Are you pragmatic, or creative? Do you work better in a group, or alone? Would you rather follow clear instructions, or figure things out for yourself? Research shows that your answers to these questions indicate how you should brainstorm in order to get the best results.

Individualism vs. collectivism

In each of those questions, the first answer indicates that you’re more collectivistic; the second, that you’re more individualistic.

• Individualism is the habit of being independent and self-reliant. Individualistic cultures emphasize individual autonomy, prioritize individual goals over collective goals, and define people in terms of their individuality and uniqueness.

• In contrast, collectivism gives a group priority over each individual in it. Collectivistic cultures encourage group harmony and cohesion, prioritize group goals over personal ones, and define people by the groups they belong to.

According to cross-cultural studies by Geert Hofstede and others, Western cultures tend to be individualistic, while Asian cultures clearly favor collectivistic behavior.

Question: Does your organizational culture encourage individualistic or collectivistic behavior?

Individualism-collectivism and creativity

In their 2005 study “Individualism-Collectivism and Group Creativity”, Jack Goncalo and Barry Staw explored how the cultural preference for individualism or collectivism influences the creative productivity of a group. Most management scholars and psychologists agree that individualism promotes creativity. However, Goncalo and Staw designed their study to also test the argument that members of more collectivistic cultures could be more creative if creativity was made an explicit group goal.

The experiment first split the study participants into individualists and collectivists, and excluded those who didn’t clearly fall into one of those categories. Each of the two groups was then divided into two sub-groups. One of the individualistic and one of the collectivistic sub-groups were asked to create practical solutions for a given problem; the other two sub-groups were asked to find creative solutions. Finally, the output was assessed for idea quantity and quality.

The findings showed that when instructed to be creative, individualistic groups are significantly more creative than collectivistic ones. Goncalo and Staw said, “while an individualistic firm may not be as efficient as a collectivistic company, it is more likely to provide fertile ground for creative ideas.” They concluded that individualism is beneficial when creativity and innovation are important to success.

Questions: Do you consider yourself to be creative? Do you consider yourself to be more individualistic, or collectivistic? Who in your organization is creative? Do you consider them to be more individualistic compared to your other colleagues?

Individualistic behavior within collectivistic cultures

In a follow-up study with Michelle Duguid, Jack Goncalo examined the effects of conformity pressure on group creativity in collectivistic environments. In their 2012 article “Follow the Crowd in a New Direction: When Conformity Pressure Facilitates Group Creativity (And When It Does Not)”, they investigate how conformity pressure can either stifle or boost group creativity depending on norms and the personality mix in the group.

They found that in collectivistic groups comprising less-creative individuals, group creativity is enhanced if the members are pressured to be more individualistic during ideation by, for instance, showing less consideration for the feelings and concerns of others. In other words, the creatively timid responded to a think-for-yourself directive by producing more, and more original, ideas. “Conformity pressure to be individualistic can facilitate idea expression, but only in groups composed of people who are not highly creative”, said Goncalo and Duguid, who also found that in groups of highly creative people, encouraging individualism boosted creativity only when conformity pressure was low. This reinforces previous research, which showed that people doing brainwriting, where ideas are written privately, produce more creative ideas than brainstorming, where ideas are presented publicly. One reason for this is that group members may not express some particularly wild or original ideas because they worry about what others think, which is particularly a problem in a collectivistic environment.

Questions: When brainstorming, do people in your organization create wild ideas, or do they play it safe? Would encouraging team members to be less considerate of others during brainstorming lead to more, and more original, ideas?

Conclusion: Individualism emphasizes uniqueness, which is a key attribute of creativity. Individualistic firms are likely to provide a more fertile ground for creative ideas than collectivistic organizations. On the other hand, findings from intercultural research suggest that most Asian organizations have cultures that favor collectivism over individualism. Based on those findings, an Asian firm with a collectivistic culture can promote creativity:

• by not forcing naturally creative colleagues — who tend to be more individualistic — to conform to the norms of the group,

• by providing clear instructions on expected behaviors and outputs to group members, and

• by encouraging less creative employees, when ideating, to be individualistic within the safe confines of a relatively structured environment.

© Dr. Detlef Reis 2012. This article was published in parallel in the Bangkok Post under the title “Encouraging creativity in collectivist cultures” on 29 March 2012.