Abstract
Previous research has demonstrated the positive effects of congruent personal and environmental characteristics on creativity. None of them, however, has tested the formal theory of person-environment fit for predicting creativity in the context of multicultural experiences. This study examined the effects of two versions of person-environment fit (Demands-abilities fit and Needs-supplies fit) on employee creativity in China, taking into account the moderating role of multicultural experiences. The results, based on the data of East Asian Social Survey in the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) in 2015, showed employees with demands-abilities fit have lower creativity than those with demands-abilities misfit; nevertheless, the demands-abilities fit creates a growing impact on employee creativity with increasing multicultural experience. Additionally, the higher the needs-supplies fit, the stronger the employee creativity; and, the needs-supplies fit creates a growing impact on employee creativity with increasing multicultural experience. It shows that different versions of person–environment fit have different effects on employee creativity and multicultural experience moderated the effects of person-environment fit on employee creativity. Implications for research and practice are discussed.
Highlights
With the development of economic globalization and modern science and technology, the world economy is marching from the era of industrialization toward that of knowledge economy, and the economic growth is increasingly driven by technological innovation
Based on the procedure in stepwise linear regression analysis suggested by Baron and Kenny (1986), the first to input into the regression equation is control variable; the second is the variable of demands-abilities fit and multicultural experience; the third, the interaction between demands-abilities fit and multicultural experience
Model 2 and model 3 in Table 2 reflects the impact of demands-abilities fit on employee creativity
Summary
With the development of economic globalization and modern science and technology, the world economy is marching from the era of industrialization toward that of knowledge economy, and the economic growth is increasingly driven by technological innovation. In this context, creativity has become dramatically pivotal to companies aspiring to gain advantages in an ever-increasingly competitive market environment (e.g., Amabile, 1988; Woodman et al, 1993; Shalley and Gilson, 2004; George and Zhou, 2007; Mumford, 2011). It is of paramount significance for the survival and boom of companies to probe into driving factors in employee creativity and its mechanism of action so as to motivate employee creativity, which has become a principal topic for scholars
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