In the era of globalization, economic competition is increasingly intensified and the technological progress that leads to product life cycles has compressed. In this circumstance, researchers, business practitioners, and policy makers have stressed the importance of innovation to create sustainable economic development and competitive advantage (Howells, 2005; Fagerberg and Srholec, 2008; Fagerberg et al., 2010; Goktan and Miles, 2011; Brem et al., 2016; Naqshbandi, 2016). The Chinese Government’s policy of encouraging and building an innovative society in recent years has become one of the compelling evidences of this trend. As one of the factors that influence the innovation, culture has been paid more and more attention in the broader sphere of business and management in recent years. The influence of culture on innovation has been recognized as a critical factor in international management and organizational development given its relevance and contribution to business and economic development (e.g. Verspagen, 2006; Rohlfer and Zhang, 2016). A large number of researchers have conducted research studies in exploring the relationship between culture and innovation in the business area (Barnett, 1953; Goncalo and Staw, 2006; Parveen et al., 2015). Consequently, it is not difficult to find that some countries or enterprises within an idiographic cultural environment have the strong innovation ability and vice versa. Although this proliferation of research has the potential to significantly improve our understanding of the roles of culture in innovation performance, there are several limitations in the current research. In essence, theorizing and research in this regard have lagged behind practical needs (Anderson et al., 2014). First, although researchers have investigated the influence of culture on innovation from a wide range of theoretical insights, extant studies are fragmented and disconnected. Therefore, it is important to take inventory of the work to date through a systematic literature review and identify key research themes and developmental patterns.