Creative Structuration as Recursive Generative Constraint: A Theory of Institutional Maturation

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Abstract

This paper advances creativity as a recursive social process. Building upon Simmel, Giddens, Becker, Abbott, and Bourdieu, I argue that while creativity generates novel institutional structures through differentiation, it simultaneously narrows the future domain of creative possibility. Creative commitment functions as a nested set: each decision defines a subset of possibilities and forecloses previously available paths. Over time, the cumulative production of artifacts produces generative constraint.

I call this process Creative Structuration. The framework rests on several analytic distinctions: creative action translates possibility into commitment; artifacts stabilize conceptual innovation and constitute institutional structures; relics materially encode artifacts; and reproduction sustains institutional durability. From these foundations emerge five portable elements: exhaustion and differentiation, stratification of creative roles, internal offloading of residual creativity, process exit and reiteration, and consumptive interpretation. As generative possibility narrows, interpretive possibility expands through consumer engagement with artifacts and relics.

Two case studies illustrate the framework’s portability. Post–World War II computer programming demonstrates how early generative latitude gave way to structural density, role stratification, and the migration of creativity toward efficiency and market differentiation. The Second Great Awakening and the institutional development of Mormonism show how expansive doctrinal innovation matures into durable organizational forms where recalibration increasingly operates within accumulated structures.

Creative Structuration provides a portable account of institutional maturation that bridges micro creative action and macro structural transformation. It offers a framework for understanding how recursive commitment produces generative constraint, how creative labor stratifies, and how recalibration or exit reorganize institutional life across domains.

Author

• Jason Paul Bonham, University of Chicago