Perceived Work Uncertainty and Creativity During the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Roles of Zhongyong and Creative Self-Efficacy.

Chaoying Tang,Ziwei Xing,Stefanie E Naumann,Huijuan Ma

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.596232

Chaoying Tang, Ziwei Xing + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.596232

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Abstract

Research on the relationship between work stress and employee creativity has been mixed. This study on 823 female attorneys in China identifies employee creative self-efficacy and employees’ value of Zhongyong as moderators in this relationship. In this study, work stress is assessed by the perceived work uncertainty brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Our study found that although Zhongyong, which involves an employee’s ambidextrous thinking, can be helpful for employee creativity, low levels of Zhongyong are better for employee creativity in an uncertain context such as the COVID-19 pandemic, due to the fact that high levels of Zhongyong result in an overemphasis on compromise and giving in when times are uncertain. Instead, low levels of Zhongyong will decrease employees’ concern about others’ acceptance in an uncertain environment. In addition, creative self-efficacy motivates employees to engage in creative efforts during times of work uncertainty. In sum, this study found that employee perceived work uncertainty brought on by COVID-19 enhances employee creativity when an employee’s value of Zhongyong is low and creative self-efficacy is high.

Highlights

Creativity in the workplace, defined as the creation of new and useful ideas or solutions (Fisher and Barrett, 2019), has been regarded as essential to organizational innovation (Akinola et al, 2019)
Our study focuses on the Chinese cultural value of Zhongyong, which is an indigenous concept originating from Confucian philosophy, as a predictor of employee creativity
Our study proposes that creative self-efficacy will play an important role in such a context, because it will motivate employees to engage in creative efforts during times of work uncertainty

Summary

Introduction

Creativity in the workplace, defined as the creation of new and useful ideas or solutions (Fisher and Barrett, 2019), has been regarded as essential to organizational innovation (Akinola et al, 2019). Creating conditions that allow employees to foster creativity is a key challenge for managers. Creating these conditions can be especially difficult during times of stress when employees tend to assign a greater priority to tasks that are certain and controllable, rather than creative (Luis et al, 2020). One month after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, a large-scale survey of U.S employees by a leader in on-demand mental health care revealed that 69% of employees reported that this was the most stressful time of their entire professional careers (Ginger, 2020). Given the great uncertainty in the workplace caused by the current COVID-19 pandemic, identifying ways to facilitate creativity under such challenging conditions is a critical issue for organizational leaders to manage

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