The Impact of Individualism and Collectivism on Employee Radical and Incremental Creativity

Abstract

Although individualism-collectivism orientations play pivotal roles in determining individual creativity, the conclusions on the topic are inconsistent. Based on sensemaking theory, our research aims to examine how individualism and collectivism differentially affect individual creativity by classifying creativity into radical creativity and incremental creativity. Time-lagged data from 342 Chinese employees and their supervisors indicated that vertical individualism has a stronger positive impact on radical creativity than on incremental creativity, whereas horizontal individualism has no significant effect on radical or incremental creativity. Meanwhile, the positive effect of vertical collectivism on incremental creativity is stronger than that on radical creativity; in contrast, the difference between the effects of horizontal collectivism on radical creativity and incremental creativity is insignificant. Our research further underscores the crucial theoretical perspective of multifaceted creativity for explaining how individualism-collectivism values drive employee creativity and highlights the vital implication for predicting employee creativity on the basis of employees’ cultural values (individualism vs. collectivism).