Culture and Creativity in Organizations

Abstract

Creativity is culture dependent. Culture influences how individuals and groups in organizations create new ideas and define and value creativity. In this chapter, we review recent research to highlight new developments in understanding individual and team creativity across cultures. Integrating different streams of research, we review research on cultural values, tightness–looseness, logic, and implicit theories. We discuss the effect of culture on the ability to generate novel and useful ideas and the impact of cultural systems on how people define, evaluate, and develop their creative ideas. Given the increasing reliance on multinational workforces and cross-country transitions of employees, we also consider the impact of multicultural experiences on creativity and the effectiveness and challenges of culturally diverse groups in innovative settings. Finally, we suggest several fruitful directions for future research, including expanding to different tasks, creative processes, and cultures.