Publish at March 04 2026 Updated March 04 2026
The word "frame" enters the language through a detour that already speaks volumes about its normative power. The french etymology «cadre» refers to "quadro" (Italian), derived from the Latin quadrum, "square": that which squares off, delimits, holds together a surface and separates an inside from an outside. The lexicographical notes show the gradual shift from the material frame (the frame of a painting) to the register of framing (military, then civilian): the "frame" becomes as much a form as a command device, a way of holding people as one holds a picture.
This genealogy helps us to understand an ambivalence: a framework makes things possible, but it also makes them conform. In today's organizations, this tension is becoming more acute, as frameworks are no longer merely legal or hierarchical; they are becoming informational, traceable and sometimes automated.
The literature on post-Covid work technologies describes the spread of digital footprints and digital exhaust produced by remote activity, making work more observable, more measurable, and therefore more governable by indicators. This "over-visibility" not only standardizes results; it standardizes ways of doing things, by bringing action closer to its evaluation, and evaluation closer to sanction.
From this perspective, the framework functions like a grammar: it prescribes what counts as a valid action, a legitimate effort, an acceptable behavior. Critical analyses of surveillance and control in the "new ways of organizing" insist on this paradox: the more autonomy and flexibility the systems promise, the more they can install diffuse control (through traces, rankings, comparisons), whose main effect is to make the norm internalized. The question, then, is not just "how many managers? but what kind of managers, supported by what technologies, and underpinned by what conception of living work.
The effects on creativity are particularly noticeable. A large part of collective creativity is based on deviations, trial and error, clumsy formulations, and paths that don't "give back" immediately. When the framework becomes too tight - numerous rules, rapid sanctions, standardization of procedures, obsession with conformity - it encourages strategic caution: we produce what is expected rather than what might surprise.
Recent work on organizational " cultural tightness " distinguishes between formal rigidity (explicit rules, official sanctions) and informal rigidity (implicit norms, social sanctions). They show that informal rigidity can stifle creativity in a particularly marked way, precisely because it acts in relationship and belonging: we don't just avoid error, we avoid dissonance.
Leadership is reconfigured around the figure of the guarantor of compliance: steering by KPIs, controlling the narrative ("this is what needs to be said"), and defensive risk management. The digital surveillance systems studied in the pandemic context have thus been described as an updated "panopticon" : management moves towards an extension of managerial prerogatives through the technical infrastructure (monitoring, scoring, tracing), which tends to reinforce more directive leadership styles and a relationship to work centered on discipline.
Conversely, "not enough management" is not creative freedom, but often atomization. When decision-making rules, quality criteria, role distribution and the protection of disagreements are not made explicit, the group compensates with implicit norms: games of influence, coalitions, charisma, or silent withdrawal. The resulting social bond can be intense but unstable, based on affinities, informal debts and personal loyalties. Networks then become the real - but unassumed - framework, and creativity depends less on a secure space in which to attempt than on one's position in the web of relationships.
This is where a decisive point emerges: too much framework and too little framework do not produce the same social bonds. With too much framework, the bond contracts around conformity and fear ("cold", cautious, bureaucratized bonds); with too little framework, the bond recomposes itself around belonging and reputation ("warm", but unequal, sometimes clannish bonds). Research into creativity and networks sheds light on this mechanism : creativity benefits from both structural holes and tie strength, but these effects are conditioned by the normative context; in "tight" environments, certain relational configurations become less fruitful, as deviation costs more socially.
It's easy to see why the managerial issue is also a question of leadership: what kind of authority does the manager establish? Who has the right to deviate? Who absorbs the risk of experimentation? And what space is left for distributed intelligence?
Contemporary reviews of collective creativity converge on a simple but demanding idea: creativity is not the absence of constraints, it's a dynamic of exploration-selection, where constraints must be relevant, debatable and revisable, otherwise they turn into inhibition mechanisms.(Collective Creativity and Innovation: An Interdisciplinary Review, Integration, and Research Agenda).
Three alternatives, in the sense of three ways of "reframing" without crushing living things, can be proposed.
These three alternatives have one thing in common: they treat the framework as a situated construction to be adjusted, rather than an apparatus to be imposed. They reject the managerial illusion of the universal "right mix" (neither too much, nor too little) in favor of a more fruitful question: what constraints make this collective more capable of inventing without tearing itself apart, and more capable of deciding without becoming rigid?
Recent research on normative rigidity (formal/informal) helps us to keep a sharp watch here: we can lighten procedures and yet stifle creativity through social sanction; we can multiply rules and yet protect experimentation if meaning, discussion and revisibility are guaranteed.
References
Acar, O. A., Tuncdogan, A., van Knippenberg, D., & Lakhani, K. R. (2024). Collective creativity and innovation: An interdisciplinary review, integration, and research agenda. Journal of Management, 50(6), 2119-2151.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/01492063231212416
Aloisi, A., & De Stefano, V. (2022). Essential jobs, remote work and digital surveillance: Addressing the COVID-19 pandemic panopticon. International Labour Review, 161(2), 289-314.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8444901/pdf/ILR-161-289.pdf
Bollinger, S., & Burger-Helmchen, T. (2021). Du contrôle de l'innovation à la créativité: vers un cadre intégrateur [From innovation control to creativity: Toward an integrating framework]. Revue d'économie industrielle, (175).
https://journals.openedition.org/rei/10365
Chua, R. Y. J., Zhao, N., & Han, M. (2024). Cultural tightness in organizations: Investigating the impact of formal and informal cultural tightness on employee creativity. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 184, 104338.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S074959782400030X
de Vaujany, F.-X., Leclercq-Vandelannoitte, A., Munro, I., Nama, Y., & Holt, R. (2021). Control and surveillance in work practice: Cultivating paradox in "new" modes of organizing. Organization Studies, 42(5), 675-695.
https://doi.org/10.1177/01708406211010988
Flipo, C., Mannucci, P. V., & Yong, K. (2023). The impact of cultural tightness on the relationship between structural holes, tie strength, and creativity. Journal of International Business Studies, 54(2), 332-343.
https://doi.org/10.1057/s41267-022-00525-7
Leonardi, P. M. (2021). COVID-19 and the new technologies of organizing: Digital exhaust, digital footprints, and artificial intelligence in the wake of remote work. Journal of Management Studies, 58(1), 249-253.
https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12648
Paris, T., & Massé, D. (2021). Le management des industries créatives. A specific paradigm and varied organizational configurations. Revue française de gestion, 47(296), 51-63
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354002028
Sharma, S., & Mehta, S. (2023). Psychological safety and creativity in teams: A mediated moderation model of shared leadership and team diversity. IIM Kozhikode Society & Management Review.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/22779752231163356
CNRTL. (n. d.). Etymology of "framework". Center National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales. https://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/cadre
Académie française. (n. d.). Cadre (9th ed.). Dictionnaire de l'Académie française. https://www.dictionnaire-academie.fr/article/A9C0133
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