Grażyna Bartkowiak

Improving the Creative Thinking of Talented Knowledge Workers and Managers in Polish and French Enterprises

Abstract The study considers the issue of creative and participatory activities of employees in the organization in the context of the changing socio-economic expectations, forcing employees, teams and executives to innovative activities. The planned research seeks an answer to the question: What factors attributable to the organization can help to improve the working conditions of knowledge workers classified as “talent”, teams of such employees and managers in charge of the work of outstanding employee teams in Poland and France? In order to answer such a question a questionnaire was developed (and subsequently validated) adjusted for purposes of the research and questionnaire research was conducted on a sample of 142 Polish workers in 23 medium-small enterprises, 84 employees from 10 companies in France. Workers considered to be particularly talented in both in Poland and France stressed in the first place the need of approval of deviating from accepted standards of work style by the entrepreneurs and board members. Members of the outstanding teams in somewhat greater number in France than in Poland (the variance obtained a criterion for statistical significance) pointed to the “favorable personnel policy” and the ability to obtain additional compensation for an above-average job. In the group of Polish managers “more autonomy” was clearly accentuated in the workplace (the French differed significantly from the Poles in terms of statistics) and already cited “favorable personnel policy”. The latter category was also nominated by the bulk of the French managers.