Organizational Creativity in Heterarchies: The Case of VFX Production

The aim of this paper is to portray organizational creativity as embedded in heterarchies rather than hierarchies or homoarchies. By drawing upon the case of visual effects (VFX) production, we demonstrate how heterarchies with multilayered, overlapping and incongruent organizational forms constitute a potential for organizational creativity that gets activated through a particular institutional arrangement of diversity. The article shows that analytically focusing on the properties of heterarchies can be a fruitful way to conceptualize context complexity as a resource rather than a barrier for organizational creativity.