Creative Behavior, Motivation, Environment and Culture: The Building of a Systems Model

With the exception of research examining the productivity of teams, the empirical study of creativity was until recently almost exclusively focused at the level of the individual creator. Investigators and theorists typically chose to decontextualize the creative process and failed to include a consideration of anyone or anything beyond the person doing the creating. The last decade has seen a long overdue proliferation of research focused on the creative milieu and the myriad of environmental factors that impact creators and serve to boost or inhibit their creativity of performance. In particular, the increasing globalization of corporate, entrepreneurial, and educational environments has underscored the need to take into consideration the impact of cultural forces. This article chronicles the construction of a systems model of creativity designed to incorporate a consideration of creative behavior at multiple levels of analysis. Over and above an examination of individual difference variables, the argument is made that creativity must be explored at the “little‐c” cultural level (e.g., the culture of the classroom or workplace), at the societal level, and at the “Big‐C” cultural level (i.e., culture writ large). An application of this systems approach is made to classroom‐based data collected in the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.