mobilizing Orpic

Introduction

Orpic is a company that tries to reach success and competitive advantage which makes it gives care and interest to innovation and creativity as being basic elements of success today for any business organization. Innovation and creativity are very important for helping the organization achieve its organizational success and goals as creativity and innovation can work as shortcuts for many long tiring tasks as they can provide instant easy solutions for many problems and can provide new methods for achieving missions and tasks of the work. Management and leadership require creativity and innovation for changing the organizational behavior to reach better high working performance levels and apply new technologies and new techniques in the business and production as this can lead to better outcomes related to the business, production, customers and human resources of the organization. The organization suffers different blocks to the proper achievement of creativity and innovation as there are barriers that work against achieving creativity and innovation and they represent great challenges to the organizational development so there should be effective solutions to face such barriers and challenges including individual blocks to creativity such as social and cultural blocks, concepts, beliefs and ideas that work against innovation and change as well as fears form change and the criticism resulting from applying it or the lack of effective communication within the work environment, individuals and employees and their leaders. (Gomez, 2007) This case study aims at analyzing the climate of Orpic and investigates its ability to provide creativity and innovation to be applied by employees in the organization effectively and checks the management's abilities in doing this and in encouraging human resources to be creative and innovative using different techniques and methods for developing the organization. This is done by discussing the relevant literature and referring to the most important evidence based experiences in relation to how to face the blocks to creativity and innovation. 

Analysis

Orpic is an oil company that is based in Oman and has an Omani business that is prevailing in the Middle East and the Arabian Gulf representing a developing leadership and a modern organization that has different plants for aromatics as well as polypropylene in addition to the company's refineries that produces oil products for being marketed inside and outside Oman. (orpic, 2016) Creativity and innovation are two main important concepts that the organization is trying to apply currently in order to reach higher performance levels and to save much effort and cost as they are inserted within the strategies and styles of management and leadership in addition to production and marketing operations and the organization is doing well in spite of some challenges resulting from the different blocks that hinder the way to creativity and innovation achievement as they are either social, cultural or individual blocks. Davial, Epstein and Shelton, (2007) discussed how business organizations can apply innovation and creativity in spite of the different blocks found in the organization and they referred to the ability of leaders to adapt the work environment to face such barriers and how leaders can encourage employees to face their individual blocks to creativity and to use the different structured techniques for being dare enough to apply innovative ideas and creative suggestions. In orpic, the leadership is wise enough to realize the blocks to creativity and has effective teams that do different researches and apply different models and structured techniques for facing such barriers.

In our organization, there are many successful and failing attempts to apply creativity and innovation and by referring to the literature, this can be seen according to Proctor, (2010) as he confirmed that any organization that seeks effective application for innovative transformations should at first analyze and assess its organizational creative climate and find out how far it is able to apply creative ideas and make full use of them without being hindered by the different blocks, they depended on a category element attribute model that can be used by business organizations for assessing the business environment and climate and evaluate it to check and identify the different blocks to creativity and innovation; they explained that the model is based on eight categories to assess the creative climate of the organization and they are the characteristics of the work, the support of management, co worker support, safety levels, different resources, risk taking, processes, diversity and the systems. This view was confirmed by Isaksen, (1993) as he asserted the idea of the creative climate but in a different way as explained that achieving an innovative change in an organization can be done when the leadership style is innovative and has a large area for accepting change as he referred to an example which is the transformational leadership style. Orpic is advantaged with a transformational leadership style as employees are encouraged to provide and apply creative ideas and innovative projects as the company is able to take risks after deep studying for it and leaders focus on facing social and individual blocks by applying new technologies and new structured techniques such as brainstorming and computerized techniques. An example is the new petrochemical products the company produces and encourages employees to innovate in them as those employees receive great encouragement from leaders and are motivated in a good way by appreciation, recognition, promotion and prizes.

Orpic is trying to be innovative but in fact the obstacles and blocks to creativity in the organization are too many and they work against the efforts done to raise the innovation level in the organization according to Isaksen, (1993), there is a framework that can be used for business organizations creative climates and this framework includes different concepts for creativity that explain the real meaning of creativity, relevant concepts, how to reach it and how to develop it within the business organization. In Orpic, creativity needs development and the blocks to creativity including the attitudes of some employees against it make it hard to apply any creative idea, in Orpic, there is a shortage in understanding the nature of creativity and employees have great fears about taking risk and implementing it as employees are not sure the results will be good and effective so they hesitate in suggesting any new project, product or a marketing idea and there are some managers who themselves have individual blocks to creativity and don't encourage employees to be creative or innovative. In Orpic, there is also a lack of proper motivation climate that provides enough encouragement for those employees who do well and provide effective creative ideas as the transformational leadership still lacks transformational motivation that focuses on better motivation styles and methods that can raise the morale of those creative innovative employees as they can for example receive special grants and scholarships to increase their educational background or to be trained on a higher level on innovation and creativity in the field of oil production. Cropley and Cropley, (2015) discussed the psychology of innovation in business organization and how the organization's human resources management should focus on spread that innovation culture and raise the employees' morale to be innovative by encouraging the good innovative ideas and apply them in order to make innovation a culture and a value that human resources have.    

In developing any business organization, there should be a great role for creativity and innovation as being the same all the time can leave passive impressions on customers and can reduce sales and reduce the quality of services in comparison to other companies. Hogan, (1995) related organizational development to creativity and innovation as he discussed how to achieve organizational changes to develop the business and make new successes in the market. This was also confirmed by Flaherty, (2008) but he added that to reach effective innovations and apply creative ideas, there should be deep analysis for the organizational ability to generalize such innovations and how human resources management is able to drive creative change and urge employees to apply it; he discussed how behaviors of the human resources should include creative idea generation and he referred to a model for rephrasing the mechanism for generating creative ideas via leaders who can make sure that the organizational climate is suitable for creativity by ensuring that risk taking is well studied and success is ensured. Orpic is well doing in achieving studied risk taking analysis as well as in human resource management that ensures engaging most employees in innovation and creativity climate as budgets and resources are well measured in relation to the business abilities and potentials but there should be stronger plans based on applying a variety of structured techniques for facing any possible challenges to creativity and innovation. 

Conclusion

In conclusion, creativity and innovation are basic elements for the success of any business organization; they can achieve any required changes that can help the organization reach higher levels of success and competitive advantage as there are some innovative ideas and projects that make the work go better and save much effort and cost to achieve what costs higher using traditional methods as creative ideas can distinguish the business in the market and help employees provide the company with the best they can do. This is good but there are usually blocks to creativity that hinder it.  Orpic is a company that is trying to do well on the innovation paths and tries to apply new creative climate through choosing the transformational leadership that can engage the company's human resources within the creative and innovative business climate but the company is hindered by some blocks to creativity and innovation that may be resulting from some employees or leaders who resist changes and fear risk taking but the company is following different structured techniques to face these challenges such as brainstorming, training and using computerized techniques to develop the business and help human resources provide creative ideas that can be applicable.  

 Recommendations

Orpic is highly recommended to do more researches in the field of innovations and creativity of oil production and marketing as the company is still in its first steps of innovation and creativity but it has made good successful innovations. The organization needs to apply new frameworks and new structured techniques that are able to face the blocks to creativity and enable employees to take risks and apply innovative ideas. Transformational leadership in Orpic needs more understanding as transformations require a suitable climate for creativity and a work environment that encourages effective communication between leaders and employees in order to ensure that employees can discuss their ideas without fears with their bosses and that they can be encouraged to apply that ideas and add benefits to the business organization they belong to; this can raise the employees' morale and retain them to the organization that they have positive ideas about its future in business as business future is related to creativity and innovation.