Abstract
Stimulating and improving the creativity of employees are both theoretically and practically important. The relationship between prosocial motivation and creativity has gradually gained attention in recent years; however, in the context of controlling for intrinsic motivation, the influence process and results between the two are not yet clear. Based on the motivated information processing model, componential theory of creativity, and regulatory focus theory, this study analyzed the mediating role of knowledge sharing and the moderating role of regulatory focus in the relationship between prosocial motivation and the creativity of employees. For this, we used the PROCESS program and the bootstrap method to test the theoretical hypotheses. Consequently, a survey of 320 Chinese employees revealed that, under the condition of controlling for intrinsic motivation, the prosocial motivation of employees was positively related to creativity and partially mediated by knowledge sharing. Furthermore, regulatory focus negatively moderated the correlation between prosocial motivation and knowledge sharing. Specifically, we found that the higher the prevention focus was, the weaker the effect prosocial motivation had on knowledge sharing. Contrary to the hypothesis, promotion focus also played a negative moderating role. Thus, the results revealed the mechanism and boundary conditions of prosocial motivation on creativity. This study expands the research on prosocial motivation and provides guidance on how managers can enhance the creativity of their employees.
Highlights
In the context of the increasingly fierce global market competition of today, the innovation ability of an enterprise is related to its survival and development
Prosocial motivation was positively correlated with knowledge sharing (β = 0.451, p < 0.01), while knowledge sharing was positively correlated with employee creativity (β = 0.553, p < 0.01), which provided preliminary evidence for the subsequent exploration of the relationships of the variables
From M1 in Table 6, we found that the interaction between prosocial motivation and promotion focus was significant [effect = −0.129, confidence intervals (CIs) (95%) = (−0.243, −0.014)], indicating that promotion focus had a negative moderating effect on the relationship between prosocial motivation and knowledge sharing, which is the opposite of Hypothesis 3 (H3)
Summary
In the context of the increasingly fierce global market competition of today, the innovation ability of an enterprise is related to its survival and development. One of the important sources for improving innovation ability is the creativity of organization members (Zhou and Hoever, 2014). Understanding the motivational basis of creativity is one of the long-term goals of creativity research (Amabile and Pillemer, 2012). Among these goals, Prosocial Motivation and Creativity prosocial motivation, which is defined as the willingness to work hard for the well-being of others, has attracted much attention in the field of creativity research because it helps employees go beyond the limitations of their own perspectives and enhance individual empathy and creative thinking (Grant and Berry, 2011; Li and Bai, 2015a; Liu et al, 2016). The theme of prosocial motivation as a “social glue” for the harmonious coexistence of different classes and ethnicities has more contemporary significance in the context of indifferent interpersonal relationships
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