Rising Stars: A Study of Creativity as Experiental Learning in County Government

Abstract

Creativity and experiential learning are not often identified with government as work place. This paper explores a nascent county government initiative designed to engage employees in creative problem solving as means of person-al, professional and organizational development in service to community. The paper asks: 1) Does the program as currently working encourage employees to perceive them-selves as creative actors in their work environment? 2) Do program participants perceive their creative suggestions as welcomed by supervisors? 3) Are participants likely to be contributors in the process of exchanging ideas in the workplace? Literature on creativity as pertinent to experi-ential learning and deep smarts is reviewed. Program fea-tures designed to overcome bureaucracy and instill knowledge sharing as a means of creating an environment conducive to creativity, innovation and sharing of ‘deep smarts’ are considered. Then, study methods are de-scribed, results are presented and implications of findings are addressed. The paper concludes with a brief analysis of the study’s limitations and suggestions for future re-search.