Page | - 0 - - A study about the creative personality, openness to experience and innovative work
behaviors of frontline employees in the hospitality industry -
Name: Oediet Doebe, Bharty Student no: 10392777
Supervisor: Dr. Daphne M. Dekker
Master Thesis Business Administration - Leadership & Management Faculty of Economics and Business
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Voor mijn lieve moeder.
Hoe ouder ik word, hoe meer ik je mis, Ook, omdat ik mezelf nupas durf open te stellen voor mijn ware ik.
Every step I take, every move I make, Every single day, every time I pray,
I'll be missing you.
Thinkin of the day, when you went away, What a life to take, what a bond to break,
I'll be missing you. -Faith Evans-
Page | - 2 - Preface
Het schrijven van deze scriptie behoort tot een van de laatste stappen voor het behalen van mijn master diploma. Na het afstuderen voor mijn bachelor’s diploma in Suriname miste ik nog enige academische uitdaging. Deze uitdaging heb ik mogen aangaan op de Universiteit van Amsterdam en die ging niet zonder slag of stoot. Het ging gepaard met erg veel twijfel aan mezelf, aan mijn keuzes en aan mijn capaciteiten, maar opgeven zat gelukkig niet in. Ik ben er alleenmaar sterker uit gekomen en ben daarom ook erg trots op het resultaat dat ik hier heb mogen neerzetten.
Veel dank gaat uit naar mijn scriptie begeleider, mevrouw Daphne Dekker, die mij elke keer van goede feedback heeft voorzien, heel flexibel was, maar die ook ontzettend veel geduld heeft getoond.
Bharty Oediet Doebe Amsterdam, 30 juni, 2015.
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Abstract
Creativity is often assumed to play an important role in influencing the generation and implementation of innovation at all levels of the organization. Consequently, the need to understand the mechanisms through which different types of creativity lead to positive innovation outcomes becomes imperative. Through a study of 100 frontline employees from the hospitality industry in Amsterstam, the Netherlands, the current thesis explores how the creative personality and openness to experience leads to innovative work behavior. The main- aim is two-folded: to examine the direct effect of the creative personality and openness to experience on innovative work behavior and to explore job autonomy as a moderator on the relationship between the creative personality and openness to experience respectively, and innovative work behavior. Regression analysis showed that only openness to experience had a significant direct effect on innovative work behavior. In addition, no moderating effect is found between the creative personality and innovative work behavior although job autonomy quasi moderates the relationship between openness to experience and innovative work behavior. These findings contribute to the understanding of how creativity impacts innovation and represent a basis for further theory development and managerial- decision- making.
Keywords:
creative personality, openness to experience, innovative work behavior, hospitality, frontline employeePage | - 4 -
Table of content
Index of figures and tables ... - 6 -
Index of appendices ... - 6 -
1. Introduction ... - 7 -
2. Theoretical background ... - 13 -
2.1 Innovation and innovative work behavior conceptualized ... - 13 -
2.1.1 Conceptualized of innovation ... - 13 -
2.1.2 Innovative work behavior ... - 14 -
2.2 Creativity conceptualized ... - 18 -
2.2.1 Creative personality and the Five Factor Model conceptualized ... - 22 -
2.3 Innovative work behavior and creativity ... - 26 -
2.4 Job autonomy ... - 27 -
2.4.1 The moderating role of job autonomy ... - 28 -
2.5 Conceptual model ... - 29 -
3. Research Design... - 31 -
3.1 Research method ... - 31 -
3.2 Data collection method... - 31 -
3.3 The questionnaire ... - 31 -
3.4 Sampling, pre-test and implementation of the final questionnaire... - 32 -
3.5 Scale development and measures ... - 32 -
3.7 Data analysis ... - 33 -
4. Data analysis and results ... - 34 -
4.1 Overview of the participants ... - 34 -
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4.3 Regression analyses and results of hypotheses ... 39
5. Conclusion and discussion ... 43
5.1 Summary of results... 43
5.2 Summary of the current study ... 44
5.3 Discussion ... 45
5.3 Managerial implications ... 46
6. Conclusion ... 48
7. References ... 49
Appendix 1: Questionnaire ... 54
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Index of figures and tables
Figure 1: Conceptual Model Figure 2: Origin of participants Figure 3: Age of participants
Table 1: Cronbach’s alpha for the constructs Table 2: Scale means, SD’s & inter- correlations Table 3: The regressions coefficients table Table 4: Moderation outcomes
Table 5: The regressions coefficients table Table 6: Moderation outcomes
Index of appendices
Appendix A: Questionnaire Appendix B: Regression Output
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1. Introduction
"Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things." — Theodore Levitt
Our life nowadays is characterized with smartphones, Wi-Fi and technology to make it easier and as a result we cannot picture life without them. We do not like anything slow, outdated or inconvenient so why would we want to experience hospitableness to be any different? Today's guest is looking for a hotel experience that goes beyond meeting only their private and work needs, for example, if it comes to technology most hotels are quite basic. Sure, they offer amenities like Wi-Fi, flat-screen TVs, and perhaps some extras like iPhone docks, but most hotels do not impress and that is why major hotel chains try to change by adapting to customers’ needs.
In an increasingly demanding world, innovative work behavior seems to be central to achieving this goal. At the same time, past challenges have demonstrated the important role of engaged creative frontline employees in ensuring the survival and prosperity of hospitality businesses (Sousa & Coelho, 2011). Yet, the question of how engaged creative frontline employees foster innovative work behavior, which will ultimately lead to innovations in the hospitality branch, has largely remained unanswered. This study argues that, in the hospitality industry, frontline employees with their creative personalities are able to initiate innovative work behavior while having autonomy on the job.
Several studies stress the lack of innovation research in the hospitality sector (Monteiro & Sousa, 2011; Ottenbacher, 2007; Sundboa, Orfila-Sintesb & Sørensenc, 2007). Interest for innovation in the hospitality and tourism sector is growing however services in these sectors are dependent on human interactions and interpersonal exchanges that require emotions and experiences (Monteiro & Sousa, 2011). These features make services in these industries hard to standardize and if, according to Monteiro & Sousa (2011), innovation is accepted as a process instead of a result it may be visible in any organization or sector. Furthermore these innovations can vary because they can start by introducing small changes in a daily process of continuous development that can be carried out by anyone in an organization.
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Monteiro & Sousa (2011, p.12) concluded that ‘’Innovation in high quality hotels seems to be
associated to small changes made in the daily operation, within the teams leaded by managers that encourage a permanent focus in the clients‟ satisfaction, reflection on the continuous improvement of organizational processes and appeal to co-workers suggestions and participation.’’
Innovation in the hospitality and tourism industry is not similar to innovation in, for example, technological organizations because innovation in services consists of a change of behavior (Sundbo et al., 2007). In particular, Sundbo et al. (2007) say that ‘’service is a social
behavior where the personal interaction between the service provider is the core of the definition of service and, thus, the explanation of service firm’s behavior, including their innovative behavior.’’ In this view the product and process cannot be divided from eachother because the
product is the process. Furthermore in Orfila- Sintes & Mattson’s (2009) study it is shown that innovation in the hospitality industry takes the pattern of a stepwise process since innovation is often introduced by organizations employees who are in contact with customers and know about their wants and needs.
Innovations are important and necessary for organizations because they make sure that the organizations survive, stay effective and have competitive advantage. It has been pointed out by professionals and in academia that innovation needs to be put into practice (Chen & Chen, 2012). Organizations in the hospitality industry are experiencing several changes in the social and economic sphere, customer’s needs, increasing competition among hotels and rapid technological innovations (Radu & Vasile, 2007). Consequently, when these challenges are tackled, organizations include cutting costs, quality and reputation improvement, gaining flexibility and become more innovative (Radu & Vasile, 2007).
According to Radu & Vasile (2007) & Enz & Harrison (2008), innovation is the proactive response of a company to a changing business environment. Furthermore, it is necessary to have continuous renewal and adaptation if the organization wants to stay in business. Literature on the innovation process in the hospitality industry points out that it is not always easy to innovate in this industry because innovations in this sector are intangible and this makes it hard to be monitored and evaluated (Radu & Vasile, 2007). Furthermore, more than one activity needs to be managed and balanced to innovate in this industry and not just one. This can be explained by the following example in Radu & Vasile’s (2007) article that says that the core
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service that is offered in the hospitality industry is important but this service is not seen as the key success factor because the success of services is often determined by the customer’s perception and how the interaction with the customer is designed.
One way for organizations to engage in the innovation development process is to rely on their employees’ ability to innovate (Ramamoorthy, Flood, Slattery & Dardessai, 2005; De Jong & Den Hartog, 2007). According to Katz (1964, p. 132) ‘an organization that depends solely upon its blueprint of prescribed behavior is a very fragile social system.’ Nowadays work has become more knowledge based and less thoroughly explained which leads to employees who can help to improve their organizations performance by using their capability to generate ideas and use these ideas as components to new and better products, services and work processes (De Jong & Den Hartog, 2007).
The contribution of employees in the development of innovations is known as innovative work behavior (IWB) which includes all work activities on an individual that relates to the development of innovation (Messmann & Mulder, 2007). This construct implies that individuals go beyond their formal job requirements and innovate on their own free will. Innovation, a result of a process that involves the generating creative ideas and putting them into action, starts with creativity (generation of ideas) that is successfully implemented within an organization (Amabile et al., 1996; Radu & Vasile, 2007).
After the introduction of creativity as an area of research in the 1950s, where topics such as the relationship between motivation, gender, educational background and creative outputs were researched, it was placed in the research field of Psychology and the Arts (Wong & Ladkin, 2008). Although scholars stressed the importance of researching creativity in several fields, research on creativity in the hospitality industry was neglected because creativity is usually linked with artistic industries such as filmmaking, writing and music composing (Wong & Ladkin, 2008). From a historical perspective the importance of hospitality was the provision of food and accommodation to travelers therefore the attention in the hospitality industry was on operational routine work of how the industry satisfied its guests (Wong & Ladkin, 2008).
This study concentrates on the subject of creativity, in particular the creative personality, for four key reasons. Firstly, one of the key factors towards creativity in the hospitality industry are the employees who initiate organizational innovation (Coelho, Augusto & Lages, 2011).
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Secondly, Wong and Ladkin (2008) assume that developing employee creativity will motivate employees and motivated staff will deliver higher levels of customer care. Thirdly, creative actions of frontline employees’ foster long- term relationships with customers because these employees discover customers’ needs, develop a relationship with customers and they solve problems that occur during the service creatively and effectively (Grewal, Levy & Kumar, 2009 & Verhoef et al., 2009). Thus, in the hospitality industry enhancing employee creativity is important to foster long-term relationships with customers so that the company can have a competitive advantage. And fourth, social and technical innovations are dependent on creative people and processes (Runco, 2004; Batey & Furham, 2006).
Research in the area of creativity is important and interesting but difficult to define because the study offers several approaches (Runco, 2007). In addition, it is diverse in its interpretation because creativity takes part in technical innovation, teaching, business, arts and sciences and several other interest areas (Runco, 2007).
Within the area of psychology different personalities exist and according to Chen & Chen (2012, p. 1628) ‘’because personality differences are found to have great effects on the
operational performance of an organization, it can be rationally assumed that a creative personality encourages the improvement and enhancement of an organization’s innovation level and performance.’’ Personality can be measured by different methods but to get a constancy of
results, researchers categorized personality measures together under the umbrella of the five factor model of personality which contains the five personality traits neuroticism, extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness and openness to experience (John & Srivastava 1999; Chen & Chen, 2012; Judge & Bono, 2000, George & Zhou, 2001).
Since the area of personality encompasses lots of theories and models, the current study includes the openness to experience dimension of the five-factor model of personality to guide this research because openness to experience relates the most to creativity and this link is both theoretical and empirical studied (Feist, 1998; King, Walker & Broyles, 1996; George & Zhou, 2001; Runco, 2007).
Given the extensive research to date on creativity in the hospitality industry, the scarcity of studies investigating innovative work behavior as an outcome is surprising. The current thesis therefore adds to our understanding of creativity by addressing and researching the
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creative personality and innovative work behavior, while considering autonomy as a potential moderator.
The objective of this study is to examine how certain variables influence innovative work behavior. This thesis focuses on the creative personality, openess to experience, job autonomy and innovative work behavior.
The following research question has been formulated:
‘’To what extent do the creative personality and openess to experience determine innovative work behavior?
With the subquestions :
What role does job autonomy have on the relationship between the creative personality and innovative work behaviour?
What role does job autonomy have on the relationship between openess to exprience and innovative work behavior?
Academic Relevance
There is a lot of comprehensive and well documented research on all of the variables in the current study (Ramamoorthy et al, 2005; De Jong 2007; De Jong & Den Hartog, 2007; Feist, 1998). However, research among frontline employees in hospitality sector in Amsterdam, the Netherlands has not been studied yet. The contribution of the current study is to understand if employees with high scores on the creative personality and openness to experience can indeed come up with innovative ideas that will benefit the company.
Managerial relevance
This thesis will provide personality and creativity researchers with more insight of how certain variables influence innovative work behavior. The effects of the creative personality, openess to experience and job autonomy are tested within the proposed model. The findings should contribute to more implementation of small innovations suggested by frontline employees. Managers or business owners can become more competitive by basinbg their change on the ideas provided by their employees because they are in direct contact with customers.
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Structure of the paper
The second chapter of this thesis contains the literature review together with the hypoteses and conceptual model of this research. The third chapter reveals the research design. Within the fourth chapter the results are set out together with different analyses. Finally this thesis ends with a conclusion, in this part the limitation and future research will also be discussed.
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2. Theoretical background
In this chapter the literature that is relevant for this research will be presented. Relevant literature will be discussed to find out what is already know and studies about the different variables that will be used in this research. In addition, insights will be given into the relationship between the studied variables.
2.1 Innovation and innovative work behavior conceptualized
This paragraph introduces innovation and gives a short overview of the key issues in its research field. Subsequently in the next section innovative work behavior is presented with the focus on the individual perspective. Thereafter the construct is discussed and then the dimensions of innovative work behavior are presented. The paragraph concludes with a classification of several antecedents of innovative work behavior.
2.1.1 Conceptualized of innovation
The amount of research that has been dedicated to innovation has grown overtime but Schumpeter (1934) is one of the first scholars that did research on the topic and introduced a theory of innovation and its effect on economic growth. Schumpeter illustrated innovation as the
‘creation and implementation of ‘new combinations’ related to new products, services, work processes or markets’ (De Jong, 2007, p. 15). Similarly, Messmann & Mulder (2012, p. 43)
define innovations as ‘new and potentially useful products and processes that are developed and
applied in a particular work context in order to address problems or improve the status quo.’
In recent years, the definition of innovation has been redefined many times and each time an aspect was added or removed from the definition. Yet, the underlying assumption remains the same and all the definitions have in common that they stress the importance of newness as an essential part of innovation (De Jong, 2007). Newness entails anything that is new to individuals or by individuals doing it and anything divergent to an organization who will implement it.
Several academic disciplines such as economics, management, history, sociology, psychology and industrial design study innovation and consequently innovation research can be
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divided between two streams: research that focuses on different kind of innovations (object- based) and research that focuses on the subject that is involved with the innovation (subject- based) (Archibugi & Sirilli, 2001; De Jong, 2007). Object- based studies focus on the innovation by itself and objects consists of new products, services, processes, radical innovations, incremental innovation, transfer of technologies and De Jong & Vermeulen (2005) made five categories of this approach namely defining innovation, new product development, patterns of adaptation and diffusion, transfer and classification of technologies and innovative business development (De Jong, 2007). On the other hand subject- based studies focus on the role of actors and how these try to manage and research how they can have a more effective and efficient role in the innovation process such as at several levels such as countries, industries, organizations, groups and individuals (De Jong, 2007). Innovation at the individual level, which falls into the category subject approach, builds on creativity studies that are categorized into the investigation of the characteristics of creative people and the stimulants of individual creativity (McAdam & McClelland, 2002; De Jong, 2007).
2.1.2 Innovative work behavior
Innovative work behavior can be operationalized by looking at personality characteristics or by looking at outputs (De Jong, 2007). Individual innovation is captured as a set of behaviors and De Jong (2007) says that there is no agreement yet among researchers on how to precisely explain this construct.
Drawing from Farr and Ford (1990), De Jong (2007, p.8) defines innovative work behavior as ‘individuals behavior to achieve the initiation and intentional introduction (within a
work role, group or organization) of new and useful ideas processed, products and procedures.’
This definition implies that individuals or employees go further than their prescribed job requirements and are innovative because they want it themselves. Furthermore, this definition also includes idea generation and types of behavior that are needed for improvements to take place that will benefit personal or business performance (De Jong, 2007). The current thesis adopts this definition proposed by De Jong (2007).
Because this formulation includes both initiation and implementation if ideas, innovative work behavior distinguishes itself from other constructs that are more restricted. An example of such a construct is employee creativity that focuses solely on the discovery and generation of
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ideas, proactive work behavior and personal initiative which also stresses change but does not exactly focuses on the initiation part of the innovation process (De Jong, 2007).
Janssen (2000) adds to this definition by stating that innovative work behaviors are behaviors that employees willingly engage in, thus it is not expected from them in their formal role and they cannot be judged by not coming up with innovations because it’s not in their formal job description. Furthermore research shows that employees are good at balancing their regular work at one hand and being innovative at the other (De Jong, 2007). Organ (1988) also stated that these behaviors are discretionary and extra-role behaviors and are not part of the organizational reward system. Nevertheless, Ramamoorthy et al. (2005), stress that employees engaging in innovative work behaviors benefit the organization and if they fail they do not suffer from consequences since their employment contract is not violated.
Also Janssen (2000; drawing from Scott & Bruce, 1994) says that innovative work behavior is a complex behavior in the workplace that is composed of three different behavioral tasks namely: idea generation, idea promotion and idea realization. The first task, idea generation, is the production of novel and useful ideas in any domain (Amabile, Conti, Coon, Lazenby & Herron, 1996) whereas the second task, idea promotion, consists of presenting the idea to potential partners. The individual who has had an idea needs to participate in gatherings to get the necessary backup for the idea. The last stage is the ideas realization task in the innovation process and it consists of realizing the idea by producing a model of the innovation so that it can be showed or experienced by other coworkers, a group or the organization (Kanter, 1988). According to Kanter (1988) the individual itself can complete less complex innovations while more difficult innovations need teamwork or specific knowledge. Janssen (2000) also stresses that the innovation process consists of discontinuous activities, which means that individuals can take part of any of the above-mentioned behaviors.
Consequently, Shih & Susanto (2011) say that innovative employees have more pleasure in job satisfaction; they achieve better performances in their workplace and develop better relationships with other co- workers. Subsequently they have a relatively low stress level, enjoy more personal growth and produce positive conflicts (Shih & Susanto, 2011).
Individual innovation can be operationalized in terms of a personality characteristics, outputs and behaviors. In line with this perspective a lot of research done on individual innovation has focused on creativity and idea generation, however, when and how these creative
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ideas are carried out is a part of the innovation process that got less attention (De Jong, 2007; De Jong & Den Hartog, 2007). The current study conceptualizes individual innovation as a part of behaviors and includes behaviors in the scope of idea generation and the implementation of these ideas as crucial parts of innovative behavior (De Jong, 2007; De Jong & Den Hartog, 2007).
De Jong (2007) also suggested an activity- stage model that is usually used to explain the innovation process. This model is divided in two phases where initiation is the first and divergent phase that includes activities as recognizing problems, thinking about it and the suggestion of ideas that might lead to innovations, whereas implementation is the second phase and is a convergent phase that goes to the advancement and the launch of innovations to get the maximum out of it (King & Anderson, 2002). Many scolars have criticized this model for being too simple while others have implemented it to explain how innovations are initiated and developed (De Jong, 2007). The model can be chopped up in several detailed activities that leads to alternative models and in this view Kanter (1988) argues that ‘activity-stage models are useful for analytical and didactical purposes and the conditions for innovation can be understood best if the innovation process is divided into its major tasks’ (De Jong, 2007, p. 19). Kanter (1988) also says that the initiation and implantation phase are not difficult to identify in the innovative behaviors by individuals that include idea generation, coalition building idea realization and transfer.
Furthermore, De Jong (2007) describes four antecedents of innovative work behavior. The first explanation of innovation at the individual level is with factors that differ at the individual level. Research done at an early stage of this level had a focus on the innovativeness of individuals as a trait or aspect of personality. Some people were believed to have a true ability to take part in innovation and change whereas other investigated areas include extraversion and tolerance of ambiguity and cognitive features and character of individuals.
The second category of antecedents focuses on work group characteristics that impact individual innovation. In this category people do not innovative on their own and the innovation outcome will most likely impact others in teams. Not a lot of research is done in this area since more research is done at the level of the individual or organization.
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The third category of antecedents focus on organizational characteristics that affect individual innovations and examples of these are effects of innovative strategies. Furthermore, this body of research has got a lot of attention similar to the first category of antecedents.
The last and fourth category of antecedents focuses on environmental or extra-organizational factors affect individual innovation. Organizations engage in different businesses and in some innovation might not have a priority. The IT-industry for example has a different innovation policy than a cost-saving company where innovation is a no-go.
Despite the importance of individual innovation, innovative work behavior as an outcome is a relatively new construct, and will therefore be addressed by the current thesis.
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2.2 Creativity conceptualized
In order for people to survive and to prosper they need adapting to changing circumstances, solving problems, generating new insights and creating new products and services (Baas, De Dreu, Nijstad, 2008). This implies that creativity is needed, it is crucial to survival and prosperity because it creates something new and unusual that is meant to improve people’s effective functioning (Baas et al., 2008).
Research on creativity has a long history because psychologists could not agree over a definition but in 1949, in J. P. Guilford’s presidential address to the American Psychological Association (Amabile, 1983) he requested for the systematic study of creativity within the field of psychology (Baas et al., 2008). Also, from a historical point of view, there is a distinction between the Eastern and Western perspective of the view of creativity as the original product of an individual (Batey & Furham, 2006). According to the Western perspective creativity can be seen as a trait of gift which is normally distributed which is most likely genetically driven property of individuals while the Eastern view creativity as an expression of personal truth, self-growth, process of understanding and enlightment (Lubart, 1999; Batey & Furham, 2006). According to Batey & Furham (2006) research about creativity and academic psychological literature has been led by the Western perspective.
When research started to identify creativity with the individual, more than a hundred years ago, they thought of creativity of an intellectual trait of individual difference (Batey & Furham, 2006). Then interest in creativity came from different area of academic research such as studies from the perspective of personality theories and processes, cognitive psychology that took interests in the creative problem-solving process, situational factors that fostered and restricted creativity at the level of individuals and teams (Batey & Furham, 2006; Amabile, 1996). Subsequently researchers studied creativity from a psychological concept, neurobiology and function of creative and creative thinking, the creative- person approach, the psychometric approach and intellectual facets of the creative person (Batey & Furham, 2006; Runco, 2004). According to the article of Prabhu, Sutton & Sauser (2008) scholars had a lot of problems defining creativity. Cognitive psychologists defined creativity in terms of a mental process. Personality psychologists on the other hand, conceptualized creativity as a trait. Furthermore, psychologists in experimental aesthetics referred to creativity as a product (Prabhu et al., 2008).
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Nowadays research on creativity has its own domain within the traditional sub- areas in psychology such as social, organizational, personality, cognitive, clinical and child psychology (Baas et al., 2008). Because creativity has a number of definitions, conceptualizations, domains, disciplines, empirical methods, and levels of analysis and research orientations Kozbelt, Beghetto and Runco (2010) organized it in ten categories of theories: in order, Developmental, Psychometric, Economic, Stage and Componential Process, Cognitive, Problem Solving and Expertise-Based, Problem Finding, Evolutionary, Typological, and Systems.
Since the eighties a status quo developed which views creativity as a product. Martindale for instance states that ‘a creative idea is marked by three attributes: it must be original, it must
be useful or appropriate for the situation in which it occurs, and it must be actually be put to some use.’’ (1989, p. 211). Similarly, Oldham & Cummings (1996, p. 608) defined creative
performance as ‘’products, ideas, or procedures that satisfy two conditions: 1. they are novel or
original and 2. they are potentially relevant for, or useful to, an organization.’’ This definition
sees a product, an idea or a procedure as novel if it entails recombining existing materials or introducing entirely new materials. Furthermore, Oldham & Cummings (1996) make a distinction between creative performance and organizational innovation where creative performance points out to products, ideas and many more that are produced at the individual lever and organizational innovation mentions the successful implementation of the products and ideas at the organizational level.
On the other hand, creativity has also been conceptualized as a cognitive process or in terms of behavior. For instance, Amabile (1983) argued that creativity is best conceptualized as ‘’a behavior resulting from particular constellations of personal characteristics, cognitive abilities, and social environments. This behavior, which is evidenced in products or responses, can only be completely explained by a model that encompassed all three sets of factors’’ (Amabile, 1983, p. 358).
In addition, Martindale (1989) suggests that creativity is a cognitive process where an individual as a whole must be considered if one wants to understand creativity because creativity involves cognition. Furthermore the cognition that is involved with creativity only exists when it is in a matrix of associated motivational, attitudinal, and personalogical traits (Martindale, 1989).
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Within the creativity literature there are two models that have a big influence on individual creativity in the workplace (Amabile, 1983, 1996; Woodman, Sawyer & Griffin, 1993). The models are the interactionist approach to organizational creativity by Woodman et al. and the componential model of creativity by Amabile. Both models have differences and similarities but put together they complement each other and build a good framework that directs research in the area of employee creativity (Zhou & Shalley, 2003). Furthermore, both models discuss individual characteristics, effects of the work environment or organizational context and they both describe a diversity of applicable contextual factors that could enhance or restrict employee creativity (Zhou & Shalley, 2003).
The interactionist approach was introduced by Woodman, Sawyer and Griffin (1993). This model of organizational creativity assumes that creativity is an occurrence on individual level that can be influenced by dispositional and situational variables. The theory is actually stating that because of the interaction of individual’s disposition and contextual factors creative performance can be predicted. A crucial part of this model is its suggestions about influences between levels of analysis where the scholars discussed that cross- level influences are important in recognizing and understanding group and organizational characteristics that can improve or constrict creative behavior in a complex social system. Woodman and colleagues (1993) state that creative performance in an organization is a result of individual (cognitive abilities or style, personality, intrinsic motivation and knowledge), group (norms, cohesiveness, size, diversity, roles, tasks and problem solving approaches) and organizational characteristics (culture, resources, rewards, strategy, structure and technology) that improve and constrain creativity (Zhou & Shalley, 2003).
The other dominant model, the componential model has been developed by Amabile (1983). The model acknowledges that social influences affect individual creativity and that products or responses are perceived as creative when witnesses independently admit that it is novel and appropriate, or useful and valuable for the task that is at hand and that when the task is open-ended, it is executed thru discovery instead of a standardized procedure (Taggar, 2002). This model of creativity was one of the first grounded and comprehensive theories of employee creativity, builded on the work of Deci & Ryan’s Self- Determination theory, and it hypothesizes that creativity or creative performance has three key components: domain-relevant skills, creativity- relevant skills and task motivation (Zhou & Shalley, 2003).
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The first component, domain- relevant skills points out to factual knowledge and expertise in an already known domain and Amabile said that the skills could be affected by formal and informal education, individuals perceptual, cognitive and motor abilities (Zhou & Shalley, 2003).
The second component, creativity- relevant processes, consists of explicit or tacit knowledge regarding the strategies for producing creative ideas, appropriate cognitive styles and work styles for creative performance (Zhou & Shalley, 2003). According to Amabile training in creative skills and strategies, experiences in creative activities and having specific personality characteristics could have a positive effect on creativity- relevant processes.
The third component which is task- motivation includes perceptions of an individual’s personal motivation for working on a task and their attitudes towards a task. An individual’s motivation can generally be intrinsic and extrinsic where Amabile (1996, p. 115) defines intrinsic motivation as ‘’any motivation that arises from the individuals positive reaction to qualities of the task itself; this reaction can be experienced as interest, involvement, curiosity, satisfaction or positive challenge.’’ Amabile also defines extrinsic motivation as ‘’any motivation that arises from sources outside of the task itself.’’
According to this model intrinsic motivation was more necessary and critical than extrinsic motivation for creativity to take place mostly at the level of discovery or problem definition. The importance of task motivation comes forward in at least two ways in the model. Firstly it brings forward a strong and powerful statement that individuals who are in possession of a big creative potential are not likely to come up with creative ideas because they need the willingness to engage in creative activities in a intense and persistent manner (Zhou & Shalley, 2003). Secondly it set the beginning of a new era of research about identifying contextual factors that improve and constrain creative performance by highlighting intrinsic motivation. Because of these developments, the componential model by Amabile is also seen as an intrinsic motivation perspective of creativity.
Collins and Amabile (1999 in Wong & Ladkin, 2008) argue that the three components of should be seen as an interaction with each other and not solely as components by themselves. According to Amabile, where the three components overlap creativity will be at its highest. Amabile calls this the creative intersection and this is important in enhancing creativity (Wong &
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Ladkin, 2008). Empirical evidence provided by Conti, Coon & Amabile (1996) show that when individuals possess high levels of these components they tend to be more creative.
2.2.1 Creative personality and the Five Factor Model conceptualized
This section reviews theory and research on the creative personality. It describes empirical research as well as characteristics that are part of the creative individual. Furthermore, it positions the creative personality within the framework of the Five Factor Model and highlights previous research that investigated the link between the creative personality and the big five-personality inventory.
According to Phares (1986, p.4 in Runco, 2007) personality can be described as ‘’that
pattern of characteristic thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, that distinguishes one person from another and that persists over time and situations.’’ However, this does not count completely for
traits because every individual has an exclusive way of combining traits and that is why not every creative individual behaves in the same way or presents the same traits (Runco, 2007).
Feist (1998) shows in his meta-analysis of personality and creativity that creative individuals have some specific traits and tendencies because he concluded that: ‘’Empirical research over the past 45 years makes a rather convincing case that creative people behave consistently overtime and situation and in ways that distinguish them from others. It is safe to say that in general a ‘’creative personality’’ does exist and personality dispositions do regularly and predictably relate to creative achievement (p. 304).’’
As aforementioned, researchers studying creativity have taken different perspectives such as cognitive, humanistic, social, environmental, psychoanalytical, personality and the neurobiology of creativity (Batey & Furham, 2006). Moreover each approach tackles the topic of creativity an another way by constructing their own constructs of theories, methods and models but researchers agree that creativity within the individual consists of cognitive ability, personality factors, cognitive style, motivation, knowledge and the environment as a source of both stimulation and evaluation (Batey & Furham, 2006, p. 358; Amabile, 1983, 1996). In this
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view, when personality traits of creative people are studied, researchers work with traditional frameworks such a 3, 5, or 16 factor model (Feist, 1998; Batey & Furham, 2006).
There is a lot of empirical research done on the creative personality. Researchers have made lists of characteristics that sometimes overlap, contradict or suggest exclusive examples but it has to be noted that not one individual shows all the characteristics at the same time or all the time (Selby, Shaw & Houtz, 2005). Barron & Harrington (1981, p. 453 in King, Walker & Broyles, 1996) for example, composed a thorough index of attributes that are typical for creative individuals such as ‘’high valuation of aesthetic qualities in experience, broad interests,
attraction to complexity, high energy, independence of judgment, autonomy, intuition, self- confidence, ability to resolve antinomies or to accommodate apparently opposite or conflicting traits in one’s self-concept, and finally, a firm sense of self ‘as creative’.’’
Similarly Treffinger et al. (2002) who studied 120 definitions of creativity and about 100 articles listed the following personality characteristics that are related to openness and courage to explore ideas: sensitivity to problems, aesthetic sensibilities, curiosity, sense of humor, playfulness, fantasy thinking, risk-taking, tolerance for ambiguity, tenacity, openness to experience, adaptability, intuition, willingness to grow, openness to feelings, unwillingness to accept authoritarian assertions without critical examination and integration of dichotomies ( Selby, Shaw & Houtz, 2005).
An early review of creativity done by Dellas & Gaier (1970; in Martinsen, 2011) concluded that the most influential personality constructs related to creativity were independence, dominance introversion, openness to stimuli, wide interests, self- acceptance, intuitiveness, flexibility, asocial attitude, unconcern for social norms and neuroticism tempered by ego-strength. They also listed motivational characteristics which are risk taking based on the need to achieve, the need to find order and the need to create (Martinsen, 2011).
The abovementioned reviews are important to research because they have outlined the research area of creativity but they also show where research lacks. The downside is that these reviews do not accurately tell researchers what the number of studies was that the reviews were based on or how empirical research was fully done (Martinsen, 2011). To solve this and to organize concepts so that they could administer meta- analysis researchers started using the five- factor personality inventory. Feist (1998) was the first researcher to adopt this view and to do empirical research on the relationship between personality and creativity. His research showed
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that creative people are more open to experience, less conventional, less conscientious, more self-confident, self-accepting, driven, ambitious, dominant, hostile, and impulsive.
Feist (1998) suggested that when studying personality about creativity researchers can take two forms which make up the group norms so that statistics and methodology can be compared. One form makes the between- groups comparison where two groups of people are compared for example artists versus non- artists and the second form analyzes within- group differences where for example, from one domain, very creative persons are compared to their less creative colleagues (Batey & Furham, 2006). According to MacKinnon (1965) in Batey & Furham (2006) researching groups like this is necessary because the results are different for artists and non- artists.
Researchers studied several areas of creativity but the current thesis focuses on the dimension of Costa and McCrae’s Big 5 personality model that is mostly related to creativity. As Costa & McCrae (1995) stated, the FFM builds from factor- analytical studies of personality structure that consists of the following labels: Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to experience, Conscientiousness and Agreeableness.
The FFM dimension that has the most empirical support in its relationship with creativity is openness to experience (Feist, 1998; Judge & Bono, 2000; George & Zhou, 2001; Runco, 2007; Furnham & Bachtiar, 2008; Dollinger, Urban & James, 2004; Martinsen, 201; King, Walker & Broyles, 1996).
McCrae (1987) implied that there are three possible reasons for this relation. First, people who are open can be extra thrilled with the open-ended, creative, problem- solving tasks, and they can score higher when being assigned to those tasks, second can have advanced cognitive skills that relate to creative, divergent thinking, namely flexibility and fluidity of thought and third open people have both interests in sensation seeking and several experiences which can be the basis for flexibility and fluency of thinking (Feist, 1998). According to Costa & McCrae (1992); McCrae (1996); McCrae & Costa (1997) individuals who are open to experience can be described as imaginative, sensitive to aesthetics, curious, independent thinkers, agreeable to new ideas, experiences and unconventional perspectives (George & Zhou, 2001).
Furthermore, Helson (1999; in Runco, 2007) described openness as a ‘’cardinal characteristic’’ for creativity with originality as the only other characteristic. Amabile et al.
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(1993) studied a small group of artists with the use of the NEO Five Factor Inventory and the results showed that this group strongly inclined towards openness. And with the use of the Work Preference Inventory she found that openness was related to a preference towards intrinsic motivation (Runco, 2007). The results of King’s et al. (1996) study indicate that openness contributes to creative ability and accomplishments but it is not synonymous to creativity. And in line with McCrae (1987) who stressed that openness in an incentive for creative behavior their study suggests that creativity refers to a more general construct of which personality and openness are parts of.
Wolfradt & Pretz (2001) studied the relationship between creativity and personality using Gough’s Creativity Personality Scale (CPS), a story exercise and list of hobbies rated by the Consensual Assessment Technique and a German version of the NEO- FFI (Amabile, 1982; Batey & Furham, 2006). Their sample included students from different academic orientations. The results showed that there were high scores on Openness and Extraversion foreseen by the CPS, hobby creativity was predicted by Openness and creative story writing had high scores on Openness. The research also showed two interesting outcomes. Firstly that scientist scored lower on the measures of creativity and Openness compared to students studying psychology or arts and design and secondly that there were differences in results in gender where women scored higher on story and hobby creativity in comparison to men (Batey & Furham, 2006).
On the contrary, George and Zhou (2001) took the interactional approach to investigate the relationship between Openness, Conscientiousness and work environment on creative behavior. These researchers found that when individuals were given positive feedback and tasks with imprecise instructions of achieving results creative behavior was highest if these individuals scores high on openness as well. Interestingly they also found that high scores of Contentiousness with the same individuals constrained creative behavior if individuals were carefully followed by their supervisors and if their colleagues were not positive on attempts of creative behavior (Batey & Furham, 2006).
Sousa & Coelho’s (2011) results, who studied creativity among frontline employees, indicate that people ranking high on conservation and low on openness to change are less creative. This finding is consistent with McCrae & Costa (1997) study where it shows that individuals who are less curious and broad- minded and more conventional are less creative.
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2.3 Innovative work behavior and creativity
Innovative work behavior and employee creativity share some differences, similarities and overlapping.
Beginning with the differences, innovative work behavior is explicitly determined to contribute to some advantage and it has an applied component because it aims for innovative output (De Jong, 2007). Furthermore innovative work behavior also has individuals behaviors that engages in the production of novel products, services or work processes under its umbrella, consequently creativity could be seen as a part of innovative work behavior that is mostly important at the beginning of an innovation process by generating ideas an recognizing gaps and problems (West, 2002; De Jong, 2007).
Next, there is a definitional difference regarding creativity and innovation for example in the workplace (Hammond, Neff, Farr, Schwall & Zhao, 2011). According to Unsworth (2001) and Anderson, DeDreu & Nijstad (2004) creativity has a focus on the generation of novel ideas while innovation involves the generation of possible alternatives, selection and implementation of the chosen alternatives. Another difference is in absolute novelty and relative novelty between both concepts. Mostly the definitions of creativity focus on absolute novelty which entails the creation of something new while innovation focuses on relative novelty which entails that even if a product, process or procedure is already in use somewhere else, it may be introduced as a new application in a particular role, task, group or organization (Hammond et al., 2011).
The similarities can be found in the kind of models that are used which suggest how individuals gather and use information for a creative solution.
The current study attempts to address the existing research gap between the creative personality, openness to experience and innovative work behavior at the individual level of the organization.
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2.4 Job autonomy
In general, studies on creativity do not focus on services while services do contribute for approximately 60-70% of employment and the gross domestic production of a developed county (Coelho & Augusto, 2010). This is one of the reasons why not very much is known about job complexity in the service sector. Specifically in the service industry frontline employees have jobs that are somewhat unstructured, non-routined and with many challenges (Coelho & Augusto, 2010).
According to Hackman & Oldham (1980), job autonomy refers to the degree of discretion that employees have over important decisions in their work. Several studies have shown that when autonomy is given to individuals higher levels of motivation, satisfaction and performance in several contexts are predicted (Joo, Jeung & Yoon, 2010). According to Hackman & Oldham (1976 in Joo, Jeung & Joon, 2010) an outcome of having autonomy is high work effectiveness and high internal work motivation because autonomy feeds the psychological state of experiences responsibility for work outcomes.
Job autonomy is a core job resource that is often used to evaluate situational strength in organizational settings and increased job autonomy translates into greater employee control and freedom, while low autonomy implies more manager supervision (Fuller, Hester & Cox, 2010). Hackman & Oldham (1976), after testing the Job Characteristics Model, recommended that five work characteristics make jobs more enjoyable for employees. These are: autonomy (the freedom that one has in carrying out his work), skill variety (the several skills that one has to use to perform his or her job), task identity (the extent to which one is able to complete a whole piece of work), task significance (the extent to which a job impacts others’ lives) and feedback from the job which implies the extent to which one gets information about his performance (Nahrang & Morgeson, 2007). The goal of these work characteristics was increasing positive behavior and attitudinal outcomes and decreasing negative behavior outcome (Nahrang & Morgeson, 2007). The concept of job autonomy is important in understanding how individuals manage their job demands. Job autonomy reduces the negative effect of job demands on well-being and stimulates effort and problem-solving behaviors (Liu et al., 2011). As work also consists of personal resources, high job autonomy allows employees to find personalized ways in which to cope with demands so it reduces disengagement and leads to higher feeling of responsibility and to increased performance (Ohly & Fritz, 2010). In Hackman & Oldham’s model autonomy is
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positioned as a one-dimensional construct but more recently scholars have proposed that autonomy has multiple aspects with unique predictive qualities and can be conceptualized as work scheduling autonomy, work methods autonomy and decision-making autonomy (Nahrang & Morgeson, 2007).
2.4.1 The moderating role of job autonomy
Coelho & Augusto (2010) studied job characteristics and the creativity of frontline service employees and had some interesting findings that relates to the interactionist model. They found that within the creativity literature the consideration of interaction between job characteristics is often hindered where as other empirical studies have shown that when it comes to explaining the creativity of frontline employees because autonomy interacts with variety, identity and feedback. Since autonomy refers to ‘’the degree to which employees are free to determine the schedule of their work and the procedures and equipment they will use to carry out their assignments (Coelho & Augusto, 2010, p..), researchers such as Amabile et al. (1996) and Hackman & Oldham (1980) state that autonomy contributes to intrinsic motivation and since intrinsic motivation, as a part of Amabile’s componential model, leads to creativity it can be said that that autonomy contributes to the feeling of autonomy, responsibility and control for work outcome which makes the job more exiting (Coelho & Augusto, 2010).
Similarly Bowen & Lawler (1992, p. 33 in Coelho & Augusto, 2010) state that autonomy gives employees confidence that they have all the resources to react to customers’ requests so that it ‘’can lead to the sort of spontaneous, creative rule-breaking that can turn a potentially frustrated or angry customer into a satisfied one.’’ Autonomy also has its effects on the domain relevant skills of service employees since factors as intangibility, heterogeneity, inseparability and perishability of services can create problems in the service delivery process (Zeithaml, Bitner & Gremler, 2006). As a result of this frontline employees are expected to be flexible in innovative when performing their jobs. According to Amabile (1998, p.82) autonomy grants employees the freedom to approach customers and their jobs ‘’in ways that make the most of their expertise and their creative- thinking skills.’’
According to Amabile, Conti, Coon, Lazenby & Herron (1996) scholars found that creativity is supported if individuals have high autonomy in their daily work basis and some ownership and
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control over their own work and ideas. Furthermore, creativity studies, for example, of Amabile & Gitomer (1984) showed that when individuals identify themselves by having a choice in how to accomplish their tasks they are given they tend to produce more creative work. Besides autonomy on the job other characteristics as viewing work as important, challenging and urgent, and receiving support from supervisors have been shown to improve employee creativity (Shalley, Gilson & Blum, 2000). In contrary to this view, existence of rigid procedures, use of surveillance, lack of resources and limited control over work procedures have been found to reduce employee creativity (Shalley et al., 2000).
In the study of De Jong & Kemp (2003) autonomy is positively related to innovative behavior of employees. They tested autonomy as a determinant of innovative behavior of co-workers and found that innovative behavior could prosper in an organization when its employees are allowed to do their task without a lot of controlled supervision or excessive rules and procedures.
Ramamoorthy et al. (2005) also found a direct effect of job autonomy on innovative work behavior. They theorized that autonomy gives employees the freedom to engage in trial and error, and since innovation consists of trial and error employees are given the freedom to try new ideas when they face challenges or failures in their work (Ramamoorthy et al., 2005).
The present attempts to address the existing research gap by investigating the direct moderating effect of the creative personality, openness to experience on innovative work behavior.
2.5 Conceptual model
Given the findings in the literature about the concepts of innovative work behavior, the creative personality this study will examine how job autonomy moderated the relationship between the creative personality and innovative work behavior.
The proposed research question and hypothesis of this study are:
‘’To what extent do the creative personality and openess to experience, determine innovative work behavior?
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H1: The Creative Personality has a positive influence on Innovative Work Behavior.
H2: Job Autonomy moderates the relationship between the Creative Personality and Innovative Work behavior?
H3: Openness to Experience has a positive influence on Innovative Work Behavior.
H4: Job Autonomy moderated the relationship between Openness to Experience and Innovative Work Behavior?
The following conceptual model is derived from previous academic literature review and discussion. The nature of the relationship is indicated by a plus (+), which respectively represents a positive relationship.
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3. Research Design
In this chapter the research design, method and procedure of the current study are presented. The design of the research, respondent sample, questionnaire and data collection are described in detail together with the instruments that are used to operationalize the constructs.
3.1 Research method
This study can be classified as an exploratory study. According to Saunders and Lewis (2012) the definition of an exploratory study is ‘’research that aims to seek new insights, ask new questions and to assess topics in a new light (p.110).’’ This research is supported by quantitative data and a representative sample. Quantitative data is data where variables are described by numbers and analyzed by diagrams and statistics (Saunders & Lewis, 2007).
3.2 Data collection method
For this research primary data will be collected through self- administered questionnaires. Primary data is data that is specifically collected for the current study (Saunders & Lewis, 2007). For this research questionnaires were distributed among frontline employees of hotels, café’s, restaurants and bars in the hospitality industry in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The questionnaires were distributed in person using convenience sampling. Saunders and Lewis (2008) describe convenience sampling as a ‘’type of non- probability sampling in which the sample the researcher uses is those who are easy to obtain rather than because of their appropriateness (p.140).’’ This method was used because it was easy to find employees who were willing to fill in the survey.
3.3 The questionnaire
A questionnaire is a method of data collection where each possible respondent is asked to answer the same questions in the same order (Saunder & Lewis, 2012). Moreover, it is a good method for data collection among a large number of respondents. Because the questionnaire consists of
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the same standardized questions, the collected data is often used for descriptive research (Saunder & Lewis, 2012). The questionnaire starts with an introduction to explain to the respondent the purpose of the research and an estimation of how much time it will cost to fill in the questionnaire. Furthermore, participants are assured that the data that will be provided by them will be treated confidentially. The questionnaire consists of 50 multiple-choice questions (see appendix A), control variables and demographic variables. It was decided to use multiple choice questions because these types of questions are easy to register, code and analyzed.
3.4 Sampling, pre-test and implementation of the final questionnaire
The population consists of all frontline employees in the hospitality industry in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The questionnaires were fully in English. A sample size of 100 employees has been chosen for this research. Before proceeding to conduct the final questionnaire, a pre-test was done. A pre-test was done to find out if some of the questions were unclear. The pre-test was done in November 2014 by selecting 5 random employees in the hospitality industry. Based on the findings of the pre-test changes will be made but the outcome of the pretest was overall positive although one respondents thought that the questionnaire was too long. Data collection started in December 2014 and all surveys were handed out by March 2015. Between December 2014 and May 2015 the questionnaires were returned anonymously.
3.5 Scale development and measures
Variables in this research will be measured with items derived from previous research based on their validity, reliability and suitability for the topic. Variables that are likely to influence the creative personality and innovative work behavior such as age, gender, education level and origin will be controlled.
Also, the ‘’Creative Personality Scale’’ (CPS) from Kaufman & Baer (2004) will be used to operationalize the creative personality. Sample items include ‘’I do the things that others find strange’’, which will be on a scale of 1= strongly disagree to 5= strongly agree.
Innovative work behavior will be measures using 9 items from Janssen (2000). These items measure the extent to which an individual employee engages in innovative work behavior.
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Reliability of the scale of the study was 0.94. A sample include ‘’I create new ideas for difficult situation’’ and the items will be on a scale from 1= never to 5= always.
Also, perceived job autonomy will be measures with 9 items based on the work of Ramamoorthy, Flood, Slattery & Sardessai (2005). These 9 items have a coefficient alpha of 0.90 and according to the researchers data coding was done such that a higher score indicated a higher level of job autonomy (Ramamoorthy et al., 2005). The items will be on a scale of 1= never and 5= always and a sample item is ‘’I choose the methods to carry out my work.’’
Likewise, openness will be measures with 12 items from the work of Mc Crae, Arenberg & Costa (1987). The items will be on a scale of 1= strongly disagree and 5= strongly agree. A sample item is ‘’I often try new and foreign foods.
The control variables in this research include respondent’s gender, age, education, origin and period of employment. These variables are measured with single items, namely ‘’What is your gender?’’, ‘’What is your age in years?’’, ‘’What is your current education level?’’, ‘’Is your background hospitality related?’’, ‘’Where are you originally from?’’ and ‘’For how many years have you been working in the hospitality industry?’’.
3.7 Data analysis
The collected data for this research will be will be analyzed with the use of IBM’s SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences), version 21, a statistical computer program. Analysis of the data includes the coefficient alpha or Cronbach’s alpha to measure the internal consistency reliability. These coefficients vary from 0 to 1 and when a value of 0.6 or above is found, one can contend that the internal consistency reliability is suitable. In addition, regression analysis will be used to measure the relationship between the independent, dependent and moderation variables.
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4. Data analysis and results
This chapter describes which tests are used to analyze the data in this research. First an overview of the respondents is given, followed by the outcomes of the reliability analysis. Subsequently the frequencies and intercorrelations are presented. In the second part an explanation of the regression analysis is provided that is used in the research.
4.1 Overview of the participants
The sample of this study consists of 100 participants. From these participants 30% are males and 70% are females. The participants vary in age from 18 to 47 years, with an average age of 27 years. Regarding the education of the participants, 59% has a non- hospitality related education, while 41% of the respondents have a hospitality related education ranging from hospitality and event management to culinary arts. Furthermore 71% of the participants have a university (WO) or applied sciences degree (HBO), 17% has finished high school and 12% has done a vocational education (MBO/MEAO). In addition, the average work experience of all the participants is 6,14 years with 25 years as a maximum and 1 month as a minimum.
The following graphs give an overview of the origin and the age of the participants. Figure 2: Origin of the participants
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Figure 3: The age of the participants
4.2 Data preparation
After the surveys were collected they were imported in IBM’s SPSS version 21. The frequencies of all variables were examined to see whether some questions had missing values. For the questions that had not been answered the code 9 had been given while importing the data and this code indicated that the value of an item was missing. For items which had 10 percent or less missing values, the Hotdeck method was used to replace these missing values. The Hotdeck method is a method where a ‘’donor’’ fills in the empty values of the ‘’donee’’ (Myers, 2011). After the missing values were replaced, the counter indicative items of the survey were recoded in SPSS. Thereafter the new variables were computed which represented the dependent, independent and moderator variable and with these variable from the final dataset statistical analysis could be performed.
But before performing statistical analysis the data was checked on being normally distributed. Normal distribution entails that the scores of the variables are distributed over a symmetrical, bell-shaped curve, which has the greatest frequency of scores in the middle, with smaller frequencies towards the extremes (Pallant, 2007). The normality of the data was assessed
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by analyzing the normal distribution, the skewness and kurtosis of the data. The skewness value provides information about the symmetry of the distribution while kurtosis provides information about the data peaks of the distribution (Pallant, 2007). For a perfectly normal distribution a skewness and kurtosis value of 0 is accepted. Given the results of the data, high values of the skewness and kurtosis of the control variables education level, origin, education related background and work experience were detected and therefore these variables were excluded from the final dataset. Furthermore to check for outliers boxplots were observed. Pallant (2007) suggested that to find out to what extend outliers are likely to be a problem the mean and the 5% trimmed mean must be compared. There were no outliers in the variables of the final dataset and all variables could be defined as normally distributed.
Next, the Cronbach alpha was used to find out if the items of the variables measure the same underlying construct. The coefficient alpha or Cronbach’s alpha measures internal consistency reliability. Values of the Cronbach alpha coefficient range from 0 to 1, but a minimum of 0.7 is recommended to shown a reliable construct between items measuring a variable (Pallant, 2007). Table 1 gives an overview of the Cronbach alpha’s that were calculated for the dependent variable (innovative work behavior), the independent variables (creative personality and openness to experience) and the moderator (job autonomy). Table 1 also shows excellence scale consistency because the results are all above 0.7.
Table 1: Cronbach alpha’s for the constructs
.
Construct
Cronbach Alpha
Innovative Work Behaviour
α = 0,862
Creative Personality
α = 0,752
Job Autonomy
α = 0,767
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In table 2, correlations between variables are presented. We can see that Job Autonomy is related to Innovative Work Behavior (r= .705, p < .01) and to Openness to Experience (r=.276, p < .005). Also Openness to experience is related to Innovative Work Behavior (r=.282, p < .01). Creative Personality is not related to Innovative Work Behavior, Openness to experience or Job Autonomy, therefore the correlations are not significant. According to Pallant (2007), multicollinearity occurs when the independent variables are much correlated, that is when the correlation is higher than .9. In this research no multicollinearity among the variables is observed.
Page | 38 Table 2: Scale means, SD’s & Inter-correlations
*. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). **. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
Mean Std. Dev. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1. Gender 1.9 2.08167 -2. Age 27.47 5.77255 .068 -3. Education 4.59 0.69769 -.211* -.253* -4. Origin 5.22 1.46046 -.129 -.044 .030 -5. Hosp. backgrnd. 1.859 2.07647 .144 -.134 -.065 -.043 -6. Work exp. 6.1351 4.98519 .092 .726** -.131 -.001 -.298** -7. IWB 3.7211 0.79066 .198* .071 .177 -.122 -.127 .229* -8. Job Aut. 3.695 0.51349 .156 .141 .074 -.169 -.192 .705** .705** -9. Creat. Pers. 3.4138 0.43043 -.413** .015 .232* .034 -.189 .118 .118 .167 -10. Openness 3.2718 0.48905 -.215* .011 .244* -.127 -.014 .282** .282** .276** .677**
