Abstract
The increasing interest of organizations in innovating and surviving during stressful work environments has led scholars to ponder ways to increase employee’s creativity. The study aims to empirically examine the relationship between perceived organizational support (POS) and employee creativity through work engagement and the moderating effect of challenge and hindrance stressors. The theoretical lens of social exchange theory was used to explain the study framework. Data was collected from 324 marketing personnel of the beverage and telecom sector in Pakistan and analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) with AMOS. The findings revealed that the direct relationship between POS with work engagement and employee creativity and work engagement with employee creativity was significant. Interestingly, the moderator has shown a prominent effect, which illustrated that low hindrance stressors strengthened the relationship between POS and work engagement. The study contributes by enhancing the employee’s creativity by reducing stressful working environments in many ways.
Highlights
Creativity is the ability to come up with novel ideas and practical solutions to issues and problems (Amabile, 1983)
The theoretical basis for our research model relies upon two theories that is organizational support theory (Eisenberger et al, 1986) and social exchange theory (Emerson, 1976)
The selected geographical region for this study is the province named “Punjab” which according to the Population Welfare Department (2017), covers around 53% of the total population and according to Emerging Pakistan (2019), cities in Punjab is where most of the retail service stores are found and have the potential for significant growth in future
Summary
Creativity is the ability to come up with novel ideas and practical solutions to issues and problems (Amabile, 1983). Organizations have realized the importance of creativity and the need to engage employees in creative behaviors. Bakker et al (2020) identify the need for employees to proactively manage their psychological resources since these resources can facilitate and promote creativity. While perceived organizational support (POS), workplace stress, and work engagement have been examined in influencing creativity (Bakker et al, 2020; Gray et al, 2020; Thao & Kang, 2018), there are relatively very few empirical investigations into the interplay of all these factors in influencing the creativity of employees. Duan et al (2020) emphasize the need to investigate the indirect effect of POS in influencing creativity. To investigate whether POS and work engagement influence employee creativity; 2. To examine how POS through work engagement influences employee creativity; 3. To assess how challenge and hindrance stressors affect the strength of the relationship between POS and employee creativity
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
