On-Brand, In-Culture: How AI-Capability and Cultural Dissonance Influence Organizational Creativity

Sammanfattning

Marketing teams use AI to adapt creative outputs across cultures faster than ever before. Thisstudy asks whether speed comes at a cost to cultural meaning, and who pays it. We surveyed101 marketing professionals in multinational firms and tested whether AI-Capability drivesOrganizational Creativity both directly and indirectly through Cultural Dissonance. Using adisjoint two-stage PLS-SEM approach, we find a strong direct effect of AI-Capability onOrganizational Creativity, carried by marketers' cultural interpretive skill rather than by thetechnology itself. Two further patterns emerge. First, what we term the "Tower of BabelIsolation": a condition where AI use is visible individually but hidden organizationallybecause the routines that would convert tacit operator know-how into shared firm assets areabsent. Second, Cultural Dissonance is broadly reported across markets but operates as anambient friction rather than as a mediator between AI-Capability and creative output.Together, our empirical evidence tells a single story: AI alone does not produce creativity.Individuals alone do not produce creativity. Organizations do. In an age of digital isolation,the collective practice, the community of meaning-making that turns creative work intoculture, is what stands to be lost.