Systemic creativity, sustainable development and business administration : understanding the bridge between Furtado and Csikszentmihalyi in the context of the Brasília National Park

Abstract

This thesis explores the social aspect of creativity, a more modern approach, and how our society comes together to produce novelty through Csikszentmihalyi’s (1988) Systems Model of Creativity. To add an economic perspective to this socio-cultural background, brought by the model, Celso Furtado (1978) and his Development and Accumulation theory is introduced to the theoretical model of this thesis. This research builds a bridge between both authors to understand how Systemic Creativity functions, when we add sustainable development to the equation, considering a business administration perspective. To achieve this objective, a qualitative, exploratory field research, combining participant observation, documental research and semi-structured interviews as data collected methods, was made, using the Environmental Education Nucleus as a case study. The content analysis technique was used to process the data collected, and a mixed grid was made with seven initial categories (field, individual, domain, development, accumulation process, insufficiency of accumulation, building bridges between theories), and four others (multi-level perspective, characterization of the field, mapping out cultural references, institutional perspective) were added after the empirical discoveries. The results analyzed include a multi-level perspective regarding all of the categories, depending on the stakeholder considered, and an empirical validation of the theoretical model. A mapping of the field around the Nucleus was essential for building the analysis, that also included how business administration is favoured by the comprehension of the Systems Model, and how a sustainable point of view is a necessity for this profession.