Moving between dissimilar organizational cultures boosts individual creativity

Evidence

In addition, culture is not limited to national cultures. Organizations also have their own type of culture, and work in the management literature suggests that organizational cultures can profoundly shape employees’ affect, cognition, behavior, and motivation, as well as the performance of the organization as a whole. Organizational culture is typically defined in terms of the rules, norms, and symbols that shape the coordination of behavior of members within an organization (e.g., O’Reilly & Chatman, 1996). Tellingly, some dimensions of national culture, such as individualism and collectivism, have been applied to organizational cultures as well (e.g., Chatman, Polzer, Barsade, & Neale, 1998). Thus, it seems possible that experiences in different organizational cultures might have an impact on individuals’ creativity. And this is indeed what we found in a preliminary study with 46 managers participating in an executive leadership class at Kellogg. We first queried these individuals as to their work experience, number of organizations they had previously worked in, and how different each organization’s culture was compared to the organization they currently work in. We then had them do the unusual uses test and queried them about their entrepreneurial experiences. We found that the more managers had worked in organizations with very different organizational cultures the more creative they were on the unusual uses test, and the more likely they were to have become entrepreneurs (Maddux, Galinsky, Gregersen, & Dyer, 2008). — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2255

Categorization

• SEED: Essay angle: treat ‘organizational culture shock’ as an underappreciated creativity lever — turning over mid-career job moves into a cognitive-flexibility intervention rather than a resume risk.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2255
• XREF: connects to: Repertoire strength depends on the balance between familiar preference and innovation capacity — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 260; Individual intelligence results from culturally accumulated tools rather than raw brainpower — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 53