A study of the relationship between person-organization fit and employee creativity

Abstract

Purpose – Like all other human behaviors, creativity must be examined by considering both personal and situational influences. “Person-organization fit” (POF) provides a suitable theoretical perspective to investigate the congruence between persons and organizations in the domain of creativity. However, few studies have examined the effects of POF on creative behavior. Although the majority of these studies have identified a positive relationship between POF and creativity, it is suggested that congruent individuals are less likely to be inventive. The current study will examine the positive relationship between POF and employees' self-rated creativity in the Turkish context. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – Subjective POF measures and a creativity measure were adapted for this research, and multiple regression was used to calculate whether and how POF relates to creativity. Findings – Two important conclusions were found from the analyses. One of these significant interaction effects was found on employee creativity. And the second is congruence between personal values and current organizational values would effect employee creativity positively. Detailed findings and contributions have been discussed. Research limitations/implications – Although providing an important contribution to POF and creativity literature, this study had some limitations. In this study, self-rating method has been used to measure employee creativity. However, supervisor rating is the most common way in field studies and gives more objective results than self-rating method. Practical implications – The findings provide valuable information for human resource practitioner about the importance of situational factors as far as personal characteristics for enhancing creative behavior in organizations. Originality/value – As far as it is known, there are few studies to examine the relationship between POF and creativity empirically. The majority of these researches examined the complementary fit (demand-abilities, need-supply, value-supply fit). On the other hand, this study specially has focused on supplementary fit (POF), rather than complementary fit and examined its relationship with employee creativity by considering a wide set of values in the Turkish context.