Perceived Threat of Covid-19, Collectivism and Employee Creativity

Abstract

The present study investigated the joint effects of cultural collectivism and perceived threat of Covid-19 pandemic on employee anxiety and creativity. Consistent with threat rigidity perspectives on creativity, two studies, including an online experiment (Study 1, N = 183) and a field study (Study 2, N = 293), found that greater perceived threat of Covid-19 was associated with greater self-reported anxiety, which in turn was associated with lower employee creativity. More importantly, we found that cultural collectivism weakened the association between perceived threat of Covid-19 and anxiety. Further, greater perceived threat of Covid-19 was associated with heightened anxiety as well as lower creativity only when cultural collectivism was low; when cultural collectivism was high, perceived threat of Covid-19 was unrelated to anxiety, and ultimately, to creativity. The present findings suggest that cultural collectivism help employees cope with psychological threats. By buffering the anxiety induced by perceived threat of a pandemic, cultural collectivism can help mitigate the negative influence of threat on employee creativity in the midst of crises.