THE INFLUENCES OF COWORKERS SUPPORT IN CREATIVITY PROCESS AND OVERALL JOB PERFORMANCE

THE INFLUENCES OF COWORKERS SUPPORT IN CREATIVITY

PROCESS AND OVERALL JOB PERFORMANCE

Geng Mingyuan University of Groningen

Faculty of Management and Organization E-mail: m.geng@student.rug.nl

ABSTRACT

For several decades creativity has become a more and more popular topic in psychology and organizational behaviors studies, since increasing competition forces modern organizations to be different in order to survive. In the stream of creativity studies, lots of works emphasized on the factors that trigger employees’ creative behaviors in workplace (e.g., Farmer, Tierney & Kung-Mcintyre 2003; George & Zhou, 2001; Gilson & Shalley, 2004; Janssen, Huang & Chiu, 2007; Parker, Williams & Turner, 2006; Shalley, Zhou & Oldham, 2004; Tierney & Farmer, 2002; Zhou & George, 2001;). Among those factors, creative self-efficacy was considered as an important antecedent for employee’s creativity (Tierney & Farmer, 2002).

In general, several studies have found that self-efficacy is a predominant predictor of subsequent performance (Bandura, 1977a; Bandura, 1982; Bandura & Adams, 1977; Bandura, Adams & Beyer, 1977; Bandura, Adams, Hardy & Howells, 1980). Those with moderate to high self-efficacy tend to engage more frequently in task-related activities and persist longer in coping with efforts. Those with low self-efficacy tend to engage in fewer coping effort (Bandura, 1977a, 1982; Bandura & Schunk, 1981; Brown & Inouye, 1978).

These findings can be used in the creativity field as well. Actually in his famous book ‘Social Foundations of Thought and Actions: A Social Cognitive Theory’, Bandura believed strong self-efficacy was a necessary precondition for creative productivity and the discovery of ‘new knowledge’ (Bandura, 1986). Besides that, Ford (1996) placed self-efficacy beliefs as a key motivational component in his model of individual creative action and found that self-efficacy perceptions influence employee creativity.

the internal drive for creative behavior of an employee, and people in social surrounding can act as an external drive for employee to perform creatively. In any organization, supervisors and coworkers are the most important ‘social others’ which may have significant influence on an employee’s creativity. Actually, there has already been found a lot of evidence to suggest that supervisor plays a vital role in shaping employees’ efficacy belief and enhancing the creativity of employees (Amabile et al., 1996; Janssen, 2005; Parker, Williams & Turner, 2006; Scott & Bruce, 1994; Tierney & Farmer, 2002). Compared with this, the role coworkers play in employee creativity is less studied. In my opinion, coworkers should deserve as much attention as supervisors, since employees work with their coworkers all the time, and it is with coworkers they have most frequent contacts. Coworkers may influence an employee’s creativity through encouragement, support, open communication, and informational feedback (Amabile et al., 1996; Zhou & George, 2001).

There are few, if any, studies focusing on the effect of creativity on overall job performance of employee. Most of studies stopped at the enhanced employee creativity, without examining how creativity works out to overall job performance. If we look through studies conducted in recent years, an interesting phenomenon can be found: all researchers assumed employee creativity to have positive influence on employee and organizational performance. That is why creativity has gained so much attention both from researchers and managers. They assume creative employee may perform better than those less creative, so researchers worked on finding factors that trigger and enhance employee creativity and managers worked on producing creativity-friendly working environment in their organizations. But does the positive relationship between creativity and overall job performance truly exist? Does creative employee really perform better than those less creative on the job? Unfortunately little statistical support can be found. Most researchers took this relationship for granted. For this reason my study hopes to make some contribution in this direction.

examines employees’ creative self-efficacy in a social context which gives self-efficacy a social meaning. More specifically, coworkers support is examined in relationships between creative self-efficacy and employee creativity as well as in relationships between employee creativity and overall job performance. It is believed that coworkers support for creativity might act as moderators in both relationships. Employees with high level of creative self-efficacy might come up with more creative activities and in turn improve their overall job performances under the support of coworkers. Secondly, different from the western-culture background of previous research, the current study is the first one with a total eastern culture background (although Tierney and Farmer conducted a research among Taiwanese employees in 2002, eighteen percent of the respondents they chose had studied or lived in American, which means they were exposed to western culture for several years). The reason for choosing a typical Chinese organization as target is because in collectivistic culture people put more emphasis on the social environment (Leung & Bond, 1984) and are more sensitive to members in their surrounding. Therefore, it is expected that support from social surrounding may play more obvious role in employee creativity in collectivistic culture. Figure 1 shows the research model in present study.

Figure 1, how coworkers supports functions as a moderating factors in the relationship between creative self-efficacy and creativity as well as in the relationship between employee creativity and overall job performance

Employee

creativity _performance Overall job

THEORY AND HYPOTHESES

According to Bandura, perceived self-efficacy is defined as people’s judgment of their capabilities to organize and execute courses of action required to attain designated types of performance (Bandura, 1986). Based on this definition, Tierney and Farmer (2002) defined creative self-efficacy as the belief one has the ability to produce creative outcomes.

The present study defines employee creativity as employees’ generation of novel and useful ideas concerning products, procedures and processes used at work (Amabile, 1988; Oldman & Cummings, 1996, Shalley, 1991; Zhou, 2003). Since what is considered novel is in large part culturally defined (Farmer et al., 2003), there is a possibility that the general definition is not accepted for Chinese culture, in which the present study has been conducted. In this sense, it is necessary to give a Chinese definition of creativity, which is “the solution of problems and products in a way that is initially original but is ultimately accepted in one or more cultural settings” (Li & Gardner, 1993:94). Comparing these two definitions, we can conclude that the core concept of creativity is common in both eastern and western cultures.

Creative Self-efficacy and Employee Creativity

As stated in the beginning of this article, researchers have documented a strong linkage between high self-efficacy and success in clinical (Bandura, Adams, Hardy & Howells, 1980; cited in Stajkovic & Luthans, 1998), educational (Lent, Brown & Hackett, 1994; Schunk, 1995; cited in Stajkovic & Luthans, 1998), and organizational settings (Bandura, 1988). Self-efficacy determines whether an individual will exhibit a certain behavior, how much efforts will be expended and how long these efforts will be sustained (Bandura, 1986). Individuals with higher levels of self-efficacy are expected to put more effort in a longer time period and produce more successful outcomes. On the opposite side, individuals with a low level of self-efficacy may easily quit and end up with failure (Bandura, 1986).

It is reasonable to expect the same positive relationship between creative self-efficacy and employee creativity. Actually, Ford (1996) proposed that self-efficacy perceptions influence employee creativity. Creative-efficacious employees actively involve in performing tasks through new and different ways. They are open-minded to new experiences and knowledge and are likely spending much more efforts in forming new ideas in a relatively longer time period. These activities finally result in higher level of creativity, which refer to generation of novel and useful ideas concerning products, procedures and processes used at work, as I defined. Hence, I propose:

Hypothesis 1: Employee creative self-efficacy is positively related to employee creativity.

Creative Self-efficacy and Employee Creativity: The Moderating Effect of Coworkers Support

of one’s personal efficacy. An outcome expectation is an estimate that a given action will lead to a certain outcome (Bandura, 1986: 395). The former is a belief about one’s competence; the later is a belief about one’s environment. The most important implication of this distinction is that a failure of an action may result from (a) low self-efficacy or (b) the perception of a social environment as unresponsive and unsupportive to one’s action (Gecas, 1989). This notion is also valid in creativity field. An employee may not exhibit creative behavior if he or she perceives little support can be expected from important others in the social environment, which in turn increases the possibility of failure. In fact, Ford (1996) claimed that employees resisting engagement in creative behaviors when they perceive creative attempts will be unsuccessful underscores the motivational relevance of self-efficacy for creativity. In other words, employees’ willingness to involve in creative activities may depend on the extent to which they perceive their activities will be a success. If an employee perceives his or her activity will fail, he or she will not like to engage in that activity. On the other hand, an employee is more inclined to exhibit creative activity if there is a higher opportunity for being successful. Coworkers support will increase the possibility of success, which in turn facilitates employee’s creative behavior.

Culture plays an important role here as well. It is a common notion that creativity may be discouraged among the Chinese (Tierney & Farmer, 2003) since there is great emphasis on maintaining harmony in one’s relationship with others through meeting shared standards (Goncalo & Staw, 2006). Suggesting new ideas challenges the existing and shared standards. Moreover, it is discouraged to express self if there is a possibility to damage or destroy the harmonious relationships by such self-expression. Therefore, even though an employee has a strong creative self-efficacy, he or she might choose to keep silent for the fear of disharmony caused by him or her, which calls for strong external forces to overcome the fear.

since it shakes the routine procedures which are widely accepted, and seldom doubted, by all employees. Secondly, the relationships among coworkers may come into tension when innovators and adaptors encounters. These two challenges exert heavy mental stress for creative self-efficacious employees and make them hold themselves from putting forward new ideas, especially when these employees are exposed to a culture that emphasizes stability and harmony. Coworkers support can serve to overcome these two obstacles. A supportive social environment produces an atmosphere that all employees are open to new ideas. Creative activities are welcome and encouraged. This expectation reduces the chances of strong opposition, which will remove most of mental pressure for creative self-efficacious employees. Moreover, the new-idea friendly environment also means all employees are willing to work on theses ideas and increase the possibility of success, which makes creative self-efficacious employees feel more self-satisfaction and are more motivated to come up with new ideas. Therefore, I propose:

Hypothesis 2: Coworkers support for creativity will moderate the effects of creative self-efficacy on employee creativity, such that the relationship between creative self-efficacy and employee creativity will be stronger for high level of coworkers support for creativity.

Employee Creativity and Overall Job Performance

Besides increasing overall job performances in their individual work roles, creativity is also expected to sharpen an individual’s performances as group members. Individual employees are effective as group players when they actively involve in identifying problems and producing new solutions which can be discussed and implemented in the group. Creative employees can also function as a role model to their colleagues, which makes other group member behave more creatively (Zhou, 2003). As Gilson et al (2005) noted, employees engaging in creative activities facilitate their group to generate incremental improvements in how work is arranged and performed, as well as radical breakthroughs when it is necessary to do things in a complete different way.

Some findings of empirical studies suggest that creativity and productivity are highly correlated (Amabile, 1997; Tierney et al., 1999; Suh, 2002). Without strong belief in the effect of creativity and productivity on better performance, many organizations would not have spent millions of dollars each year on creativity training programs (Suh & Shin, 2005). Further more, creative processes involve learning-oriented behaviors. A learning orientation helps people develop their understanding of environments and improve their knowledge of appropriate strategies (Suh & Shin, 2005). A learning-orientated individual not only has and use his or her ability to do both adaptive and generative learning, but also keeps an open mind to different perspectives and has a commitment to learning (Senge, 1990; Baker & Sinkula, 1999, cited in Barrett, Balloun & Weinstein, 2005), which will in turn enhance the individual’s overall job performance. Therefore, I propose:

Hypothesis 3: employee creativity is positively related to employee overall job performance.

Employee Creativity and Overall Job Performance: The Moderating Effect of Coworkers Support

job performance relationship as well. It is worth to note that generation of new ideas is only the first step to improve individual’s overall job performance. If these ideas are finally not adopted, it does not make sense to discuss if creativity helps to enhance individual’s job performance. Here comes a point, generating an idea is not sufficient to ensure implementation of the idea, and other factors are deemed necessary to provide the opportunity to put suggestion into practice (Axtell et al., 2000). There is a good reason to believe that the implementation of an idea requires more social support than generating an idea, since it requires the approval, support and resources of others (Axtell et al., 2000). In this way, it is expected that coworkers may have significant influence on this process and in turn influence employee’s overall job performance through increasing the chances of successful implementation of new ideas. It has been stated that learning-orientation is one of the important characteristics of creative employee. Coworkers are the best source of new knowledge and ideas. They are exposed to the same work environment and they interact relatively frequently with each other. During their time-to-time interactions and communications, coworkers may share knowledge and expertise with others and provide help and support (Zhou & George, 2001). Besides that coworkers can provide informational feedback to the focal individual which may correct the errors and improve individual’s overall job performance. In this sense, I propose:

Hypothesis 4: coworkers support will moderate the effect of employee creativity on overall job performance, such that the relationship between employee creativity and overall job performance will be stronger with high level of coworkers support.

Creative Self-efficacy and Overall job performance: The Mediation Effect of Employee Creativity Interacted with Coworkers Support

interacted with coworkers support to enhance employee’s overall job performances. In other words, the interaction between employee creativity and coworkers support provides a line that mediates the interactive effect of creative self-efficacy and overall job performance. Thus, it is expected that creative self-efficacy interacts with coworkers support to become beneficial to overall job performance due to the mediating role of employee creativity moderated by coworkers support. This is also what figure 1 displays. Accordingly, I offer the following:

Hypothesis 5: The interaction of employee creativity and coworkers support mediates the interactive effect of creative self-efficacy and coworkers support on overall job performance.

METHODS

The participants in this study were employees in a Chinese community services company set up in 2001, which mainly provides maintenance services, including cleaning, security, heating and other needed services, for residents communities and office buildings. Respondents in this research ranged from dustmen and security whose jobs are assigned as routine jobs, to engineers and office clerks, including accountant, sales person, secretaries and other employees working in office, who do most of non-routine jobs. Each respondent was asked to fill out a questionnaire to self-report for their creative self-efficacy and perceived coworkers support. Supervisors were required to fill out questionnaires to assess the creative behaviors and overall job performances for their subordinates.

envelope, and each participant was asked to put the fulfilled questionnaire into the envelope and sign it on the seal. If the envelope were opened before reaching researchers, the questionnaire in it would be abandoned.

The questionnaire was developed in English in the first place. This initial version was translated into mandarin Chinese and then back-translated into English by two independent bilingual translators. The Chinese version was sent by E-mail to general manager of the community services company and then was printed out and handed out to each employee in every level. After the questionnaires were filled out, the collected questionnaires were delivered to the researcher by DHL.

Out of the 160 received questionnaires, 115 had both self-reports and leader reports which composed the final sample. The sample contains 71 male and 44 female; average age is 27 (s.d. = 7.80) and average organizational tenure is around 2 years (s.d. = 1.50). 13 of the respondents received college degree, 33 were high-school grounded, 60 were graduates from secondary school, and 9 were only with primary school degree.

Measures

The items comprising the scales outlined below are detailed in the appendix.

Creative self-efficacy Employees’ belief in their creative ability was measured by the three-item scale developed by Tierney and Farmer (2002). The response format was a seven-point scale (1=totally disagree, 7= totally agree). The examples are: “I feel that I am good at generating novel ideas”, and “I have confidence in my ability to solve problems creatively”. The Cronbach’s α was .88.

“totally disagree”, to 7, “totally agree”. The scales measured general helps from coworkers (for instance: “My coworkers provide help to further work out my creative ideas into solutions that can be implemented”) as well as specific helps provided by coworkers (for example: “My coworkers share their knowledge with me to try to bring my creative ideas into reality”). The Cronbach’s α was .87.

Employee creativity Employees’ creativity was assessed using supervisor ratings of six items based on Zhou and George’s (2001) thirteen-item creativity scale. Taking into account of the organizations where the study had been conducted and the creativity definition in this study, I selected six out of the established thirteen items that focused on generating new ideas. Supervisors were asked to assess each of their subordinates by indicating how many ideas were suggested by the focal employee during last year. The response scale ranged from 0 to more than 10. Two item examples are: “In last year, how many creative ideas to achieve work goals did this employee suggest?”, and “In last year, how many creative ideas to increase quality did this employee suggest?”. The Cronbach’s α was .90.

Overall job performance Employee’s overall job performance was measured by the five-item scale developed by Denison, Hooihberg and Quinn (1995). Supervisors were asked to rate each of their employee in the following performance aspects: their performance as a role model for others (1= very bad role model, 7= very good role model), the degree to which they were successful (1= not at all successful, 7= very successful), the effectiveness as an employee (1= very ineffective, 7= very effective), the degree to which employee’s performance meets work standards (1= far below standards, 7= far above standards), and their performance compared with their peers (1= much worse, 7= much better). The Cronbach’s α was .87.

organizational tenure were also measured. Besides these socio-demographical data, supervisors support for creativity was also measure since it was expected to be related to coworkers support and influences both employee creativity and overall job performance.

RESULTS

Table 1

Descriptive Statistics and Correlations of Variables

Variables Mean S.d. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Gender 1.38 .49 Age 27.39 7.81 .14 Education 2.43 .80 -.37** -.11 Type of Position 1.63 .48 .37** -.19* -.61** Org. Ten. 1.99 1.50 -.33** .20* .54** -.64** Supervisor Support 4.58 1.08 -.34** -.09 .26** -.25** .25** Creative Self-efficacy. 4.60 1.36 -.46** -.22* .48** -.40** .38** .65** Coworkers Support 4.63 1.05 -.42** -.20* .39** -.22** .21** .68** .68** Employee Creativity 2.09 1.50 -.44* -.16 .50** -.44** .47** .47** .65** .58** Overall Job Perf. 4.84 .71 -.04 .29** .28** -.25** .35** .34** .39** .32** .43** N=115 * p<.05 **p<.01 Testing of Hypotheses

positive relationship with employee creativity (B=.54, p<.01; ΔR2_{=.06, p<.01; see} table 2), indicating that employees with higher level of creative self-efficacy exhibit more creative activities on job. Therefore, hypothesis 1 is fully supported.

TABLE 2

Results of Hierarchical Regression Analyses for Employee Creativity

Step and Variable 1 2 3 4 Step 1 Gender -.22 -.15 -.10 -.12 Age -.23 -.14 -.14 -.19 Education .26 .16 .07 .14 Type of Position -.14 -.09 -.14 -.11 Organizational Tenure .35* .30* .34* .36** Supervisors Support .42*** .16 -.03 .25 Step 2 Creative Self-efficacy .54** .40* .40** Step 3 Coworkers Support .42** .61*** Step 4

Creative Self-efficacy * Coworkers Support .36***

ΔR2 _{.46*** .06** .03** .07***}

Adjusted R2 _{.43*** .48** .51** .58***} N=115 for all variables

* P<.05 ** p<.01 ***p<.001

employees’ creativity, which is consistent with my notion that coworkers are important social others in creativity context. In order to examine the interaction of creative self-efficacy and coworkers support on employee creativity, the cross-product term was added to the regression equation. It yields a significant effect (B=.36, p<.001; ΔR2_{=.07, p<.001; see table 2). Figure 2 is a graph of this} interaction, with coworkers support on high and low values of creative self-efficacy (M+1SD; M-1SD). As this figure displayed, the relationship between creative self-efficacy and employee creativity is stronger for high level of coworkers support. Hypothesis 2 is supported.

Hypothesis 3 Hierarchical regression analysis was employed here as well. After controlling for covariates, employee creativity was added to the regression equation. Two covariates had significant effects on employees’ overall job performances as displayed in Table 3, which are age (B=.27, p<.01) and supervisors support (B=.16, p<.05). Older employees have better performance than younger employees; employees with higher levels of supervisor support perform better than those with lowers levels. Employee creativity has a very significant contribution in predicting overall job performance (B=.28, p<.001; ΔR2_{=.09, p<.001). Thus, hypothesis 3 is supported by practical evidence.}

0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 Low High E mp lo ye e C re at iv it y Creative Self-efficacy

Figure 2 Interaction of Creative Self-efficacy and Coworkers Support on Employee Creativity

High Level of Coworkers Support

TABLE 3

Results of Hierarchical Regression Analyses for Overall Job Performance

Step and Variable 1 2 3 4 Step 1 Gender .11 .15* .16* .14* Age .23** .27** .27*** .25*** Education .20* .15 .14 .16* Type of Position .09 .12 .11 .11 Organizational Tenure .14* .07 .08 .12 Supervisors Support .24*** .16* .13 .21** Step 2 Employee Creativity .28*** .26** .11 Step 3 Coworkers Support .06 .19* Step 4

Employee Creativity * Coworkers Support .20**

ΔR2 _{.32*** .09*** .00 .04**}

Adjusted R2 _{.28*** .36*** .36 .40**} N=115 for all variables

* P<.05 ** p<.01 ***p<.001

very remarkable improvement in employees’ overall job performance. Therefore, hypothesis 4 is supported.

Hypothesis 5 For testing the moderated mediation effect, a two-step hierarchical regression analysis was adopted. In the first step, covariates, creative self-efficacy, coworkers support, and the cross-product term of creative self-efficacy and coworkers support were entered to predict the dependent variable of overall job performance. As table 4 shows, creative self-efficacy was positively and significantly related to overall job performance, where as the coworkers support and cross-product term of creative self-efficacy and coworkers support did not reach significance. In the second step, employee creativity and the interaction of employee creativity and coworkers support were added. Results of this two-step regression analysis shows that the B-weights of creative self-efficacy reduced only with a small amount from .23 in the first step to .20 in the second step. Thought this is not a substantial reduction, it still can be concluded that a moderated mediation model exists in the sense that creative self-efficacy in interaction with coworkers support influences employee creativity, which in turn, interacts with coworkers support to enhance overall job performance. In this sense, hypothesis 5 is partially supported.

4 4.2 4.4 4.6 4.8 5 5.2 5.4 Low High Ov er al l J ob P er fo rma n ce Employee Creativity

Figure 3 Interaction of Employee Creativity and Coworkers Support on Overall Job Perfomance

Table 4

Hierarchical Regression Analysis for The Moderated Mediation Effect

Step and Variable B1 B2 Adjusted R2 ΔR2

Step 1 .34*** .39*** Gender .15* .15* Age .26*** .29*** Education .15 .13 Type of Position .11 .13 Organizational Tenure .12 .11 Supervisors Support .13 .11 Creative Self-efficacy .23** .20* Coworkers Support .13 .13 Creative Self-efficacy * Coworkers Support .08 -.15*

Step 2 .45*** .11***

Employee Creativity .04 Employee Creativity * Coworkers Support .40***

N=115 for all variables * p<.05 ** p<.01 ***p<.001

DISCUSSION

provides empirical support for the long-standing, but seldom tested, proposition that creative employees perform better than those less creative employees. Thirdly, this study sheds light on Chinese people’s creativity ability and refutes a notion that creativity is not encouraged in Chinese culture.

Theoretical Implications

Consistent with motivational view of self-efficacy theory, the result of the first hypothesis shows that creative self-efficacy drives employees to exhibit creative activities. This finding supports the notion that self-efficacy can be a predominant predictor for subsequent behaviors (Bandura, 1977a; Bandura, 1982; Bandura & Adams, 1977; Bandura, Adams & Beyer, 1977; Bandura, Adams, Hardy & Howells, 1980). Creative self-efficacy provides some internal, sustaining force that propels individuals to persevere in the face of challenges, which are native to creative performance. Strong creative self-efficacy beliefs enhance the persistence level and the coping effort with creative performance. Even more, creative self-efficacy also influences overall job performance through the mediating role of employee creativity interacted with coworkers support. This finding discloses another consequence of creative self-efficacy and accentuates the importance of creative self-efficacy once again. For these reasons, generating and maintaining high level of creative self-efficacy deserves special attention from researchers. Unfortunately, there are few studies focusing on creative self-efficacy (Tierney & Farmer, 2002) compared with a vast amount of studies on general self-efficacy. Therefore, further studies are needed for creativity-specific efficacy.

the person, the field (defined as those people who populate and effect the structure of a domain), and the domain (defined as the rules, language, customary practices, etc., of a recognized area of action) that together contribute to the occurrence of a creative act. Fields and domains represent the situation or context that influences individual’s actions (Ford, 1996). Employee creativity is a function of internal drive (which is addressed as personal characteristics in person-context interaction framework) and external stimulation. This finding aligns with the result of a study conducted by Farmer and Tierney in 2003. In their study, they proposed and found organizational valuing of creativity, as external stimulation, will enhance the positive relationship between creative role-identity, the internal drive, and employee creativity.

This finding also adds something new to Bandura’s (1986) self-efficacy theory. In his model, Bandura treated verbal persuasions from others as an antecedent for self-efficacy which generates one’s self-efficacy. In this study, coworkers support, including verbal encouragement and practical assisting, functions as a moderator in the self-efficacy and performance relationship. The finding suggests that influences from social others are not only the sources of self-efficacy, but also the activator for subsequent performance. Apparently, the influence of important others does not stop after generating self-efficacy, their influence continues in shaping the effects of self-efficacy on subsequent performances. This can be read through figure 2, at low level of coworkers support, the regression line between creative self-efficacy and employee creativity is almost flat, but when coworkers support increases, there is a sharp enhancement in employee creativity. This stresses again that self-efficacy can not be studied independently of social environment.

they would spare no effort to provide encouragement and assisting. Moreover, humility is very strongly stressed in Chinese culture as a kind of virtue, which sometimes results in less willingness to exhibit one’s ability in order to avoid being blamed as flaunt. In this sense, employees with high level of creative self-efficacy might do not display creativity in afraid of being blamed. Coworkers support can help to overcome this feeling. When creativity is encouraged by social surrounding, the focal person is glad to display this performance, which is also consistent with the emphasis of importance of others in Chinese culture.

This is one of the few studies that prove there is a significant and positive relationship between employee creativity and overall job performance. This finding is consistent with majority of creativity literatures that assert workers’ productivity and performance depend on their intrinsic motivation and creative outcomes. It also adds new value to creativity theories by pointing out the outcomes of high level of creativity. It has been stated that most of recent studies focus on the ways and factors that enhance employees’ creativity, but seldom emphasizes on the consequence of enhanced creativity. One can hardly find an empirical study testing the relationships around the constructs related to creativity and job performance. Further research is needed in this direction.

Creativity emphasizes generative learning, and creative employees keep on changing cognitions, abilities and behaviors of their own as well as the methods and procedures of doing job. This improves their performances in their individual work role. Besides that, creative employees also act as role model to their group members. New ideas proposed by one employee can be worked out in the whole group and even adopted by employees in other groups or departments. In this way, creative employee makes contribution to the whole group or even the whole organization, which improves his or her performance as an effective group and organization member.

characteristics (Axtell et al., 2000). Sharing of knowledge and expertise increases the chance of successful adoption of novel ideas. Communication and cooperation speed up the elimination of out-dated procedures, which are replaced by new and novel methods. This renewal and update helps to improve individual employee’s overall job performance as well as organizational performance as a whole. Figure 3 shows this effect. When coworkers support stays at lower level, the effect of employee creativity on overall job performance is slightly despite positive. But when the level of coworkers support increases, a significant and positive relationship between employee creativity and overall job performance appears. This figure suggests that it should be kept in mind for further researchers that coworkers support carries a heavy weight in predicting overall job performance.

Practical Implications

My study also carries several practical implications for practicing managers. In the first place, the positive and significant relationship between employee creative self-efficacy and creativity suggests that managers should be sensitive to factors that can generate and maintain high level of employees’ creative self-efficacy, which will in turn motivate creativity and ultimately benefit overall job performance. Secondly, the influence of coworkers support on the relationship between creative self-efficacy and employee creativity suggests practicing managers should create supportive social environments for those creative self-efficacious employees.

benefits will tighten the relationships among employees. The interdependence, trust and cohesion between employees will be enhanced, which will make employees more actively involve in cooperation and coordination. Coworkers, or team members, are more willing to help and support each others for better performance of the team, which will in the end benefits every single employee in that team. Therefore, it sounds logically that creative self-efficacious employee will receive more encouragement and assisting since creative performance might benefit the whole team. This effect should be more obvious in eastern countries because of the emphasis of group. But unfortunately the reality is sometimes opposite to this fair-sounding story. Several empirical studies (Goncalo & Staw, 2004) reported that high level of trust and cohesion among team members discouraged employee creativity in teams, since high level of trust and cohesion make team members not want to deviate from others and challenge existing and shared rules, which is exactly creative behaviors requires. In this way, being creative leads to tensional relationships among team members, which might undermine the team performance. Resisting new ideas and following the rules can keep harmonious relationships among teams, but at the expense of long-term benefits of the team, or even the whole organization. Therefore, creating supportive social environment for creativity is very important for teams. It seems the only effective way to motivate creativity while keeping cohesion and trust among team members at the same time. This study discloses the importance of social supportiveness for creativity, and how to produce this atmosphere in teams and groups is needed to be stressed in further studies and practices.

Potential Limitations

process. However, generation of ideas does not equal to implementation of ideas. The later process was only roughly mentioned when discussing the moderating effect of coworkers support on the relationship between employee creativity and overall job performance. Actually, this process deserves an individual study, since an employee can be creative and generate new ideas alone, the implementation of ideas typically depends upon the approval, support and resources of others (Axtell et al., 2000). In this way, coworkers support is expected to play important role in idea implementation process as well. So it is suggested that further research could separate idea generation and idea implementation as two different phases, and examine coworkers’ roles in both processes.

Secondly, coworkers support for creativity referred to practical support in this study, such as sharing of knowledge and expertise and cooperation. This can be treated as some kinds of expectations and encouragement for creativity in some degrees, but it is a little bit implicit. Expectations sometimes distinguish from practical supports. In that sense, the present study does not provide a clear line between the influences of coworkers expectations and coworkers supports on creativity processes. It is estimated that coworkers expectation plays more influencing role in idea generation phase, and coworkers practical support plays more influencing role in ideas implementation phase (Axtell et al., 2000). Further research is called for in this direction.

Finally, the research was conducted in a typical organization with totally eastern culture background, this may reduce the generality of this study because of cultural differences. For example, people from individualistic culture may not be such sensitive to environment as people from collectivistic culture. So the influences of social others are probably different in these two settings. Moreover, the respondents of this study all came from service industry, so there is a possibility that the model does not predict well for manufacturing industry.

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