Postnational constellations of innovativeness: a cosmopolitan approach

Innovativeness emerges from the contexts in which individual actors and groups of actors are embedded and which influence their behavior. We refer to that context in terms of culture. The management literature normally understands culture in the sense of Alexis de Tocqueville's ‘habits of the heart', which is the customs, habits, norms, values, and shared views of reality, expressed in a specific behavior of individuals and groups. This paper confronts established concepts of innovativeness with recent discussions on individualized and globalized societies. According to the sociologist Ulrich Beck, we are interacting more and more in a transnational and transcultural context thereby developing shared habits of the heart beyond the established (mainly geographically bound) understanding of culture. A new culture is emerging, which he introduces as cosmopolitanism. The paper analyses the conditions of innovativeness in cosmopolitan interaction by discussing two examples, the emergence of transnational civil society activism and global cooperation of researchers in the fight against SARS.