Fostering creativity across countries: the moderating effect of cultural bundles on creativity

Research has traditionally focused on the moderating role of single cultural dimensions to capture differences in how individual creativity is fostered across cultures. Culture, however, is a multidimensional construct, with cultural dimensions operating interdependently. Building on this reasoning, we propose that the moderating effect of culture is better understood by focusing on the configuration of cultural bundles. We define a cultural bundle as the set including the cultural value dimensions that characterize a given country, and the strength of the norms enforcing these values. We find support for this view in a mixed-methods study that combines a meta-analysis of 584 effect sizes from 205 studies set in 38 different countries with fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fs/QCA). We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings, arguing for the importance of focusing on cultural bundles, rather than cultural dimensions in isolation, to understand the moderating effect of culture on creativity.