Now You Do It, Now You Don't: The Mixed Blessing of Creative Deviance as a Prosocial Behavior.

Jigyashu Shukla,Ronit Kark

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00313

Jigyashu Shukla, Ronit Kark

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00313

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Abstract

Creative deviance, the act of developing an idea by an employee even when it was banned by the manager, is a novel and interesting construct that can bring both positive and negative outcomes to organizations. The construct of creative deviance is neglected in the existing literature and the theory development for creative deviance is still in the nascent stages. We expand the theoretical nomological network of creative deviance by introducing prosocial motivation as an antecedent of creative deviance and developing a multilevel model of the moderators of this relationship. Creative deviance can occur due to pro-self or prosocial intentions. In our paper, we focus on the prosocial intentions behind acts of creative deviance. We illustrate how the prosocial motivation can lead to creative deviance and how creative deviance in turn, can act as a double-edged sword leading to positive outcomes of creative performance and innovation as well as negative outcomes of wastage of resources and deteriorated leader member exchange. Our model delineates the boundary conditions influencing the relationship between creative deviance and its outcomes. Specifically, we explore the theoretical foundations of social skills and perspective taking, as the individual level moderators; team network structure and climate of excellence, as moderators at team level; organizational structure at organization level; and uncertainty as the external environmental level moderator.

Highlights

There are many cases in organizations in which employees disobey the requests of supervisors to stop working on a creative solution to a problem or on a project with creative potential
We focus on the prosocial motivation to creative deviance for two reasons: First, little is known about the possible negative outcomes of the prosocial behavior
In order to contribute to this limited area of research and at the same time develop the nomological network of creative deviance(a novel construct that has not yet received a lot of research attention), we explore how creative deviance may be derived from prosocial motivation and when it can lead to both positive and negative outcomes

Summary

Introduction

There are many cases in organizations in which employees disobey the requests of supervisors to stop working on a creative solution to a problem or on a project with creative potential. The novel construct of creative deviance, which has received limited attention in the extant literature, is vital because it is evident in the field, touches on a significant stage in the creative process, and can predict various positive and negative organizational outcomes. These outcomes contribute to creativity and innovation, or, in other cases, lead to wastage of various important resources (e.g., time, money, loss of materials, and reputation). At the broader external environment level, we focus on the uncertainty in the external environment as a meaningful moderator of the relationship between creative deviance and its outcomes

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