Are proactive employees more creative? The roles of multisource information exchange and social exchange-based employee-organization relationships

Abstract

This study integrated personal characteristics and social perspectives on employee creativity and employed a moderated mediation model to examine the relationships among proactive personality, multisource information exchange, and employee creativity in the context of social exchange-based employee-organization relationships (EORs). Data were collected from 509 employees and their direct supervisors within a large Chinese company. The results indicate that multisource information exchange partially mediates the positive association between proactive personality and employee creativity. Furthermore, in social exchange-based EORs, proactive employees are more likely to engage in multisource information exchange activities with internal and external stakeholders and to subsequently generate more creative ideas. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.