Cross-National Differences in Managers’ Creativity Promoting Values

Abstract

As more companies rely on the creative potential of their employees across borders to remain competitive, a better understanding of cross-national determinants of creativity is needed. Building on prior work, we identify the national climate for creativity as relevant national-level context variable and argue linkages with managers’ creativity promoting values. In particular, the national climate for creativity is argued to include (a) ideological supportiveness, which on the national level, is captured by low levels of power distance and high levels of assertiveness, (b) perceived freedom in the society, (c) material supportiveness, operationalized as R&D intensity, (d) positive pressure in terms of innovation dependence, (e) negative pressure, captured by high levels of performance orientation in the society, and (f) procedural impediments, operationalized as governmental regulations. We use data from 9,988 managers from 19 European countries and apply Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) to test our hypotheses. Results support five of seven hypotheses, indicating the utility of cross-national analyses in understanding managers’ creativity promoting values. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.