Cultural Variations and the Morphology of Innovation

The relationship between culture and innovation has intrigued researchers for generations. After much research and experimentation, what we know about the relationship is that innovation both shapes and is shaped by culture, and that both culture and innovation can be conceptualized as operating at multiple levels - national, regional, and organizational. We also know that in the management literature, culture has most commonly been conceptualized as an organizational variable - a constellation of norms and values, unique in some respects to every organization, that can, through its influence on behavior of organizational members, either encourage and facilitate innovation or be an obstacle to it.