University of Groningen
Employee incremental and radical creativity Liu, Ye
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Publication date: 2019
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Liu, Y. (2019). Employee incremental and radical creativity: Differential antecedents, psychological mechanisms, and boundary conditions. University of Groningen, SOM research school.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to many great people for their support at all phases of my PhD journey. Being deeply supported by all of them gives me courage and strength to pursue my academic and personal development. Here, I want to express my sincere thankfulness to those who contributed their time, talent, and creativity to this dissertation.
First and foremost, my special thanks go to my supervisors, Onne and Tim. I feel so honored and lucky to have you guiding me through my PhD. As a supervision team, you proved to complement and supplement each other perfectly. Onne, thank you for training me to conduct high quality research and raising me up to more than I can be. I remember that at the very beginning of my PhD you spared no effort to provide me hands-on coach regarding how to generate highly creative research ideas, how to work out intriguing results, how to formulate convincing argumentation lines, and how to organize a research paper. You have been always available to advise me whenever I have questions, doubts, and personal difficulties. These teachings will inspire me for a lifetime and help me become a well-rounded person. I have learned and benefited profoundly from your expertise, wisdom, openness, and empowering supervision style. Tim amazed me with his logical thinking, his proficiency in advanced statistical techniques, his ability to sort out the core of problems and, most importantly, the constructive comments and timely feedback he offered each time after reading my work. Tim, thanks you very much for advising me on methodology issues, for providing me all kinds of opportunities to develop my professional abilities, and for suggesting plans to ensure this project is well on the track and completed on time. Tim is always like a friend and his sense of humor has often made me happy. I am very grateful for your involvement.
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Furthermore, I am indebted to my supervisors at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS), Prof. Maicun Deng and Prof. Kan Shi, for their critical roles in making this research happen. I want to thank Prof. Maicun Deng for connecting me to multiple organizations’ top management teams to facilitate my survey-based data collection. Thank you for caring me so much and making me feel that you are willing to support me in every possible way to see my growth. I also must thank Prof. Kan Shi for introducing me to the field of organizational behavior, for encouraging to embrace work and life challenges I face, and for providing me substantial help in many other aspects beyond doing a PhD. I could never have made it this far without your continuous
challenge and guidance. Thanks very much for walking me through my two publications in high-impact Chinese journals and my dissertation at UCAS, all of which means so much to me.
Next I would like to extend my gratitude to the members of the reading committee, Prof. Rolf van der Velden, Prof. Xu Huang and Prof. Bernard Nijstad, for their valuable time and efforts to read my manuscript and share their views with me. I was fortunate to know Bernard earlier in my project and have him as the discussant commenting on my two research papers at SOM PhD conferences. Bernard, thank you for energizing me to move forward with an explorative orientation and for all of your suggestions and comments contributing to this dissertation.
I am thankful to the entire SOM staff and the colleagues at the department of HRM & OB. Many thanks go to Taco van der Vaart, Rina Koning, Arthur de Boer, Ellen Nienhuis, Zedef Karakayali, and Tineke Teuben for their helpful assistance with all sorts of administrative issues. Special thanks go to the creativity and innovation group
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members who have helped me without hesitation each time I turned to you with a
question or request. I also wish to acknowledge the career guidance I have received from Janka Stoker who was a helpful hand on my academic path.
My stay in Groningen was made colorful and joyful due to the many friends who have cheered me up whenever I feel overwhelmed. I would like to thank all my friends and fellow PhD students, Yuwan Duan, Chengyong Xiao, Li Jiang, Feng Hu, Suxiao Li, Bingqian Yan, Yan Yan, Jingjing Zhang, Kailan Tian, Jiyuan Wang, Jing Jing, Qiubin Huang, Jennie Ong, Huan Liu, Chenming Peng, Yingjie Yuan, Yan Shao, Fan Wang, Suqing Wu, Shili Chen, Binqi Tang, Aobo Jiang, Ramzi, Elena, Joost, Jacoba, Sanne, and Frederik, among others. Thank you for the weekend get-togethers, all the listening, understanding and sharing.
Finally, I would like to thank my family for your unconditional trust, support and love. I can never thank you enough for instilling me an appreciation for the world, for encouraging me to be what I want to be, for caring my feelings, for always being by my side. I feel blessed to have your strong backing at all the choices I’ve made.
