Managers perceptions of sleep and its connection to creativity and innovation

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Department of Business

MANAGERS PERCEPTIONS OF SLEEP AND ITS CONNECTION TO CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION

Master’s Thesis, Innovation Management Merja Jalkala (230255)

April 28, 2018

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Abstract

UNIVERSITY OF EASTERN FINLAND

Faculty

Faculty of Social Sciences and Business Studies

Department Business School Author

Merja Jalkala

Supervisor

Päivi Eriksson, KTT Title

Managers perceptions of sleep and its connection to creativity and innovation

Main subject

Innovation Management

Level

Master’s degree

Date

April 28, 2018

Number of pages 70+2

Abstract

This study explores sleep in the context of innovation management. The essence of this study is to bring forward how sleep and its connection to creativity and innovation is presented in the managerial context.

Previous studies have address sleep having an effect on individual level creativity. Sociological studies have studied the individual attitudes, beliefs and perceptions of sleep. Yet, studies have not taken the initiative to study the managers perceptions of sleep and its connection to creativity and innovation with a qualitative setting.

Qualitative theme interviews were utilized to study the Finnish managers perceptions, beliefs and attitudes of the connection between sleep and creativity & innovation. Five different managers in a different level of management positions participated in the thematic interviews.

Four of those managers where male and one female manager. Interview data was analysed with a theory related approach, where data and theory driven themes was derived from the data.

According to the findings of this study, gender differences play a role when analysing the differences between male and female managers perceptions and attitudes regarding sleep as an individual and organizational issue. The connection between sleep and creativity & innovation was primarily formulated through the biological negative consequences of sleep loss, different sleep problems e.g. sleeplessness and fatigue. Overall sleep was perceived to be a valuable necessity in order to maintain a certain way of living, performance and ability to be creative and innovative.

The value of this study is that it brought forward managers viewpoints how sleep is perceived to be an individual and organizational level issue and how the current 24/7 society has an effect on individuals sleep. Furthermore, sleep was viewed as a boost for individual creativity and innovation, and contributed to the novel research field of creativity, where individual creativity is more than a stable trait and can be enhanced true a recovery process such as sleep.

Key words:

sleep, creativity, innovativeness, innovation

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Tiivistelmä

ITÄ-SUOMEN YLIOPISTO

Tiedekunta

Yhteiskuntatieteiden ja kauppatieteiden tiedekunta

Yksikkö

Kauppatieteiden laitos Tekijä

Merja Jalkala

Ohjaaja

Päivi Eriksson, KTT Työn nimi

Esimiesten näkemyksiä unesta ja sen yhteydestä luovuuteen ja innovointiin. Managers perceptions of sleep and its connection to creativity and innovation

Pääaine

Innovaatiojohtaminen

Työn laji

Pro gradu -tutkielma

Aika 28.04.2018

Sivuja 70+2 Tiivistelmä

Tutkimus käsittelee unta innovaatiojohtamisen kontekstissa. Tutkielman tavoitteena on tuoda esille, kuinka uni ja sen yhteys luovuuteen ja innovointiin näyttäytyy esimiestason kontekstissa. Aikaisemmat tutkimukset ovat todenneet, että unella on vaikutusta yksilötason luovuuteen. Sosiologiset tutkimukset ovat tutkineet yksilöiden asenteita, uskomuksia ja näkemyksiä uneen liittyen, mutta tutkimusnäyttöä ei ole esimiesten näkemyksistä uneen ja sen yhteydestä luovuuteen ja innovatiivisuuteen.

Tutkimuksen empiirinen osuus toteutettiin kvalitatiivisin menetelmin, jossa haastateltiin viittä suomalaista esimiestä IT, jalometalli, akatemia ja start-up- aloilta. Haastateltavana oli yksi nainen ja neljä esimiestä. Haastattelut toteutettiin puolistrukturoituina teemahaastatteluina, sekä aineiston analysointi oli luonteeltaan teoriasidonnainen. Analyysin keskiössä oli tuoda esille esimiesten subjektiiviset näkemykset, asenteet ja uskomukset liittyen uneen ja sen yhteyteen luovuuteen ja innovatiivisuuteen.

Tutkimuksen tulosten mukaan sukupuolella on merkitystä esimiesten erilaisissa asenteissa ja näkemyksissä erityisesti unen liittämisellä yksilö- ja organitason asiaksi. Unen ja luovuuden

& innovoinnin välinen yhteys nähtiin univajeen, uniongelmien ja väsymyksen biologisten vaikutusten kautta. Esimiehet kokivat hyvien yöunien olevan arvokas välttämättömyys, joka edesauttaa heitä saavuttamaan

Tämän tutkimus toi esille arvokkaita esimiesten näkökulmia kuinka uni koetaan olevan yksilö- ja organisaatiotason kysymys, ja millainen vaikutus yhteiskunnan hektisyydellä on yksilöiden uneen. Lisäksi uni nähtiin luovuutta edesauttavana tekijänä, sekä empiirisen osuuden tutkimuksessa esimiesten näkökulmasta ja luovuuden ja unen aiemmissa teoreettisissa tutkimuksissa.

Avainsanat

uni, luovuus, innovatiivisuus, innovaatio

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1 INTRODUCTION

In this first chapter I will firstly introduce the topic of my thesis, sleep and its connection to creativity and innovativeness and argument an existing research gab which my study is answering. Secondly, I will go through the main research questions and clarify the purpose of this study. Lastly, I will explain the key concepts of the study and present the overall structure of this thesis.

1.1 The relevance of sleep

“Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care, The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath, Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, Chief nourisher in life’s feast”

-William Shakespeare, Macbeth

Sleep is essential for our wellbeing and we use almost third of our lives sleeping. Even tough researchers debate about why we need sleep to function properly, variety of different studies shows that there are several different negative affects when we do not get enough sleep.

(Coveney 2014). One explanation of why we sleep, is that it organizes our previous thoughts to a form of new combination (Sio & Ormerod 2009; Härmä & Sallinen 2004, 59) and the amount of sleep one should gain per night varies between individuals (Medina 2009, 152.)

Instead thinking about the right amount of sleep we should have, the focus should be on what is the amount of sleep that is not enough. (Medina 2009, 158.) The essential point that Medina (2009, 163) states is that sleep is something that allows brains to function normally and lack of sleep is something that shifts the brain to a state of malfunction and therefore diminishes e.g.

the overall ability to think, hurts attention, memory function, logical reasoning ability, executive function, mood and quantitative skills.

Sleep problems e.g. sleepiness has come an epidemic problem among working people according to National Sleep Foundation (NSF). The sleepiness issue in the workplace setting has been ignored as an occupational health topic in the field of industrial and organizational psychology. As sleepiness impacts on one’s personal wellbeing, it has practical, health and legal consequences for organizations in the workplace setting. (Krauss et al. 2003.)

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Additionally, to sleep disorders, people are currently suffering from situations where they just are not getting enough hours to sleep (Hafner 2016). The decreased amount of time we spent sleeping is due to the fact that we favour more waking state activities and engage in different social opportunities (Williams 2011; ref. Coveney 2014). Lack of sleep is heavily associated to other lifestyle factors such as alcohol consumption, smoking, lack of physical activity, excessive electronic use and psychosocial stress. As a result, the lack of sleep can have a variety of negative impacts such as declining success at school and in the labour market. As argued, lack of sleep has several negative impacts on people’s health and quality of life. Furthermore, it has a larger scale influence on our future economic situation. (Hafner et al. 2016.)

It is interesting that organization scholars have paid little attention to sleepiness, to the biological drive to sleep, even though it has major impact on the workplace behaviours (Mullins et al. 2014; Krauss et al. 2003). Gaultney & Collins-McNeil (2009) states that sleep problems impact on organizations is often unrecognized even tough poor sleep costs business directly and indirectly, through different levels impaired cognition, lost productivity, depression, poor social relationships and different negative effects on workers physical and emotional health.

The fact that sleep problems are relatively common (Mullins et al., 2014) is a result of the fact that the number of sleep full-time workers are getting, have been decreasing over the past 30 years. At the same time, the amount of work people is doing has increased (Knutson, Van Cauter, Rathouz, DeLeire, & Lauderdale, 2010). In sum, sleep has a major role on how well organizations business functions (Gaultney & Collins-McNeil 2009).

The sleep study research area is emphasized with the disciplines such as epidemiology, neuropsychology and different behavioural strains of psychology. Those disciplines have given the backbone for sleep research, but the sleep issue in these disciplines has been neglecting several other study areas as the political, economic and sociocultural aspects of sleep. Little attention to sleep is given from the perspective of organization and management studies.

(Hancock 2008.) As Hancock argues, it is the organizational and managerial viewpoint to sleep that has been neglected in the existing research. Coveney (2014) states that the sociological work regarding on the experiences of sleep in different sections of society is something that would need study further.

To answer the research gabs underlined by Hancock (2008) and Coveney (2014), this thesis aims to study managers viewpoints, beliefs and attitudes to sleep and creativity and innovativeness. So why sleep, creativity and innovativeness are especially relevant to study from managers perspective? When targeting the individual perspective to fit the leadership and manager perspective, it is not irrelevant how organizations supervisors are sleeping. Studies

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have been found to support the idea that constructive leadership behavior can have a positive effect on employee’s sleep, by gaining higher level sleep quality (Munir & Nielsen, 2009).

Barnes et al. (2015) discovered in his study that leader’s poor night sleep has impact on their daily abusive behavior which eventually impacts negatively on daily subordinate unit work engagement. All in all, managers and leaders sleep can be seen to be highly relevant and important as their decision can have large scale impact on people’s lives (Ruderman, Clerkin

& Deal 2017). More detailed, the skills that are the most essential to leaders e.g. ability to support subordinates, to receive feedback, adapt to change situations and decision making are all areas which are hampered by sleep deprivation (Van Dam & Van der Helm 2016). In contrast, negative stressors in the workplace can lead to employees’ fatigue and in the worst case, insomnia (Eriksen 2006; Wagner et al. 2014).

Managers sleep plays a role to employees’ creativity as Han (2017) draws the conclusion that if an employee has an abusive supervisor at work, which has an influence on employees’

wellbeing, it can lead to sleep loss or other sleep problems and as a continuum have an effect on decrease of the cognitive resources. Those cognitive resources are seen to be essential when engaging in creative performance in the workplace settings. Therefore, supervision behavior can have a negative effect on employee creativity through sleep deprivation. (Han 2017.) The current situation is that there is a little amount of research which have studied experiences, beliefs and attitudes toward sleep in different sections of society (Coveney 2014), as well as studies exploring leaders sleep habits and beliefs they possess toward sleep (Svetieva 2017).

Nevertheless, there is existing research data shows that sleep enhances and fosters individual creativity (Ritter et al. 2012; Wagner et al. 2004) whereas sleep loss and sleep problems are link to impaired ability to engage in a divergent thinking process (Horne 1988).

In contrast to the traditional studies emphasizing the connection between creativity and personality, resent study on Weinberger et al. (2018) revealed that recovery processes such as sleep can have a critical role on entrepreneurs’ creativity. Weinberger et al. (2018) pioneer study underlines that the ability to be creative has more a changeable nature, than just depending on personal traits. As Weinberger (2018) study underlines, being creative does not relay so much on personal traits as understood recently and is more depending on individual ability to recover e.g. through good night sleep.

In sum, sleep and creativity and the role of management are closely related to each other.

Nevertheless, no qualitative study has addressed these themes together where managers beliefs and attitudes are in the spotlight. Therefore, my study will contribute to this existing research

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gab stated by Hancock (2008) Coveney (2014) and Svetieva (2017) and connects the sleep issue with creativity and innovativeness as Weinberger (2018), but with a qualitative approach.

1.2 The purpose of the study

The purpose of this study is to unravel connections between sleep and innovativeness from managerial point of view. The focal element is to analyse how Finnish managers talk about sleep and creativity and innovativeness. Sleep and its linkage to innovativeness and creativity is being discussed through three levels, individual, organizational and cultural perspective.

With these distinctions in mind, three different research questions are set to seek answers to this issue.

My main research question is:

1. “How sleep and its connection to creativity and innovation is presented in the managerial context?”

I will find answers to my main research question, with the support of two other sub research questions:

2. “How managers perceive sleep as an individual, organizational and society level question?”

3. “How managers perceive the relevance (or irrelevance) of sleep for creativity and innovation?”

By finding answers to these research questions I am contributing to the study of sleep in the organization management research field. My aim is to bring forward and clarify the notion that sleep has influence on individual’s ability to be innovative and creative. The empirical part of this thesis unravels how sleep and its connection to creativity and innovation is presented in the managerial context. Managers subjective perceptions, beliefs and attitudes are in the spotlight and how they perceive sleep as an individual, organizational and society level question.

Furthermore, how managers perceive sleep to be relevant or irrelevant to creativity and innovation. This qualitative research is contributing the organizational management research field, where qualitative studies of sleep and its connection to creativity and innovativeness have been neglected.

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The theoretical framework where the empirical study is relaying, is structured around Hancock’s (2008) three level insight into sleep. The focal element is that individuals sleep behavior always occurs under some cultural and organizational context and therefore it is relevant to reflect these different levels where the individual sleep behavior is occurring and acted upon. Therefore, the utilization of Hancock’s (2008) insight into sleep helps to clarify the bigger picture where the individuals sleep behavior is occurring and acted upon and what kind of connections and influence can organizational and cultural practices have on individuals sleep behavior.

Sleep is something that is often sacrificed because of the demands of waking life in the different sections of our society. The need is to explore how individual beliefs and expectations are performed tough their connection to the broader context e.g. work, social roles and lifestyle factors and how those attitudes toward sleep are changing in the 24-h world. (Coveney 2014.) The utilization of Hancock’s (2008) micro, meso and macro level insight into sleep is a helpful framework to study how connections between sleep and innovativeness & creativity are shown and presented among Finnish managers.

1.3 Key concepts and structure of the thesis

The key concepts related to this study are sleep, sleeplessness, innovativeness, creativity, management and organizational practices. Next, I will describe the overall definitions of these different concepts.

Sleep: Firstly, sleep can be understood through as a primary physiological recovery process which allows body to deactivate and regenerate (Åkerstedt 2006) and which organizes our previous thoughts to a form of new combinations (Sio & Ormerod 2009).

Creativity: According to Amabile’s (1988) the original componential model of creativity

“Creativity is the production of novel and useful ideas by an individual or small group of individuals working together” (Amabile 1988; Amabile 1996). Rank, Pace & Frese (2004) defines that creativity is the different psychological process which enhances the change in individuals, teams and organizations toward to an eligible state. Rank et al. (2004) underlines the difference between creativity and innovation where creativity is a truly novel and fresh idea and innovation can be formulated through previous experiences or ideas. Lastly, Sarooghi, Libaers and Burkemper (2015) states that creativity is the backbone and starting point of every innovation.

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Innovativeness: Innovativeness according to Amabile’s (1988) widely used definition states that innovativeness is the ability to shift creative ideas into their final form. As can be seen from the innovation definition of Sarooghi et al. (2015), these two concepts are used in some extent as a synonymy for each other.

Innovation: The difference between creativity and innovation can be firstly underlined through the individual and social difference “Innovation is primarily an intraindividual social process whereas creativity is to some extent an intraindividual cognitive process” (Anderson

& King 1993). More detailed, Sarooghi, Libaers and Burkemper (2015) states that innovation is the ability to change the creative ideas into different products and services.

In Chapter 2, Firstly I present the innovation management context where the sleep issue is being discussed and where the individual ability to innovate and to be creative is discussed more detailed. Secondly, I present the theoretical framework of sleep by Hancock (2008) which sets the frame for my empirical study.

In Chapter 3, I present the methodology of the empirical study. The qualitative methodological approach is argued, and details of the collection and analysis of the interview data is being presented. I present two tables which clarify the classification between theory and data driven themes as well as background information regarding the interview participants.

In Chapter 4, I present the results of the analysis of my empirical research. In the first subchapter 4.1, the managers individual perceptions and beliefs of sleep are presented, in the second subchapter 4.2 managers viewpoints of sleep from an organizational standpoint are presented, in third 4.3 subchapter, sleep from the managerial standpoint is presented from macro- level insight to sleep. The last chapter 4.4 sums up the key results of the empirical research.

In Chapter 5, I summarize the overall study. More detailed, a summary of the empirical study is opened and connected with the earlier theoretical knowledge and what new knowledge this study provided. Results of the study are reflected through its practical and managerial contributions and the chapter is closed by discussing study limitations and future study proposals.

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2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

In this chapter, I will firstly present the theme of this thesis, sleep in the context of innovation management where I describe the existing research of the connection between sleep and creativity. Secondly, I will provide a theoretical framework for my empirical research where Hancock (2008) three level insight into sleep is utilized.

2.1 Innovation management context

If a firm truly wants to possess a high level of innovativeness, it is essential and necessary to possess a high level of creativity (Cohen & Levinthal, 1990). Amabile (1988) states that individual creativity is the most crucial element of organizations ability to innovate, but in no means, it is by itself sufficient. As sleep is itself linked to creativity (Ritter et al. 2012) it gives a good argument to study this special connection further.

Creativity & innovativeness

According to Amabile & Pratt (2016) a revised componential model, creativity is something that leads the generation of ideas or products externally or internally, whereas innovativeness refers to the ability to change these ideas into their final form (Amabile 1988). Therefore, creativity can be seen as a dimension of innovativeness. When considering organizations innovativeness, it reflects on the willingness and ability to successfully enhance new opportunities to adopt and implement innovations (Hurley & Hult, 1998).

Amabile (1998) argues that people usually tend to link creativity to be something related to arts and to different expressions of highly original ideas. In business life, the originality isn’t enough and therefore the ideas must be easy to implement, appropriate and useful. (Amabile 1998.) As Raj and Srivastava (2016) points out, many scholars tend to use innovativeness and creativity terms interchangeably where most innovations build on creativity (Rosenfeld & Servo, 1990).

In spite of this similarity among those concepts, it has been widely recognized that creativity is something that produces ideas, whereas innovation is the implementation of those ideas (Blomberg et. al 2017).

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In the latest version of Amabile’s (1988) original componential model, Amabile &Pratt (2016) presents a model of how organizational innovation is related to individual level creativity and how those different domains are related to each other. At the individual level, three different components are identified which creates individual’s overall creativity. They are expertise in the task domain, intrinsic motivation related to the task in hand and creative relevant processes.

(Amabile & Pratt 2016.) From those three components, it can be argued that sleep has the most relevant linkage to the motivation and process domains. Ritter et al. (2012) argues that individuals can actively enhance their creativity process during sleep.

When considering the overall creativity and innovativeness of a firm, naturally it is formulated through the individuals who are working for that specific company. Therefore, the creativity of individuals is the backbone of overall organizational creativity (Blomberg et.al 2017). The research area of individual creativity has pointed out four elements that are essential when considering creativity from individual perspective and in the end organizational creativity.

Those themes according to Blomberg et al. (2017) are different self-management factors e.g.

self-efficacy, self-concordant goals and self-regulation, a mood and affect, motivation and knowledge. (Blomberg et.al 2017.)

Furthermore, to Amabile’s (1988) and Amabile & Pratt’s (2016) versions of creativity components, Robert Epstein’s original generativity theory from the 1980s (Epstein 2013) suggests four core competencies of creative expression for individual creativity to occur.

One should 1) broaden knowledge and skills, 2) capture new ideas 3) manage surroundings and 4) seek challenges. The generativity theory underlines the meaning of ones’ surroundings when considering making a difference in creativity. From these four competencies, sleep is best known to have a connection to the first one, for capturing new ideas as they occur. For example, great artists, inventors, writers and composers take high measures to reduce the likelihood to the fact that new ideas will be lost. By relaxing and drifting off to sleep e.g. Salvador Dali and Thomas Edison would have a key in their hand which dropped to the floor and awaked them to record the occurred ideas. (Epstein et al. 2013.)

Innovation in organizations

The overall understanding currently is that innovation is something which is essential for economies to be successful and competitive, nevertheless there is absent of consensus of the definitions of innovation. (Khne et al. 2010.) From organizational perspective, innovation is a process that helps organizations to grow by making some changes and by introducing something new (Baporikar et al. 2015). Those innovation processes are complex and the reason

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why innovation has so multiple definitions (Khne et al. 2010.) Innovation in its old form is associated very easily solely to products (Baporikar et al. 2015). Nowadays it can be defined as a setting of processes where new and fresh ideas are implemented within an organization. Those innovation processes are non-linear by nature and therefore require adaptive and flexible tools.

The essence in those process is to shift ideas into social, technological and institutional assumptions that are blended in with normal processes, products or practices. (Valtanen et al.

2013.)

When considering from time perspective, innovations can be radical or incremental and they can happen at all levels inside an organization. (Baporikar et al. 2015.) Reunanen (2013) highlights that some level of top-down management is needed when controlling those innovations, but at the same time solely relaying on bottom-up philosophy could lead to pure chaos. As a result, it is essential to balance between top-down and bottom-up philosophies among the different innovation process and utilize the practices depending on the situation.

(Reunanen 2013.)In the current creative and knowledge economy, the ability to innovate has grown to a point where it is seen to be a top priority to hold firms competitive edge. The interesting element is that managers have understood the role of innovation management initiatives to be highly important and therefore they have put a significant effort into those, even in the time of financial crisis. (Baporikar et al. 2015.)

The second part where individual level creativity in the Amabile & Pratt’s (2016) model is related, is organizational innovation, which is formulated through motivation to innovate, resources in the task domain and skills related to innovation management. Those domains affect the individual and group level of creativity and vice versa. The role of management is relevant in the linkage of organizational innovation and individual creativity. For example, if managers themselves are creative and are able to use different managerial practices that enhance individual creativity, it can lead to a positive situation where employees themselves start to develop their own process that are related to the creativity aspect. (Amabile & Pratt 2016.) It was also, in those other reasons.

In sum, as organizations are formulated from individuals, it is essential to go further and highlight the aspect that makes individuals more innovative and creative. If the ability to innovative is so crucial as stated, how could we enhance individual creativity and organizational innovativeness and innovation. When examining person’s ability to be innovative, creativity is something what is seen to be studied very thoroughly at the individual level of innovativeness (Baporikar et al. 2015). Furthermore, it is interesting to combine these main themes of this study, sleep and creativity together and see how they are connected to each other.

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2.2 Sleep as a key to creativity and innovativeness

Sleep deprivation and sleepiness have several different consequences on the well-being of the person. Sleep deprivation can e.g. reduce perceived emotional intelligence and constructive thinking skills (Killgore et al. 2008), fatigue (as feeling tired) has a special impact on knowledge workers (Barnes & Dyne 2009) and sleep quality has been shown to be linked to self-control resources where negatively associated to unethical behavior (Barnes et al. 2011). Barnes &

Dyne (2009) states that as knowledge workers are the back bone and competitive advantage to organizations as they develop ideas as new products and strategies.

The existing research shows especially the biological and medical evidence that sleep, sleeplessness and dreams effects on individual creativity and innovativeness. From Finnish scholars, professors Mikko Härmä and Mikael Sallinen (2004) states that the connection between sleep and creativity is that the ability to be creative requires rest and especially sleep.

This connection can be firstly explained through sleep problems, where a person who is suffering from a sleep deficit tends to perform tasks on a routine basis even though it won’t lead to hoped results. Therefore, people staying up just one night, are not able to fluently shift between different thinking strategies and produce fresh ideas, which is key element in creative thinking. The second explanation is that sleep itself helps brains to connect thoughts with a new way. Thirdly the role of dreams, which can be the source of inspirations, can be seen as one way to explain the sleep having influence on individual creativity. (Härmä & Sallinen 2004, 59-60.)

Other reasons why sleep increases individual creativity are e.g. that sleep promotes explicit knowledge and bolster insightful behavior (Wagner et al. 2004). Alhola and Polo-Kantola’s (2007) study found that sleepiness or sleep deprivation weakens cognitive performance as decreased alertness, vigilance and attention. Horne (1988) stated that sleep loss impairs one’s ability to truly engage in a divergent thinking process which is stated to be a synonymy for one’s ability to be creative. Ranking from science to the music and other arts industry, sleep has been proven to facilitate and foster creativity (Ritter et al. 2012). Inside creativity, the studies of cognitive flexibility (Walker et al. 2002) and the ability to find remote associations (Cai et al. 2009) has showed to be improved through good sleep behavior.

So far scholars have acknowledged the benefits of sleep on creativity but resent findings have found that people can actively enhance the beneficial effects of sleep having on creativity. More detailed, people can actively trigger creativity-related processes during their sleep, and as a

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result enhance the beneficial effect of sleep on creativity. (Ritter et al. 2012.) The study by Ritter et al. was performed by exposing control groups to conditioned, control and no odour in their sleeping conditions. As a result, triggering creativity-related processes during sleep can have a positive effect on the ability to engage in creative thinking in a waking state (Ritter et al. 2012). As a continuum, Damn & Helm (2016) underlines the relevance of managers sleep where getting enough sleep leads to effective leadership and the ability to think divergently.

A workload with a special time pressure is seen to undermine the possibility to be creative, if an individual feels the pressure to be too much to handle (Amabile et al. 1996). As workload pressure is found to diminish the ability to be creative in the organization, work resources in other hand can facilitate one’s creativity (Rasulzada & Dackert 2009). As continuum, getting enough sleep is associated to play a major part in individuals overall health and wellbeing (Ellenbogen 2005).

So far, the creativity and innovation research studies have demonstrated that creativity is the backbone of innovativeness and the its relevance in the business environment. As Ritter and Dijksterhuis (2014) acknowledges, “Creativity is one of the most important assets we have to navigate through the fast-changing world of the 21^st century” (Ritter & Dijksterhuis 2014).

Nevertheless, organization management research area is lacking the knowledge what are organizations managers beliefs and attitudes toward sleep and its linkage to creativity and innovativeness. To study managers beliefs, perceptions and attitudes its fruitful to take a relatively large viewpoint to this special issue, such as Hancock (2008) three level insight into sleep.

2.3 Theoretical framework of sleep

When discussing why people at work are tired and feeling fatigue, too many of the current research focuses on individual level problems and solutions. Therefore, more attention should be given to wider, organizational level insight into fatigue at workplace, where organizational factors are one part of the problem where employees are feeling fatigue. (Levenson 2017.) As a result, my theoretical framework is answering this larger, organizational level insight into fatigue issue, where Hancock (2008) three level insight model gives an opportunity to address sleep and creativity and innovativeness from the wider perspective as well. The reason why especially the organizational level approach to sleep is crucial, relays on the shift in our society

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where we are carrying smartphones and technology to our home, where as previous generations could more easily to shift away from work as Levenson (2017) states.

In sum, all the three level insights into sleep are tightly related to each other, where individual expectations, beliefs, attitudes and experiences are produced under the organizational and cultural levels. Svetieva (2017) states, even though sleep can be seen as a biological imperative, it is always placed at some social and cultural context, which can influence individuals’

expectations, beliefs and attitudes of sleep. It has been studied that social pressure can be even more powerful force than individuals’ biological drive to sleep and dictate whether one has enough sleep or not (Walch, Cochran & Forger, 2016). The three-level insight into sleep, creativity and innovativeness gives a wide and versatile approach to these themes.

The focal point of Hancock’s (2008) the model of sleep is that sleep is currently being discussed from a variety of perspectives, where the corporate as organizational and self-management as individual perspectives are addressed, and which are embedded in the cultural, macro and economic levels. Those different level of discussions generates different sets of discourses e.g.

the crisis of sleep. My aim of this study is to unravel how those discourses are apparent in managers talk of sleep and creativity and innovativeness. As Hancock (2008) states that sleep is something that enables humans to engage their capacities to be creative and innovative individuals, this study addresses this linkage by focusing how managers perceive and reflects this special linkage.

In sum, the value of my empirical study is that it adds innovativeness and creativity aspect to Hancock´s (2008) the model of sleep. Therefore, the notion of sleep having and influence on individuals’ innovativeness and creativity is being added to Hancock’s meso level insight, where sleep can be seen as a source for performance at work context. It brings forward how individual who invests in their self by maintaining good sleep behavior can actively enhance their ability to be creative and innovative as well as company which wants to maintain high levels of innovation & creativity.

In sum, Hancock’s (2008) framework helps to understand the larger viewpoint to sleep by underlining how sleep is talked through the different discourses and what are the most dominant technologies that produce those talks from economic, organizational and personal viewpoints.

These three different level insights allow individuals, organizations and policy makers to see the underlying mechanisms that has an influence on individuals sleep behavior.

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Three different primary discourses crisis/consumption, performance/responsibility and investment/actualization which are present in the different levels of interventions. In this context, the primary concept refers to the most dominant and apparent discourses and technologies that are being brought forward in Hancock’s’ (2008) model. Secondly, the intervention concept refers to the level of analysis where the different discourses of sleep are being formulated. The primary technologies refer to the existing tools that have most influence in generating the primary discourses at the three-different level of interventions. The primary technologies are mass media/marketing, policy/facilities management and self- help/therapeutic. To clarify the division of the interventions, discourse and technologies, they are presented in Table 1 below.

Table 1. (Hancock 2008, 420)

The focal element that Hancock (2008) three level insight into sleep and other scholars brings forward is to see sleep more than as an individual issue, an expand the individual aspect of sleep to the cultural and organizational level where we are facing an acute sleep crisis.

2.3.1 Sleep as a cultural and economic issue, macro- level

The first examination of sleep in Hancock’s (2008) model is underlining that sleep is a cultural and social problem. Therefore, the ways sleep is preliminary talked on the cultural level are crisis and consumption discourses. It is something where mass media and marketing play an important role and can give the voice to the individuals who wants to bring forward their sleep questions. Hancock (2008) demonstrates how the pressure of performing in 24/7 society has led to a situation where business people are coming more and more to speak about of their experiences of sleep and sleepiness and the impacts it has on their lives. For example, different documents, radio podcasts (Hancock, 2008) and the out coming of writer and businesswomen

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Arianna Huffington collapsing because of lack of sleep are all demonstrations of the acute sleep crisis we are currently going through.

The sleep crisis has come to the existing point as a result of 24/7 society we are facing today.

(Hancock 2008.) In contrast, the drumming behalf of sleep has in some cases lead to extreme situations, where people are being treated as sleep deprived if they are not getting at least eight hours sleep per night, which is not itself yet a sign of sleeplessness situation. (Hancock 2008.) The important paradox that Hancock (2008) brings forward that even the situation is that we have an acute sleep crisis, but what is the level how much this kind of discourse, increases good sleep behavior or contrast increases just peoples’ alertness or in the worst case, the fear of sleep problems.

To understand the shift of sleep culture in our society, the increased value toward sleep has taken its place e.g. in the Helsinki-Vantaa airport, where Finnish innovation Go Sleep pods can be used. Across Atlantic in New York Empire State Building, Metro Naps offers their sleep services. Hancock (2008) argues that those nap pods are something that illustrates the macro level concern of sleep we are facing today. Therefore, it is not solely about having an acute sleep crisis, but we are trying to actively find ways to solve the situation where people are feeling more fatigue and tired.

Even though sleep can be seen as something that can be a very individual and private matter, cultural and macro level characteristics are something that are closely linked to the individual sleep questions. For example, the expression “Did you sleep well?” about well-being of the person is something that express a dynamic view of the cultural interpretation of sleep. The common situation when discussing about sleep and its relevance to individual often neglects the cultural context where the sleep behavior is occurring. (Airhihenbuwa et al. 2016.)

As living in the modern 24/7 society, over 1 billion people are engaging in this sleeping behavior cycle (Bliwise 2008). The sleep research community has kept the biological, behavioural and physiologic element of sleep at the core of their studies. Nevertheless, in real life the cultural aspect of sleep cannot be separated from those biological, behavioural and physiological elements of sleep. As Airhihenbuwa et al. (2016) argues, the social conditions where people live have major implications to the behavioural sleep research. The situation for e.g. improving the sleeping conditions can vary depending on the living conditions and socio- economic status. Therefore, the cultural and broader aspect of sleep is relevant to discuss in order to understand the organizational and personal level of the question of sleep.

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Researchers Williams, Coveney & Gabe (2013) states in their study that politics is one broader discourse which impacts on individuals sleep behavior. Airhihenbuwa et al. (2016) notes that even though these two words are seen together very little in the existing research literature, Williams et al. (2013) are the scholars that have been able to give solid argument about why these different areas should be further studied within the sleep research area. For example, the rise of 24/7 capitalist nature of living faster and faster, has led to the situation where normal working people are suffering from various of sleeping disorders (Williams, Coveney & Gabe 2013). As a result, politics is related to sleep through the existing sleep crisis.

Apart from Hancock’s (2008) notions, Airhihenbuwa et al (2016) states that yet our 24/7 society is demanding more and more from workers and individuals, the discourse of sleep, being seen as something negative or almost as a lazy activity, has shifted more to a situation where sleep is being valued and lauded. The sleep-positive climate is supported and enhanced through by the variety of different policies and practices, for example innovative sleep products (e.g. sleep pods), sleep clinics and sleep medicines. (Airhihenbuwa et al. 2016.) As a result Hancock (2008) notes that consumption is the second primary discourse where the sleep is occurring at the cultural level. In other words, the sleep crisis has led to a situation where people are consuming more and more different sleep related products and services. Those different sleep related services, products and solutions are one way of solving our sleep crisis. (Hancock 2008.) From Finnish scholars, Anu Valtonen has studied sleep from sociological perspective and especially how sleep, work and economy are related to each other. She argues that our sleep habits and the way we talk, and value sleep are all formed through the ideals of economy and work life we are carrying with us. As a result, by studying Finnish media journals Valtonen find out that sleeping is often seen in the Finnish context to be something as a way to grow our bodily capital. (Valtonen 2014.) An underlining that Valtonen (2014) brings forward was the approach how sleep and sleeping are generally being discussed in the Finnish economy.

Valtonen separates the different manners how sleep is being discussed in the media. The first way shows sleeping, or more detailed sleepiness as a threat to the whole economy. The sleep issue is discussed in this fear or threat context with a negative manner, where the consequences of sleepiness are being brought in the spot light.

Valtonen (2014) highlights how interesting it is that how many speak about sleep as a synonymy for sleepiness. The second way of discussion highlights sleep in a more positive manner, good night sleep is being seen as a boost for the economy. In this specific way of how sleep is being discussed, innovativeness and creativity are seen to have a linkage to sleep. The third way that sleep is being discussed according to Valtonen (2014) was the managerial speech, where the

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sleep discussion is linked to the working life and especially to managers and leaders. (Valtonen 2014.) Therefore Valtonen (2014) and Hancock (2008) shares similarities of the different ways sleep is being talked in our current society.

When considering what kind of economic cost of insufficient sleep can have, RANDs´ Europe study clarified this issue in 2016. In this extensive study, five OECD countries, the United States, Canada, Japan and Germany were studied more detailed when considering economic and social costs among the global workforce. They discovered that the overall costs of insufficient sleep among working-age population are alarming high. Factors which have the biggest effect on sleep loss are people mental health, commuting to work where heavy commuters, who travel more than 60 minutes to work per each side, sleep on average 16.5 minutes less per day. Personal and socio demographic factors for example, having children under 18 lives in the same household sleep on average 4.2 minutes less than people who do not have children. Lastly, economic losses are high as sleepiness has high impact one individual’s productivity and, in the end, it increases mortality risk. (Hafner et al. 2016.)

2.3.2 Sleep as organizational and managerial issue, meso-level

In the second level of intervention by Hancock (2008) is the examination of sleep through organizational and managerial viewpoints. Therefore, this intervention level brings forward the aspect of organizational and managerial level awareness/unawareness of managers and employees sleep and its different consequences. This approach has several similarities to Becker’s (1994) human capital approach. In the human capital approach, “The most valuable of all capital is that invested in human beings” (Alfred Marshall, Principles of economics, 1961).

According to Becker (1994) human capital approach emphasized as a contradict to a material approach, all the knowledge, talent, skills and creativity possessed by humans. As reflecting a human capital approach to sleep, Hancock (2008) argues that by investing employees sleep, organizations can achieve greater success, through the higher productivity and performance by their employees. Negative work outcomes such as poor work performance (unproductiveness) and the risk of having a work-related accident has a positive correlation to sleep deficiency (Czeisler 2006). As a result, performance is the first primary discourse Hancock (2008) argues to be existing at the organizational level. In the performance discourse the focal element is to

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see sleep through the different positive and negative consequences it has on the workers and eventually to the organizations overall performance.

The second discourse related to the managerial intervention, responsibility clarifies the need for organizations and individuals together to understand the impact and consequences of sleep problems (Hancock, 2008). Therefore, the focus is not solely on the positive performance or creative impacts, but what kind of consequences sleepiness, in other words lack of sleep can have. One of the world’s leading sleep professors, Charles A. Czeisler from Harvard Medical School states that intervention from an organization standpoint to the sleep issue is highly relevant. “A good sleep policy is a smart business strategy. People think they are saving time and being more productive by not sleeping, but in fact they are cutting their productivity by not sleeping, but in fact they are cutting their productivity drastically.” (Czeisler, 2006.)

From the technologies stand point, different policies and facilities management are the ones having major impact on organizations sleep behavior. Even tough sleep has historically been seen as an individual matter, more and more organizations are beginning to see the true value of sleep, as a comparison to other employee wellbeing actions e.g. sport and nutrition initiatives.

Especially organizations in the UK have been at the top edge of corporations that have adjusted their policies to become more sleep friendly. (Hancock, 2008.)

Different sleep researches have argued that sleepiness is something that is relatively common and as the hours when people are working has increased, the time people are sleeping has been declining (Knutson et al. 2010). The current situation for contemporary organizations around the world is that they are suffering from situation where their employees are working after having a poor quality or too short night of sleep (Barnes, 2012). As Barnes (2012) notes, it is interesting that there has been so large research gab to this day in the organizational psychology research area, even the topic itself has been so relatively important within the organizations practical realm.

So, what could an organization do to enhance its workers sleep as the arguments states that sleep is so highly important. For example, companies such as BASF, Nova Chemicals have e.g.

contributed to this agenda by providing their workers to have daytime naps in order to enhance alertness and reduce possible fatigue (Hancock, 2008). From the largest companies around the world, Google is one of the companies that have offered sleeping pods to their workers use and are leading the bath to other companies to utilize sleep as a strategic resource. Managing fatigue in operational settings, Rosekind et al. (1995) describes it as an alertness management strategy.

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The alertness management itself is a concept to the different methods that organizations and managers are trying to enhance their employees sleep.

Mullins et al. (2014) presents different interventions that organizations could utilize when trying to reduce those sleepiness individuals within an organization. Organizations should therefore pay more attention to job demands such as time pressure, work load and perceived control which all has an effect on person’s sleepiness. Working schedules, as working long hours and a work schedule which multiple night shift works are linked to sleepiness. (Mullins et al. 2014.) With the emphasis on sleepiness negative impacts, Mullins (2014) tries to underline that organizations should firstly address those negative impacts and after that they can modify their practices regarding those issues within the organization.

Even though the different aspects of sleep in this chapter tried to bring closer the corporal and organizational needs e.g. productivity, Hancock (2008) states that individuals in the organizations should see the sleep issue as something that can be seen as an investment into their personal wellbeing and as an input to the overall organizational benefit. Therefore, the need for gaining the true benefits of sleep, seeks inputs from both organizational and personal level to the sleep issue (Hancock, 2008).

2.3.3 Sleep as an individual issue, micro- level

So far sleep is discussed through as a socially and organizationally responsible practice, but in the micro level sleep is seen through as an individual investment, which can be actively managed through her/his own actions. (Hancock, 2008.) Hancock (2008) states that sleep is an individualized embodied resource. Investment is the first discourse which is apparent in the micro level insight into sleep. By investing and actively managing individuals sleep behavior, and not to see sleep itself as the goal, rather than the benefits and opportunities that good sleeping habits can produce, one can truly actualize their lifestyle opportunities (Hancock 2008).

The actualization is the second discourse where Hancock (2008) sees that the essence of sleep is that it allows us to pursue and achieve our goals in our careers, dreams and in areas of our lives. It is the respite and recovery aspect of sleep that enables us to actualize those chosen goals. Nevertheless, the discourses investment and actualization are tightly engaged in the

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cultural and organizational levels, where the individuals are making those different investments to sleep and as a result actualizes their work-related goals as well.

The current primary technologies which are influencing on one´s sleep behavior and attitudes toward sleep are self-help texts and different therapeutic options. As we are surrounded with a variety of different e. g. books, magazines and blog posts encouraging us to sleep better, the primary idea is to be able to be as productive as possible through well-rested body. (Hancock, 2008). The essence of the body to be productive through good night sleep is not solely about being productive in the work, but it allows to pursue goals in their personal lives as well. It means to be productive from the people personal life perspective, and their ability to achieve their opportunities in all different areas of life. As discussed already in the first, macro level insight into sleep through the crisis discourse, it is the reflexive attitude toward sleep at the personal level what is needed in the demanding 24/7 society. (Hancock, 2008.)

Lastly, as Hancock (2008) states it is the individual and biophysical aspect of sleep that has been dominating the sleep research, but the wider socio-cultural and managerial intervention to sleep is needed. As can be seen through Hancock (2008) model, sleep which is usually seen as an individual matter is affecting and vice versa having influence through the cultural and organizational levels as well.

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3 METHODOLOGY

In this chapter, I will describe the qualitative approach regarding my empirical study. I will describe how the data was collected and analysed to find answers to the appointed research questions. I have produced two different tables to clarify the interviewed managers background information and the classification of data and theory driven themes.

3.1 Methodological approach

The empirical part of the study was conducted by using qualitative methods. As argued earlier, there is not an existing study where managers perceptions and beliefs toward sleep and its connection to creativity and innovativeness have studied. Therefore, I wanted to answer this existing research gab with the help of a qualitative approach. The qualitative approach allows to study the managers subjective perspectives of sleep and its connections to innovativeness and creativity. The subjective beliefs and attitudes helps to find out the existing situation how people in management positions reflect these timely and relevant issues.

The value of this qualitative approach to sleep is that it brings forward the different meanings, perceptions and beliefs managers attach to the given themes. More detailed, qualitative interviews help to underline the attitudes and hidden aspects that individuals possess related to sleep. (Arber & Meadows 2011.) My thesis brings forward managers viewpoints, attitudes and beliefs to sleep, and as interviews are a good way to bring forward dominance and inequality issues (Arber & Meadows 2011) and furthermore managers works in a such dominating positions it is reasonable to use interviews to bring forward such connections between a management position, sleep, creativity & innovativeness. To reveal managers beliefs and attitudes and to study what formulates those specific viewpoints, we can give further suggestions how to deal with sleep and its connections creativity and innovativeness in organizational context.

3.2 Data collection

To find answers to the research questions, I conducted 5 face-to-face qualitative interviews among Finnish managers from several different industries. To gather interview participants for the study, I send emails where I described my research aim and questions. As Eriksson &

Kovalainen (2016) states, the aim of qualitative research is to have access to a data which is rich in nature, and therefore the researcher must identify the most suitable participants for the interviews.

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By taking Eriksson and Kovalainen’s (2016) notion into consideration, I found out that as the research issue itself was not familiar or the context where the sleep was discussed, it automatically deleted participants who did not had something to give for the issue. In other words, the participants who were interviewed were all very motivated to talk about the sleep issue in its special context even though sleep as an issue can be seen in some extent as a private matter. After receiving email answers, the time and location for the interviews were selected to be the most suitable for the participants timetable and situation.

To secure interview participants anonymity, their names and critical background information will not be described more detailed. Instead, each interviewee is described with different codes as follows, P1, P2, P3, P4 and P5. In this context, P represents the participated manager in the study. In table 3, minimum background information is described in order to give classification of the industries and positions, were the managers where working at the time the interviews took place.

Table 3.

From five participants, one was female and other four male managers. The range of participants age varied between 54-61 years. Reasons why the participated managers age range was relatively limited can be explained firstly due to the fact that people in management positions have a longer career bath behind them when they enter to such high-level positions. Secondly, it can be noted that as the managers had experiences and personal stories related to sleep it can in one way explain the situation that younger managers, who were conducted regarding the participation to the study, did not have gained so much sleep related experiences e.g. sleep problems and as a result did not think that they were able to contribute to the study.

All the interviewed managers worked in a managerial position but the number of subordinates they had varied. Manager P1 worked at the time in a CEO position in a Finnish IT firm and he had worked in a similar position earlier but in a different sector. Managers P3 and P4 worked at the academia in a business development and human development positions. Manager P4 worked in a wellness and health related start-up company in a CEO position and lastly manager

Participant Industry Position

P1 IT CEO

P2 Academia HRD Manager

P3 Wellness & health start-up CEO

P4 Academia BD Manager

P5 Precious metals Design Manager

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P5 worked as a design manager in a company that design and manufactured a variety of products from precious metals.

The interviews were held at the end of the year 2017 in November and December. As Silverman (2011) notes that even though interviews are not naturally occurring data, its economic nature such as time and resources makes it a good data collection technique. The aim was to study managers perceptions about the sleep issue in its special context to innovativeness, creativity and their managerial work.

Therefore, when studying individual perceptions and experiences on some matter, interviews allow those subjective viewpoints to be heard. No quantitative manner can address those subjective viewpoints and experiences. This is what Silverman´s and Rapley’s idea support:

Qualitative interviews are something to utilize when a researcher wants to study indirect representations of individual experiences, and therefore they don’t give us tools to access objective facts (Silverman, 2011, 168; ref. Rapley, 2004, 182).

The interview questions were formulated with the help of the literature review. The sleep issue was discussed by attaching it to the key concepts and themes, innovativeness, creativity and managerial work. Those themes were discussed inside micro-, meso and macro levels of the sleep issue. In practice, the interviewees were firstly asked questions of sleep by attaching it to more on the individual level and then proceeding to larger contexts, meso- and macro- levels inside the sleep issue.

Every face-to-face interview was held in the participants office locations and they were discussed by using Finnish. The main reason to use Finnish was that every participant native language was Finnish and therefore it allowed them to speak more freely and fluently. Each interview took a minimum of 42 minutes up to one hour and thirteen minutes. All interviews where recorded and I took hand written notes to support the recorded interview data. Soon after each interview, I took time to transcript the audio files in to text formation. The transcription level of the data was performed through basic level transcription. More detailed, all words where transcribed but e.g. the pauses and tone of voices were excluded from the transcription.

3.3 Analysis of the data

Interview data was analysed through qualitative thematic content analysis. Three key features describe a qualitative content analysis method, its flexible, systematic and it reduces data. A focal objective of qualitative content analysis is to provide a good description of the material.

Therefore, related to concept-driven categorization, it is advisable to add data-driven

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categorization as well. (Schreier 2014.) To take Schreier’s notions into consideration, I utilized the pre-formulated interview frame to firstly structure the data into different categories. Those micro, meso and macro categories where utilized in the interview frame itself and were originally based on the intervention model of sleep by Hancock (2008).

After the raw categorization, I started to build a coding frame with a combination of theory driven themes and data driven themes. I firstly went the data through several times and coded the data with the themes based on the theory. The second step was to find some themes occurring from the data which were not already coded already into theory driven themes. In this phase, I utilized Schreier’s (2014) practical steps of subsumption. Firstly, I read once again the data until a relevant concept was found, secondly if the founded concept was not already coded I created new subcategories for those, and lastly, I continued to go through the text with this same technique until all the text was systematically coded. As a result, I combined all the found words and sentences to fit a specific theme.

Interpretation of the coded data was in-depth in nature. I started to find similarities, differences inside the themes which were occurring from the interviews. In this phase of analysis, I utilized my field notes, where I had written done some relevant notions from the interviews. To clarify the theory-driven and data-driven themes, the coded themes are presented in Table 2.

Main categories Coded themes Data /Theory driven

Micro/Individual level Beliefs and perceptions of sleep Innovativeness & creativity Managers sleep stories

(DD) (TD) (DD) Meso/Organizational level Organizational practices

Role of management Work-life balance

(DD) (TD) (DD) Macro/Cultural level 24/7 rhythm of the society

Sleep talk

(TD) (TD) Table 2.

As three main categories, individual, organizational and cultural levels are all in some extent interdependent and overlapped with each other, all the themes are included in some extent in the different levels.

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4 RESULTS OF THE STUDY

In this chapter, I will present the results of my empirical research. I will address the main studied themes with the classification to three main levels by Hancock (2008), 1) micro- individual, 2) meso- organizational and 3) macro- cultural and economic level. Themes derived from the theory are combined with the data driven themes.

4.1 Managers perceptions, beliefs and attitudes of sleep

When talking of relevance or irrelevance of sleep in general, managers shared the notion that sleep is something they personally value. Managers added that their value toward their sleep had increased over time. These increased sleep value notions at the individual level are in line with Airhihenbuwa`s (2016) the notion of the overall shift in our society, in the macro level, where seeing sleep as lazy activity has moved toward valuing sleep.

“As I have get older, I have understood the relevance of sleep and maybe more so, that it has these negative causal effects when the amount of sleep is too little. Like it has a linkage to my eating and other things, and therefore I have started to appreciate it quite differently.” (P1)

As can be seen from a manager P1 quotation, manager P1 linked the value of sleep to other aspects of healthy life as nutrition. He had a similar view of lack of sleep being something as a potential risk factor for the ability to maintain a healthy life which is compared with nutrition and exercise as Hislop & Arber (2003) states. There was a shared perception among managers that sleep has a significant role in body`s overall function. The positive value role that was shared when discussing sleep was understood through its indirect effects on overall function.

These effects where related to eating, performance and person’s ability to think clearly. This supports Hancock’s (2008) perspective where sleep is seen through the benefits which a good night sleep can bring.

“I value sleep much more. It is like putting money in the bank. It calms me down and gives energy when I need it. It also rhythms my life but as I guess that the biggest thing is that it truly gives me the space to relax and stop the mind work.” (P5)

Managers perceptions of sleep and its connection to creativity and innovation

Abstract

Tiivistelmä

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 The relevance of sleep

1.2 The purpose of the study

1.3 Key concepts and structure of the thesis

2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

2.1 Innovation management context

2.2 Sleep as a key to creativity and innovativeness

2.3 Theoretical framework of sleep

2.3.1 Sleep as a cultural and economic issue, macro- level

2.3.2 Sleep as organizational and managerial issue, meso-level

2.3.3 Sleep as an individual issue, micro- level

3 METHODOLOGY

3.1 Methodological approach

3.2 Data collection

3.3 Analysis of the data

4 RESULTS OF THE STUDY

4.1 Managers perceptions, beliefs and attitudes of sleep