing objectsto endogenously produce what employees need inorder to act creatively.

On a related note, the findings from this studysuggest that it is difficult to explain creativity as afunction of an organization’s resource endowmentwithout concomitantly asking how managers (andemployees) act in response to a perceived resourceendowment. This is because the objects that em-ployees creatively resource are not static, suggest-ing the need to understand actions that transformthese objects. However, scholars have not givendue attention to managerial actions to cultivate cre-ativity (Ford & Gioia, 2000). The current researchsuggests that creativity scholarship should broadenfrom primarily an exercise in mapping indepen-dent variables (such as resource amount) to creativeoutputs, to include an examination of the processesby which employees and managers act on objects.In this regard, research has not considered in depthorganizational processes of creativity in whichmanagers mediate between interpretations of anorganization’s resource endowment and employ-ees’ creative actions. Yet it is precisely a focus on


the mediation of an organization’s resource endow-ment and employees’ creative actions that may re-solve the theoretical conflict over whether limitedor abundant resources foster creative acts. The find-ings from this paper propose that both types ofresource endowments can lead to creative acts, butthat this creativity is dependent on how managers(and employees) respond to these endowments.

More specifically, managers can foster creativitywith perceived limited resources through autono-mous resourcing, in which managers shape em-ployees’ identities to enable them to act creatively.But this comes with minimal, ongoing managerialcontrol. This view contrasts with extant explana-tions in creativity research, which suggest thatmanagers might respond to limited resources byenhancing motivation such as through setting goalsand altering expectancies (Ford, 1996) or more ef-fectively helping employees utilize what resourcesthey already have (Taggar, 2002). Alternatively, un-der directed resourcing, managers regulate objectsto find a balance between withholding fixed objectsand provisioning dynamic objects. By regulatingobjects, managers create some of the conditionsmore typical under a limited resource endowment(i.e., the lack of resources that embody the one rightanswer) while also providing objects more likelyunder an abundant resource endowment (i.e., ob-jects that provide a foundation from which to re-source that help employees solve problems). Put inmore psychological terms, regulating objects mayprovide a way of conditionally presenting objectsto employees, which likely leads to more engage-ment with the objects and potentially greater cre-ative problem solving (Langer & Piper, 1987). Thetentativeness suggested by provisioning dynamicobjects coupled with withholding fixed objects de-mands that individuals find a creative solution andlimits their tendency to perform work tasks mind-lessly. This suggests that managers engage in anartful balance of providing the appropriate type ofobjects that continue to stimulate and shape cre-ativity without over-determining it or stymieing it.This explanation contrasts with the view of organ-izational theorists who propose that as organiza-tions enhance their resource endowment, they seekto standardize solutions in ways that might limitintra-organizational heterogeneity (Quinn & Cam-eron, 1983).

Second, in unpacking autonomous and directingresourcing, I explain how scholars can understandorganizational processes of creativity as a dynamicbetween permission and guidance (Locke et al.,

2008). In some contexts, perceptions of a limitedresource endowment can permit employees to cre-atively resource (autonomous resourcing), whereasin other contexts managerial actions play a moreprominent role in permitting creativity (directedresourcing). At the same time, managers guide em-ployees through the creative process using differentmeans—through either helping to foster a resourc-ing identity (autonomous) or regulating objects (di-rected). While scholars have suggested the role ofpermission and guidance in fostering new discov-eries, they have done so in the context of theorydevelopment (Locke et al., 2008; Swedberg, 2012;Weick, 2006). Yet, in accordance with this view-point, the managers from my study created an en-vironment in which employees had both permis-sion to be creative and some guidance about how todo so. Permission, in the form of a perceived lim-ited resource endowment that demanded creativesolutions, or in the form of managerial withholdingobjects to replicate some of that limited resourceendowment, sparked a need for creative action.Guidance, in the form of a creative owner identitythat encouraged experimentation or in the form ofprovisioned objects that provided a foundationfrom which to creatively resource, shaped that cre-ativity. While only tentative, these findings suggesta shift from a unitary view of creativity, popularamong scholars, in which similar processes explainboth novelty and usefulness dimensions of creativ-ity (George, 2007; Shalley et al., 2004; cf. Unsworth,2001). For autonomous resourcing, employees havebroad permission to enact a creative owner iden-tity; but they are nevertheless modulated by theirlimited resource endowment, which requires prac-tical solutions to keep their store (and the organi-zation) operating. In directed resourcing, withhold-ing objects motivates novel actions as managersdeprive employees of a fixed object to solve theirproblems. But employees creatively resource fromprovisioned objects that help direct that creativeresourcing towards solutions useful for the organi-zation. In both cases, the organizational context iscritical for understanding creative actions as op-posed to primarily the innate qualities of individ-uals. While scholars have suggested that creativityis largely a byproduct of personality or innate abil-ity (Feist, 1998), my findings complement this re-search by indicating that creativity is shaped byorganizational context and processes (see also Har-gadon & Bechky, 2006).

Third, a focus on managerial actions also ex-plains how organizations can continue to foster

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creativity as they grow. Similar to alternative mech-anisms to foster creativity such as knowledge bro-kering (Hargadon & Sutton, 1997), collective sense-making (Drazin et al., 1999; Ford, 1996), andimprovisation (Kamoche, Pina e Cunha, & Vieira daCunha, 2003), I explain how creativity is not sim-ply an outcome but also an organizational process.But unlike extant research, the findings from thisstudy add an important focus on how actionschange over time as organizations evolve. In doingso, I call attention to the skill of managers who shiftfrom autonomous to directed resourcing as theirperceived resource endowment changes. As a re-sult, the findings from this paper encourage schol-ars to account for the wider organizational contextin which creativity unfolds (Plucker, Beghetto, &Dow, 2004). Creativity is contextually embeddedbased on the organization’s lifecycle development(e.g., a new or mature organization (Koberg, Uhlen-bruck, & Sarason, 1996; Quinn & Cameron, 1983))and I illuminated how managers and employeescollectively act to reach creative solutions as theorganization’s lifecycle progresses. While thisclaim warrants further exploration, highly originalsolutions may be more useful to a new venture withlimited knowledge and experience when it issearching for answers to survive, whereas a focuson intra-organizational variations that have more incommon across an organization might be more use-ful for a larger, more mature organization seeking tohave a uniform identity. This is especially impor-tant to creativity scholars who have heretoforelacked a nuanced discussion of how key terms suchas “usefulness” may be contextually dependent(George, 2007). It also suggests that, at an organiza-tional level, fostering a resourcing identity mayhelp organizations explore ways to cope with per-ceived limited resources, whereas regulating ob-jects may help them exploit a perceived abundantresource base (March, 1991).

Fourth and finally, my research joins a growingbody of scholarship around the importance of thematerial context for creativity (e.g., Bechky, 2003;Garud & Rappa, 1994; Stigliani & Ravasi, 2012). Myresearch explains how managers influence this ma-terial context by regulating objects that stimulateand shape the recombining and manipulating ofmaterial resources (e.g., fixtures and products). Intheorizing this material context of creativity, mywork unpacks how organizational members inter-pret many objects not as having a fixed meaningbut, rather, as more akin to epistemic objects thathave a wide degree of interpretive discretion (Knorr

Cetina, 1981, 1997). This is an important shift inhow creativity scholars typically theorize re-sources, because it suggests that focusing simply onthe quantity of resources, without recognizing howindividuals act on material (and non-material) ob-jects to transform them into resources, overlookshow resources can be endless wellsprings ofknowledge creation that continually acquire novel(and potentially useful) properties as individualsact on them (Rheinberger, 1997).

Contributions to Research on Resourcing

The findings from this paper also make two im-portant contributions to the literature on resourcing(e.g., Dutton et al., 2006; Feldman, 2004; Feldman &Worline, 2012; Glynn & Wrobel, 2006).

First, the resourcing literature calls attention tothe skilled actions of individuals who resource us-ing a variety of mechanisms, such as narrating toforge a collective identity (Quinn & Worline, 2008)and juxtaposing new and existing cultural re-sources (Howard-Grenville, Golden-Biddle, Irwin,& Mao, 2011). To this body of work, the currentstudy adds the importance of creativity as a foun-dational skill for resourcing. Creative acts maybroaden and enhance the way that individuals re-source, and can help explain other mechanismssuch as narrating and juxtaposing. For example,individuals can creatively resource to enhance nar-ratives as they manipulate and recombine objects tocreate more novel and useful stories that may fostera more compelling collective identity. In this re-gard, the current study opens up the possibility fordeepening resourcing research by drawing from re-search on creativity to add detail to the skilledresourcing actions of individuals.

Second, scholars typically theorize resourcing asa bottom-up process (e.g., Feldman & Worline,2012). Although employee actions play a large partin my empirical story and emergent theory, manag-ers play a critical role in permitting and guidingcreative resourcing, and it is something that sug-gests the need to better understand the managerialskill involved in fostering resourcing. For example,scholars can examine how managers learn to re-source in ways that are more helpful. Furthermore,resourcing scholars may benefit from a closer dia-logue with more psychologically oriented scholarswho offer a rich tradition of explaining the ante-cedents of creative acts (e.g., George, 2007), whichmay also serve as important antecedents for actionsthat support a resourcing process.


Contributions to Practice

My findings suggest two key practical implica-tions. First, it should be noted that, rather thanfocus on the amount of resources to foster creativ-ity, practitioners can focus on the actions that man-agers and employees take in response to their per-ceived resource endowment. Managers facilitatecreative action under a wide variety of contextsthrough adopting actions consistent with either au-tonomous or directed resourcing. But there are dis-tinct, practical tradeoffs between the two types ofresourcing. While autonomous resourcing requiresless ongoing involvement from managers, it comeswith less control over employees’ creative activi-ties. At the same time, it offers the possibility formore original solutions to emerge from the open-ended nature of problems that employees solve(Unsworth, 2001). As a result, managers may wantto facilitate autonomous resourcing, not only whentheir perceived resource endowment is limited butalso when they seek highly novel outcomes. Incontrast, directed resourcing affords managersgreater control over the creative activities of em-ployees but also depends on the development of arepertoire of objects to provision that serve as thefoundation of employees’ creative resourcing—aprerequisite that most likely depends on previousexperience with creative resourcing. While some-what speculative, solutions from directed resourc-ing may favor usefulness more than novelty asmanagers exert greater control over the creativeprocess, although scholars clearly need to conductmore research to substantiate this tradeoff.

Second, while creativity research has developedimportant practical insights into factors that ex-plain creative action of employees, such as theirpersonal characteristics (Shalley et al., 2004), in-trinsic motivation (Amabile, Hill, Hennessey, &Tighe, 1994), and leader–member exchange (Basu &Green, 1997), my findings suggest other ways man-agers can spark creative activity through fostering aresourcing identity and regulating objects withheldand provisioned to employees. This opens up newavenues for managers to influence creative activi-ties among their employees. Furthermore, this re-search calls attention to a new domain of creativeactivity often overlooked by scholars and managersalike, namely, that a crucial creative activity ofemployees is the way in which they work withobjects, which they use to solve problems vital forthemselves and the organization. This can beequally important for new ventures with a limited

resource environment and mature organizationswith a more abundant resource environment.

CONCLUSION

By spotlighting the crucial actions that managersand employees take to mediate interpretations of achanging resource endowment with creative activ-ities, I elaborate theory around critical processesthat help explain the elusive goal of fostering on-going creativity as organizations grow. In doing so,this research broadens the conversation of creativ-ity scholars beyond the amount of resourcesneeded to foster creativity to include the actionsthat managers and employees take in response toperceived resource endowments. The theory pro-vides a valuable depiction of key organizationalprocesses that call attention to the skilled actions ofmanagers and employees in engaging in creativeactivities. Returning to my opening question, ne-cessity can be the mother of all creativity. Simi-larly, an abundance of resources can spark creativ-ity. But whether each type of resource endowmentleads to creativity depends on the interpretationsand actions of managers and employees.

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APPENDIX A

Interview Protocols

Home Office Employees:

• Can you tell me what you do for BoutiqueCo?• What did you expect your job to be like before you

started? How has it actually been?• Can you tell me what a model BoutiqueCo employee

is? Is there more than one way to be a modelemployee?

• How do store employees learn about being a modelBoutiqueCo employee?

• Who is [iconic symbol of BoutiqueCo]? How wouldyou describe her?

• How do you exemplify BoutiqueCo in your joband role?

• BoutiqueCo has been opening up a lot of boutiques.Has this impacted your job?� Follow up: how have you had to adapt to this

growth?

Store Employees:• Can you tell me about what you do for BoutiqueCo?• What did you expect your job to be like before you

started? How has it actually been?• How long have you worked in this position? What did

you do before taking this position? Can you tell meabout your other experience in retail?

• Can you tell me about what is a model BoutiqueCoemployee?

• How did you “learn the ropes” about working atBoutiqueCo?

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• How would you characterize your relationship withyour co-workers?� Follow up: what was is like trying to be accepted by

them when you first started?

• Who is [iconic symbol of BoutiqueCo]? How wouldyou describe her?

• How would you describe your interaction and rela-tionship with headquarters?

• How do you go about the sales process?• What are the different ways in which you exercise

creativity or discretion in your job?• BoutiqueCo has been opening up a lot of boutiques.

Has this impacted your job?� Follow up: how have you had to adapt to this

growth?

● What do you most enjoy about working here? What doyou least enjoy about working here?� (Store managers only): What practices do you use to

help your employees “learn the ropes”?

*Note: Due to the semi-structured nature of the proto-col and the grounded theory design, the interview ques-tions differed slightly among participants as the researchprogressed. But the protocol emphasized the above corequestions.

Scott Sonenshein ([email protected]) is the Jones SchoolDistinguished Associate Professor of Management at theJesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice Uni-versity. He received his PhD in Management and Organ-izations from the Ross School of Business at the Univer-sity of Michigan. His research, which utilizes a range ofmethods in field settings, focuses on organizationalchange, social change and business ethics.


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