Culture and Creativity, uncovering the national values influence.

Creativity has been an object of study for decades. Research has covered both individual personality traits influences on creativity, and group or organization dynamics impact on creativity outputs. More recently, relevant advances have been done in approaching the creativity output construct from a cultural context perspective; based on the cultural factors study from Hofstede (2001). As introduced in previous blog entries, Prof. Geert Hofstede identified five key cultural indicators that helped to differentiate cultures at national level:

• Power Distance Index (PDI): Reflects the expectancy and acceptance of an unequally distributed power between the members of an organization.
• Individualism (IDV): Determines how tight, or otherwise loose, are the bonds between the members of a society.
• Masculinity (MAS): Refers to the adoption of masculine roles by the men and women in a society.
• Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI): Evaluates the tolerance for ambiguous or uncertain situations, and how comfortably members of a society deal with unknown scenarios.
• Long-Term Orientation (LTO): Shows whether people in a community identify themselves with values associated to long term orientation or, otherwise to a more shortcoming future.

At the Innova Institute we are interested in seeing how differences in cultural values factors might shed some light on the understanding of creativity outputs differences at national level. In Gómez (2009) research in progress, a comparative case study in two Spanish organizations is done to research whether given a certain individual values and organizational culture, the national culture of the collective helps to explain the Employee Creative Behavior (ECB). How does the cultural context influence creative behavior? Does cultural context explain the differences in national creativity output? Which are the implications for organizations? Comments and contributions are welcomed! References:

• Gómez, M., 2009. El comportamiento creativo del empleado basado en las dimensiones culturales nacionales: observaciones desde un estudio comparativo de casos. Advanced Studies Diploma (DEA), La Salle – Ramon Llull University.
• Hofstede, G., 2001. Culture's Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, institutions, and Organizations across Nations. 2nd Ed., Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.