Cultural differences in creativity and innovation: are Asian employees truly less creative than western employees?

Abstract

Some Asian countries have recently announced new national slogans advocating creativity and innovation. Paradoxically, these slogans support Asians’ self-deprecating belief that they are not as creative as Westerners. To investigate whether this belief is true, especially in the management field, we review 29 articles across various levels of analysis of cultural differences in creativity and innovation. Our review demonstrates that collectivism, power distance, and uncertainty avoidance have had mixed results in influencing creativity and innovation. The aforementioned belief might be incomplete and premature because of several theoretical as well as methodological shortcomings. Finally, we make suggestions for future research.