The Role of Individualism-Collectivism in the Individual Creative Process

Abstract

This study is among the first to examine how individuals’ cultural value orientations impact 2 separate stages of creativity: idea generation and idea implementation. A total of 247 Chinese employees completed questionnaires including individualism–collectivism culture orientation and their idea generation behavior. Supervisor ratings of idea implementation were obtained to avoid single-source bias. Partial correlation results showed that both horizontal individualism and horizontal collectivism had positive influences on idea generation, but vertical collectivism had a positive impact on idea implementation. Although vertical individualism was not correlated to either idea generation or idea implementation, it moderated the relationship between these two stages such that idea generation predicted idea implementation better among high vertical individualists than among low vertical individualists. Theoretical contributions and practical implications are discussed.