The Effect of Emotional creativity on Employees’ Innovative Behavior: Social Constructivist View of Emotion Perspective

Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2016, Vol. 39 ›› Issue (1) : 124-130.

PDF(757 KB)
PDF(757 KB)
Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2016, Vol. 39 ›› Issue (1) : 124-130.

The Effect of Emotional creativity on Employees’ Innovative Behavior: Social Constructivist View of Emotion Perspective

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Abstract

With the development of research on emotion in organization, emotional creativity had been receiving more and more attention from scholars and practitioners, and had become an important theme in Management Psychology in foreign countries. At present, although scholars at home and abroad have begun to focus on the effects of emotional creativity on innovation, but most studies ignore the process mechanism between emotional creativity and innovative behavior. Based on the social constructivist theory of emotion, this study examined the relationship between employees’ emotional creativity and their innovative behavior, as well as the role of leader encouragement of creativity and employees’ creative role identity. The sample populations used for our analyses consisted of employees and their immediate supervisors from 26 enterprises in the area of Changsha, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Hangzhou and Shanghai. Surveys consisted of two parts, an employees’ survey and a supervisors’ survey. The two parts of the survey had a common serial number, which was latterly used to match the employees’ completed surveys and supervisors’ completed surveys. Items measuring emotional creativity, and leader encouragement of creativity and creative role identity, were included in the employee survey. Items measuring employees’ innovative behavior were included in the supervisors’ survey. A total of 1000 surveys were administered. The response rate was 82.50 percent, and 708 matched-employee-supervisor surveys were obtained finally. Data analysis included: Firstly, factor analysis were conducted to examine the common method bias; Secondly, correlation analysis was conducted to examine the intercorrelations among all the variables; Finally, multiple regression analysis were used to test the meditating effect of creative role identity, and to test leader encouragement of creativity acting as a mediated-moderator. The results showed that, when employees’ emotional creativity was high, the probability of their innovative behavior was also increased, and this relationship was mediated by creative role identity. Leader encouragement of creativity positively moderated the relationship between employees’ emotional creativity and creative role identity. In other words, the main effect was stronger when the moderator was high. In addition, leader encouragement of creativity acted as a mediated-moderator which moderated the relationship between employees’ emotional creativity and innovative behavior. Finally, the implications and future research were drawn from the findings. This study theoretically contributes to the comprehension of “black box” between the employees’ emotional creativity and their innovative behavior, and enriches the social constructivist theory of emotion. Moreover, this study provides guidance for supervisors in helping them encourage the innovative emotion of their employees to improve innovative behavior in the actual operation of enterprises. Firstly, in the management practice of selection, employment, training, and retaining of employees, organizations should effectively use and develop employees’ emotional creativity to improve their leverage on the innovative behavior of employees. Secondly, the organization should strengthen the emotional management of employees in its systems and policies to encourage employees to improve their emotional creativity. Finally, to improve employees’ innovative behavior, the supervisors of organizations should improve their leadership abilities, and create a competitive, mutually-supportive, tolerant, and harmonious environment to encourage employees to improve their emotional creativity.

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emotional creativity, leader encouragement of creativity, creative role identity, innovative behavior

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The Effect of Emotional creativity on Employees’ Innovative Behavior: Social Constructivist View of Emotion Perspective[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2016, 39(1): 124-130
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