Culture and Individual and Group Creativity in Organizations

Culture and Individual and Group Creativity in Organizations

This paper focuses on the relationship of culture to the creativity of individuals and groups. Cultural contents provide the raw material for the creativity of the individuals, groups, and organizations within any culture. Cultures provide physical and social raw materials for creativity, including but not limited to social patterns and social knowledge, and background resources, tools, and technologies. Moreover, cultures differ in the extent to which they generally encourage or generally discourage creativity; as well as in the specific domains where creativity is channeled or proscribed. More specifically, cultures shape which classes of people have access to which raw materials as well as how, where, when each class of person will apply which types of raw materials to creativity. What is known and what can reasonably be inferred about the influence of those different aspects of culture on individual and group creativity are described in this paper. Some suggested directions for future research on culture and creativity are also outlined.