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Creativity East and West: Perspectives and Parallels

Part of: Cross Cultural Collection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2015

Michael W. Morris  and
Kwok Leung
Michael W. Morris
Affiliation:
Columbia University, USA
Kwok Leung
Affiliation:
City University of Hong Kong, China
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Abstract

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This Editors' Forum – ‘Creativity East and West’ – presents five papers on the question of cultural differences in creativity from the perspective of different research literatures, followed by two integrative commentaries. The literatures represented include historiometric, laboratory, and organizational studies. Investigation of cultural influences through country comparisons and priming manipulations, focusing on how people perform creatively and how they assess creativity. This introduction notes parallels in the findings across these research perspectives, suggesting some cultural universals in creativity and some systematic differences. Many differences can be explained in terms of the model that creativity means a solution that is both novel/original and useful/appropriate, yet that Western social norms prioritize novelty whereas Eastern norms prioritize usefulness – an account which predicts cultural differences would arise in contexts that activate social norms. The commentaries elaborate this argument in terms of processes – at the micro cognitive level and at the macro societal level – through which creativity occurs.

Keywords

creativitycultural differencesEast Asiainnovationsocial norms创造カ文化差异东亚创新社会规范
Type
From the Editors
Information
Management and Organization Review , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , November 2010 , pp. 313 - 327
Copyright
Copyright © International Association for Chinese Management Research 2010

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