AI can copy, but can't create culture: Collective identity redefinition among Vietnamese creative professionals in...

Drawing on social identity theory (SIT), this qualitative study examines how AI adoption threatens the professional social identity of content creators in Vietnamese communications agencies and the identity-management strategies they employ in response. Despite research on technological disruption and professional identity in Western contexts, the role of cultural values in moderating identity threat and coping processes remains underexplored, particularly in collectivist Asian societies, where group membership rather than individual competence constitutes the primary source of self-concept. Through semi-structured interviews with 25 content creators across communications agencies in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, we identified four forms of identity threat: competence threat, distinctiveness threat, categorization threat, and value threat. The findings reveal that Vietnamese content creators predominantly employ collective identity redefinition rather than individual repositioning or direct resistance, reflecting Vietnam's collectivist cultural orientation, high power distance, and face concerns. Participants reframed AI as a tool that enables a focus on strategic and culturally nuanced work, particularly Vietnamese cultural understanding, while delegating mechanical tasks, thereby preserving professional group distinctiveness through shared narratives rather than individual competitive positioning. This study demonstrates that cultural context fundamentally moderates the forms of identity threat that prove most salient and the coping strategies that are employed, contributing to cross-cultural organizational psychology and challenging Western-centric assumptions about professional identity transformation during technological disruption. Practically, the findings suggest that Western change management approaches emphasizing individual adaptation may prove ineffective in collectivist cultures, necessitating culturally responsive AI integration strategies that facilitate collective sense-making rather than mandating individual skill development.