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Cornell University ILR School DigitalCommons@ILR Faculty Publications - Organizational Behavior Organizational Behavior 11-1-2005 Individualism-Collectivism and Group Creativity J ack A. Goncalo Cornell University, jag97@ Barry M. Staw University of C alif ornia, Berkeley, staw@ Follow this and additional works at : /obpubs Part of the Organizational Behavior and Theory Commons Thank you for downloading an article from DigitalCommons@IL . Support this valuable resource today ! This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Organizational Behavior at DigitalCommons@IL . It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications - Organizational Behavior by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@IL . For more information, please contact hlmdigital@. Individualism-Collectivism and Group Creativity Abstract Current research in organizational behavior suggests that organizations should adopt collectivistic values because they promote cooperation and productivity, while individualistic values should be avoided because they incite destructive conflict and opportunism. In this paper, we highlight one possible benefit of individualistic values that has not previously been considered. Because individualistic values can encourage uniqueness, such values might be useful when creativity is a desired outcome. Although we hypothesize that individualistic groups should be more creative than collectivistic groups, we also consider an important competing hypothesis: Given that collectivistic groups are more responsive to norms, they might be more creative than individualistic groups when given explicit instructions to be creative. The results did not support this competing hypothesis and instead sho