Creative Role Identity Research Articles

Constructing the associations between creative role identity, creative self-efficacy, and teaching for creativity for primary and secondary teachers.

Constructing the associations between creative role identity, creative self-efficacy, and teaching for creativity for primary and secondary teachers.

How transformational leadership impact on employee service innovation: the moderating effect of employee creative role identity

PurposeThis study examines the impact of transformational leadership on employees' service innovation behaviors in service firms and explores the moderating effect of employees' creative role identity on the relationship between the two from an employee psychological perspective.Design/methodology/approachThis study designed two questionnaires to be distributed to supervisors and employees as a means of conducting a questionnaire survey, which resulted in a sample of 328 leader–employee matches. The hypothesized relationships were tested using structural equation modeling and regression analysis.FindingsTransformational leadership has a significant positive effect on employee service innovation. The analyses further confirmed that creative role identity plays a moderating role between transformational leadership and employee service innovation.Originality/valueThis study confirms the effect of transformational leadership on employee innovative behavior and extends the theoretical basis of this relationship. It also hopes to provide inspiration and reference for local management in China.

On the Receiving End of Customer Creativity: Insights From Approach-Avoidance and Interpersonal Complementarity Perspectives

Increasingly, transactions between firms and customers are typified by the co-creation of value, wherein customers play an active role in the development of new products and services. Over the past two decades, research on co-creation has flourished across multiple disciplines, largely highlighting its benefits for firms and customers. Importantly, though, while customer engagement in the creative process may be viewed positively by customers and improve organizational performance, it may not be experienced as universally positive by the service providers who must respond to it. To gain a more complete understanding of both the positive and negative sides of customer creativity, we take an approach-avoidance perspective to build a theoretical model explaining how and why customer creative behavior can lead to divergent responses by service providers. Specifically, we describe how creativity by customers can inspire service providers, driving them to act more prosocially toward customers in return. Simultaneously, customer creativity can cause performance anxiety in service providers, leading them to withdraw from their work. Adding nuance to these predictions, we draw from interpersonal complementary theory to explain why the approach-avoidance processes triggered by customer creativity should be contingent on service providers’ creative-role identity. Across an experience-sampling field study (Study 1), a critical-incident experiment (Study 2), and a scenario-based experiment (Study 3), our results largely align with our theoretical model (overall N = 647). We close by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of our work.

The innovation paradox of global work: Does cultural tightness shape or constrain innovative behaviour?

AbstractDrawing on role identity, dynamic constructivism and the norm‐based model of cultural tightness, we examine the innovation paradox of whether and how congruence of home and host culture in tandem with creative role identity not only enhances but also constrains different facets of innovative behaviour for global workers. Results reveal that the effects of loose home employees' cultural tightness congruence on idea generation and idea realization behaviours depend on creative role identity (Study 1), that idea generation may be more salient in loose cultures (Study 2) and that when exposed to an incongruent tight culture, individuals temporarily switch their innovative identity content to fit the alternative cultural frame (Study 3). Our results paint a complex and dynamic picture of cultural exposure and role identity on innovative behaviour. Our results also suggest that cultural considerations and organizational interventions that shape the content of creative role identity may enhance innovative behaviours for global workers.

Linking extroversion diversity to group service innovation among Chinese and Australian hospitality employees: The roles of adhocracy culture and creative role identity

ABSTRACT Understanding how extroversion diversity influences group service innovation helps hospitality firms achieve service excellence. We developed a multilevel model of the link between extroversion diversity and group service innovation and the mediation and moderation mechanisms underlying the direct relationship. We collected data from China and Australia. We utilized multilevel structural equation modeling for model validation. Results from both samples demonstrated that extroversion diversity was positively related to group service innovation. Creative role identity was a mediator between extroversion diversity and group service innovation. Chinese result showed that adhocracy culture positively moderated the link between creative role identity and group service innovation. However, adhocracy culture was not a moderator on such a link among Australian employees. Therefore, we advanced the stream of diversity innovation in the hospitality discipline and offer managers suggestion to improve service innovation among work groups by building group diversity via recruitment and trainings. 了解外向型多样性如何影响集团服务创新, 有助于酒店公司实现卓越服务. 我们开发了外向多样性和群体服务创新之间联系的多层次模型, 以及直接关系背后的中介和调节机制. 我们收集了来自中国和澳大利亚的数据. 我们利用多级结构方程建模进行模型验证. 两个样本的结果都表明, 外向多样性与群体服务创新呈正相关. 创造性角色认同是外向多样性和群体服务创新之间的中介. 中国的研究结果表明, 专治文化对创造性角色认同和群体服务创新之间的联系起到了正向调节作用. 然而, 对于澳大利亚员工之间的这种联系, 专治文化并不是一个调节因素. 因此, 我们在酒店学科中提出了多元化创新流, 并为管理者提供建议, 通过招聘和培训建立团队多样性, 以提高工作团队之间的服务创新.

Lean innovation training and transformational leadership for employee creative role identity and innovative work behavior in a public service organization

PurposeWith the growing need for employees to be innovative, public-sector organizations are investing in employee training. This study aims to examine the effects of a combined Lean Six Sigma and innovation training, using action learning, on public-sector employees’ creative role identity and innovative work behavior.Design/methodology/approachThe authors studied a public service agency in Singapore in which a five-day Lean Innovation Training was implemented, using a combination of Lean Six Sigma and Creative Problem-Solving tools, with a simulation on day one and subsequent team-based project coaching, spread over six months. The authors administered pre- and postintervention surveys among all the employees, and initiated group interviews and observations before, during and after the intervention.FindingsCreative role identity and innovative work behavior had significantly improved six months after the intervention, enabled through senior management’s transformational leadership. The training induced managers to role-model innovative work behaviors while cocreating, with their employees, a renewal of their agency’s core processes. The three completed improvement projects contributed to an innovative work culture and reduced service turnaround time.Originality/valueStarting with a role-playing simulation on the first day, during which leaders and followers swapped roles, the action-learning type training taught all the organizational members to use various Lean Six Sigma and Creative Problem-Solving tools. This nimble Lean Innovation Training, and subsequent team-based project coaching, exemplifies how advancing the staff’s creative role identity can have a positive impact.

임파워링 리더십과 조직 구성원의 혁신행동

This empirical study examined both the mediating effect of creative role identity and the moderating effect of promotion focus on the relationship between empowering leadership and employee innovative behavior. Research models and hypotheses were established based on previous studies that explored empowering leadership, creative role identity, employee innovative behavior and promotion focus. It was confirmed that empowering leadership had a direct effect on employee innovative behavior and an indirect effect through the partially mediating variant of creative role identity. The study also confirmed that the lower an employee's promotion focus, the greater the effect of empowering leadership on creative role identity.
 The results of this study are significant because it verified the mechanism of identity perspective and expanded the literature on the effect of empowering leadership on employee innovative behavior. In particular, the creative role identity formed through leader's expectations, interactions, and employee's self-conceptualization of individual roles mediates the influence of empowering leadership on employee innovative behavior. At the same time, empowering leadership can influence employee innovative behavior differently depending on an employee's individual characteristic. Accordingly, continuous interaction for nurturing an employee's creative role identity rather than simple task instruction or delegation of authority is strongly recommended. Similarly, managers should demonstrate consistent interest in employee creative role identity as well as empowering leadership in order to encourage innovative behavior among employees.

Mediating and moderating effects of task interdependence and creative role identity behind innovation for service: evidence from China and Australia

PurposeInnovation for service contributes to service quality and customer satisfaction, and further benefits service-centered organizations to sustain competitive advantages. However, concurrent mediating and moderating mechanisms underlying innovation for service at both the group and individual levels have been scarcely investigated. The purpose of this study is to explore multilevel mediating and moderating mechanisms behind the relationship between dual-level transformational leadership (TFL) and innovation for service at the group and individual levels.Design/methodology/approachData were collected from two countries (i.e. China and Australia). Multilevel structural equation modeling was employed to validate the research model. Bootstrapping with 5,000 replications and latent moderated structural equation modeling were used to respectively examine the mediating and moderating mechanisms.FindingsThe cross-national results showed that task interdependence and creative role identity respectively played as the group-level and individual-level mediating roles between TFL and innovation for service. It was also found that task interdependence played as a cross-level predictor enhancing individual innovation for service. Task interdependence was a moderator on the relationship between individual-level TFL and creative role identity among Australian employees, but not among Chinese employees. The relationship between creative role identity and individual innovation for service was not moderated by task interdependence among both Chinese and Australian employees.Originality/valueThis study contributes to advancing the TFL–innovation research through revealing dual-level TFL as the antecedent of innovation for service at both the group and individual levels. It also extends the understandings of the mediating and moderating mechanisms behind this dual-level relationship between TFL and innovation for service.

Creating Cognitive Style and Employee Creativity in the Uncertain Work Context

Drawing on trait activation theory, we examine the mechanism through which creating cognitive style influences employee creativity in the uncertain work context. Using multi-level, multi-source, and multi-wave sample of 221 employees from 42 teams in mainland China, we have four major findings. First, work uncertainty activates the trait of creating cognitive style and enhances its effect on creative role identity. Second, creative role identity mediates the relationship between creating cognitive style and employee creativity. Third, work uncertainty is positively related to team problem-solving demand, and team problem-solving demand enhances the positive effect of creative role identity on employee creativity. Fourth, work uncertainty and team problem-solving demand moderate the indirect effect of creating cognitive style on employee creativity via creative role identity. The indirect effect of creating cognitive style is highest when both work uncertainty and team problem-solving demand are higher. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed. Supplementary analysis suggests that the moderated mediation effects remain when planning cognitive style serves as a parallel independent variable or creative self-efficacy serves as a parallel mediator. The result attenuates omitted variable bias. The study contributes to creativity literature.

The Influence of Innovation Climate on Creative Role Identity: The Mediating Role of Flow.

Creative role identity is an important antecedent of innovative behaviors. Both the mechanism of how external factors and individual factors affect the formation of creative role identity and details of this process have yet to be discovered. Based on data collected from 226 students in 6 classes at a university in Guangdong during the development of innovative projects, the influence of innovation climate on the students’ creative role identity, especially the mediating effect of flow, was investigated. The results show that the innovation climate has a positive impact on creative role identity and that flow plays a partial mediating role in this relationship.

Can developmental culture enhance team service innovation? Quantitative and qualitative analyses in the hospitality industry

PurposeService innovation benefits hospitality organizations’ service quality and competitive advantages. However, how and when team culture amplifies team service innovation is still not fully comprehended. Thus, this study aims to reveal the mediation and moderation mechanisms behind the team-level culture and service innovation nexus.Design/methodology/approachThis study used both quantitative and qualitative methods to validate the research model. The authors collected data from leaders and their members working in the hospitality sector in China.FindingsThe results demonstrated the positive nexus of developmental culture and team service innovation. This nexus was sequentially mediated by aggregated creative role identity and aggregated creative self-efficacy and was also strengthened by task interdependence.Practical implicationsThe results indicated that hospitality practitioners should consistently instill the values of developmental culture into their members to trigger their teams’ service innovative endeavors. They should also design more tasks requiring intensive teamwork and encourage members to complete these tasks collaboratively.Originality/valueThis study advances the understanding of the direct, mediating and moderating effects behind team service innovation.

Exploring the impacts of transformational supervision on supermarket store managers’ creativity: evidence from Nigeria, South Africa, and the United Kingdom

The current article is one of the rare studies to specifically focus on the contextual conditions under which the learning-related actions of transformational supervisors’ help retailing supermarkets’ store managers to learn and engage in behaviors that produce creative outcomes. We use a qualitative research approach with the data based on in-depth semi structured interviews with 40 retailing supermarkets’ store managers in Nigeria, South Africa and the UK. Our findings show that transformational supervision significantly boosts store managers’ creativity, facilitated by fostering store managers’ learning orientation, creative role identity (CRI) and creative self-efficacy (CSE), in all three contexts. From our findings, we have developed a model that symbolize the role of transformational supervisors in fostering store managers’ creativity, which provides a baseline for supermarkets in (re)evaluating the significance of their leadership styles on follower creativity.

Nurturing service innovation through developmental culture: A multilevel model

Hospitality organisations rely on service innovation simultaneously at the team and individual levels to improve service quality. Nevertheless, mechanisms underlying this dual-level service innovation have rarely been investigated. This study aims to develop a multilevel model of the mediating and moderating mechanisms behind the relationship between developmental culture and service innovation at both the team and individual levels. Dyadic data were collected from 58 team leaders and their 442 employees from 31 hospitality organisations in Zhengzhou, China. Multilevel structural equation modelling (MSEM) was utilised to validate the model. Results showed that developmental culture enhanced both team service innovation and service innovative behaviour. Creative self-efficacy and creative role identity partially mediated the relationship between developmental culture and service innovative behaviour. Team-focused transformational leadership (TFL) strengthened the effectiveness of developmental culture on team service innovation under higher but not lower levels of team-focused TFL. Based on the research findings, this study advances the culture-innovation research stream in the hospitality management literature by identifying the direct relationship between developmental culture and service innovation at the team and individual levels and revealing the mediating and moderating mechanisms underlying this culture-innovation link. This study also provides practitioners with practical insights into how to enhance team and employee service innovative endeavours through building developmental culture and adopting team-focused TFL behaviours in hospitality organisations.

Customer Cooperation and Employee Innovation Behavior: The Roles of Creative Role Identity and Innovation Climates.

Employee innovation behaviors lay the foundation for sharing economies and are of importance to business success, especially for service sector firms such as hotels. This study examines the relationship between customer cooperation and employee innovation behavior (EIB) by focusing on the mediating role of creative role identity and the moderating role of innovation climate. Drawing on resource based theory and role identity theory, we propose that customer cooperation enhances creative role identities and EIB, and the relationship between creative role identities and EIB is stronger when innovation climates are described as “high” rather than “low.” A total of 213 respondents in high star hotel were selected for questionnaire survey in this study. The results indicate that Customer cooperation is positively related to EIB. Customer cooperation positively affects EIB partially through creative role identities and innovation climate strengthens the direct effect of creative role identities on EIB and the indirect effect of customer cooperation on EIB through creative role identities. Theoretical and practical implications were also discussed.

The chain mediation effect of spiritual leadership on employees' innovative behavior

PurposeBased on the intrinsic motivation theory and spiritual leadership theory, the current study proposes a chain mediation model for testing the linkage between spiritual leadership and employees' innovative behavior through individual values and role identity.Design/methodology/approachIn this study, 309 valid leader–subordinate matching questionnaires from 10 Internet enterprises and 21 manufacturing enterprises in China were collected through a field study. The hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling and bootstrapping.FindingsThe results show that spiritual leadership has a positive impact on employees' innovative behavior. Uncertainty avoidance and creative role identity not only respectively play a mediating role but also play a chain mediating role in the process of spiritual leadership influencing employees' innovative behavior.Originality/valueThis study explores the influence of leadership style on employees' individual values, which has rarely been done in previous studies. Furthermore, the research explores the impact of personal values (uncertainty avoidance) on employee self-perception (creative role identity). And it enriches the relationship between spiritual leadership and employees' innovative behavior and reveals the deeper influence mechanism between them.

The Impact of Customer Creativity on Service Employees: An Emotional Appraisal Perspective

Increasingly, transactions between firms and customers are typified by co-creation of value, wherein customers play an active role in the development of new products and services. In the past two decades, research on the dynamics of co-creation, and its largely positive effects on consumers and firms, has flourished in multiple disciplines of research. However, the effects of customer creativity on the service-providing employees themselves has received far less empirical attention, which is not necessarily surprising, given that research on the consequences of creativity at work, in general, is scarce. To contribute to our understanding of the effects of co-creation on employees, and of the outcomes of creativity, we examine how creative behavior from others at work (i.e., customers) affects the focal employees (i.e., service providers). Specifically, drawing from emotional appraisal theory and interpersonal complementary theory, we predict that perceived customer creative behavior elicits the emotion of inspiration in service employees, which in turn motivates them to engage in customer-oriented prosocial behavior. We also propose that customer creativity can elicit the emotion of performance anxiety, which leads to subsequent work withdrawal among employees. Using an experience-sampling study with three daily assessments in the service industry, we find support for our predictions. Furthermore, we find that the aforementioned emotional appraisal processes are contingent on employees’ creative role identity. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of our work.

It Takes Three to Tango: How the Performance-Oriented HR System Influences Employee Creativity

A firm’s performance-oriented human resource (HR) system may encourage employees to adhere to workplace standards and thus meet performance expectations. Yet, can a firm’s performance-oriented HR system also facilitate employee creativity, which oftentimes involves risk and deviation from conventions? To address this question, we examine the joint influence of the performance-oriented HR system and HR creativity-building orientation on line managers’ tolerance of failure and further employee creativity. Analyses of multi-source, multi-phase data regarding 1086 employees in 107 high-technology companies reveal that when an organization’s HR manager interprets the organization’s HR practices as having a strong creativity-building orientation, a performance-oriented HR system will enhance line managers’ tolerance of failure in employee’s creative attempts. Moreover, managers’ tolerance of failure will shape employees’ creative role identity and further enhance employee creativity.

Organizational Aesthetics and Creative Outputs

Artifacts as part of the organizational aesthetics have been more often studied as a ‘communication tool’ that elicit emotions, meanings, goals, and values to employees and rarely as an impact on creativity. Although researchers have explored the idea that organizational artifacts can affect employees’ creativity, very little is known about how and why it works and the underlying mechanisms of it. Drawing on the frameworks of Rafaeli & Vilnai-Yavetz’s, (2004a) description of artifacts characteristics and Shimamura’s (2012) I-SKE model, this article has proposed a theoretical model explaining the mechanisms through which visual artifacts at work create an aesthetic experience for employees that in turn influences creative ideas. The model takes into consideration the conditions of creative leadership and creative role identity. In addition, the article adds to the literature of creativity and organizational aesthetics by pointing out the underlying mechanisms that connects these two areas.

Creativity at work: exploring role identity, organizational climate and creative team mindset

Both individual and organizational factors affect creativity at work. An area to be further studied is the role of the team factor in explaining creativity. In this study, the construct of creative team mindset was developed and investigated, along with individual and organizational factors. A false feedback paradigm was also used to examine the impact of organizational climate on creativity. In line with previous research, results showed that creative role identity and organizational creative climate positively affected creative behavior. Specifically, the more employees perceived their organization climate to be creative and indicated they had a creative role identity, the stronger their creative behavior. Furthermore, creative team mindset was related to creative behavior (divergent thinking). A final model indicated that creative team mindset was related to creative behavior through its relationship with creative role identity. It appears that creativity in groups is also an important factor that can increase understanding of creativity and foster such creativity. Implications for creativity management in organizations were discussed.

Combined Effect of Abusive Supervision and Abusive Supervision Climate on Employee Creativity: A Moderated Mediation Model.

In accordance with social identity theory, a multi-level model is put forward to investigate how the “conjoint” associations between abusive supervision and abusive supervision climate exert influence on employee creativity through creative role identity. The data in this paper were from 357 supervisor-subordinate dyads in 77 working groups to test the proposed model. The results indicated that creative role identities mediated the relationship between abusive supervision and employee creativity, and group-level abusive supervision climate moderated the relationship between creativity and individual-level abusive supervision through the process of creative role identity, the mutual influence of abusive supervision climate and individual-level abusive supervision significantly predicated employee creativity. This paper also discusses related managerial and practical implications.