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Cited by 433Cultural Differences and ValuesCreativity in Education and NeuroscienceGlobal and Cross-Cultural Management

The Impact of Culture on Creativity: How Cultural Tightness and Cultural Distance Affect Global Innovation Crowdsourcing Work

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Chua, Roy Y. J., Roth, Yannig, Lemoine, Jean-François·2015·Administrative Science Quarterly
DOI 10.1177/0001839214563595
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Abstract

This paper advances a new theoretical model to understand the effect of culture on creativity in a global context. We theorize that creativity engagement and success depend on the cultural tightness—the extent to which a country is characterized by strong social norms and low tolerance for deviant behaviors—of both an innovator’s country and the audience’s country, as well as the cultural distance between these two countries. Using field data from a global online crowdsourcing platform that organizes creative contests for consumer-product brands, supplemented by interviews with marketing experts, we found that individuals from tight cultures are less likely than counterparts from loose cultures to engage in and succeed at foreign creative tasks; this effect is intensified as the cultural distance between the innovator’s and the audience’s country increases. Additionally, tight cultures are less receptive to foreign creative ideas. But we also found that in certain circumstances—when members of a tight culture do creative work in their own or culturally close countries—cultural tightness can actually promote creativity success. This finding implies that some degree of convergent thinking as engendered by tight cultures could be beneficial for creativity, challenging the dominant view in creativity research that divergent thinking is a prerequisite for creative performance.

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  • Across contemporary nations and US states, cultural tightness is negatively correlated with openness to new ideas and societal innovations that disrupt the social order.

    “Across contemporary nations [24] and US states [29], cultural tightness is negatively correlated with openness to new ideas and societal innovations that disrupt the social order [31–32]”

    From Ecological and cultural factors underlying the global distribution of prejudice (2019) · cites this paper as [31]

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Authors
Chua, R. Y. J., Roth, Y., & Lemoine, J.-F.
Affiliations
  • Singapore Management University (SG)
  • Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (FR)
  • ESCA Ecole de Management (MA)
ORCID
Venue
Administrative Science Quarterly
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Published
2014-12-08
Volume
60
Issue
2
Pages
189-227
ISSN
  • 0001-8392 (ISSN-L)
  • 1930-3815
DOI
10.1177/0001839214563595
OpenAlex
W2148882560
Semantic Scholar
ea3a76d13fdabb5d9216d788f7a07e5f8f1efb6e
Cited by
433
References
186
Citations by year
2026: 27 · 2025: 29 · 2024: 47 · 2023: 31 · 2022: 37 · 2021: 54 · 2020: 46 · 2019: 39 · 2018: 32 · 2017: 26 · 2016: 16 · 2015: 24 · 2014: 11 · 2013: 9 · 2012: 2
FWCI
38.09
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Administrative Science Quarterly (publishedVersion)
  • Singapore Management University Institutional Knowledge (InK) (Singapore Management University) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
  • HAL (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Cultural Differences and Values
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Creativity in Education and Neuroscience
  • Social Sciences › Anthropology › Global and Cross-Cultural Management
Keywords
culture and creativity, cultural tightness, cultural distance, crowdsourcing contests, social norms, convergent thinking, divergent thinking, cross-cultural creativity

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