Cultural Breadth and Embeddedness: The Individual Adoption of Organizational Culture as a Determinant of Creativity

Choi, Y, Ingram, P and Han, S W (2023) Cultural Breadth and Embeddedness: The Individual Adoption of Organizational Culture as a Determinant of Creativity. Administrative Science Quarterly, 68 (2). pp. 429-464. ISSN 0001-8392 OPEN ACCESS

Abstract

We propose that individuals differ in their ability to generate creative ideas as a function of the values, beliefs, and norms of their social group’s culture they have adopted and routinely use. To generate creative ideas, an individual needs to think differently from their group to generate novel ideas that others cannot, while understanding what the group will view as appropriate and practical. We view culture as a network of cultural elements and decompose individuals’ cultural adoption into two conceptually and empirically distinct dimensions. Cultural breadth, which reflects whether individuals have adopted a broad range of values, beliefs, and norms that span the organization’s culture, contributes to the novelty required for creativity. Cultural embeddedness, which reflects whether individuals have adopted the core values, beliefs, and norms entrenched in the organization’s culture, helps an individual generate ideas that others will view as useful. We predict that individuals with both high cultural breadth and high cultural embeddedness, who we label integrated cultural brokers, will be most likely to generate creative ideas that are novel and useful. We test and find support for our theory in two contexts: an e-commerce firm in South Korea and MBA students at a U.S. university.

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Item Type: Article
Subject Areas: Organisational Behaviour
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This paper has been published online-first by Administrative Science Quarterly and is copyright Sage Publications 2023.

Choi, Y., Ingram, P., & Han, S. W. (2023). Cultural Breadth and Embeddedness: The Individual Adoption of Organizational Culture as a Determinant of Creativity. Administrative Science Quarterly, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/00018392221146792

Date Deposited: 23 Feb 2023 16:05
Date of first compliant deposit: 21 Feb 2023
Subjects: Organisational behaviour
Creativity
Last Modified: 04 Oct 2024 01:51
URI: https://lbsresearch.london.edu/id/eprint/2807
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