Work environment barriers prohibiting creativity

Organizations lacking the ability to enable their workforce to approach their work in creative ways limit the organization's innovative output and might fall behind their competitors. An explorative approach was taken to determine barriers for creativity in the work environment of a branch of a European technology company based in Thailand. Work environment factors that can decrease creative output were drawn from the componential theory and extended by two categories, namely culture and physical work environment. Some individual categories were found that indirectly relate to the work environment impediments for creativity. Results show that the main barriers were fear of risk taking, physical work environment, time pressure, autonomy or freedom, and organizational impediments in form of control and internal strife.