Abstract
This chapter discusses the relationship between ethics and creativity. After introducing some common working definitions of ethics, the discussion focuses on how creativity, both as a product and as a process, relates to several ethical issues in a variety of ethical domains, with a particular focus on four types of behavior: uncreative and unethical, uncreative and ethical, creative but unethical, and creative and ethical. It is suggested that inadequate and ambiguous attention to creativity’s usefulness or appropriateness, along with an overemphasis on its novelty, leads to an oversimplified understanding of the relationship between creativity and ethics. The chapter concludes by proposing three possible means for promoting ethical creativity and reducing unethical creativity and briefly discusses some potential research directions on the relationship between these two complex concepts.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | The Oxford Handbook of Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship |
| Editors | Christina E. Shalley, Michael A. Hitt, Jing Zhou |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press, Inc. |
| ISBN (Print) | 9780199927678 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2015 |