Traditionally, the role of leadership has received little attention in the
literature dealing with organizational creativity. This article describes a
study of the role of leadership and its implications for organizational
creativity in pharmaceutical research and new drug development. Creative work in
new drug development is to a large extent riddled with a series of paradoxes and
non-linear causality and thus needs to be dealt with using leadership practices
which help researchers overcome what would seem to be paradoxical. The study
makes use of Niklas Luhmann’s concept of de-paradoxification to
examine a number of opposing objectives and concepts which influence leadership
practice during creative and innovative work. De-paradoxification, in this
sense, does not mean solving the perceived paradox but making it manageable.
This study is based on a series of interviews concerning how managers and
scientists at three pharmaceutical companies conceive of leadership in creative
environments. This article pinpoints the importance as well as the influence of
leadership in both R&D settings, and in creative milieus in general,
concluding that leadership is important in creative settings, but that it should
be practiced by other means than those used in less complex environments.
Consequently, more systematic research as well as more critical evaluations of
the leadership literature are needed.
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