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Linking job control to employee creativity: The roles of creative self‐efficacy and regulatory focus
Author(s) -
Du Yana,
Li Ping,
Zhang Li
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
asian journal of social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.5
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1467-839X
pISSN - 1367-2223
DOI - 10.1111/ajsp.12219
Subject(s) - creativity , psychology , regulatory focus theory , promotion (chess) , social psychology , supervisor , job control , control (management) , moderated mediation , mediation , social cognitive theory , mechanism (biology) , applied psychology , management , sociology , electrical engineering , politics , political science , law , sense (electronics) , philosophy , epistemology , economics , engineering , social science
Providing job control to employees has been used to improve employee creativity in many organizations. However, the underlying psychological mechanism between job control and employee creativity has not been sufficiently examined. Whether the mechanism is consistent among different individuals rarely has been studied. Drawing on social cognitive theory and regulatory focus theory, we propose a moderated mediation model to investigate the relationship between job control and employee creativity as well as the mechanism and boundary condition of this relationship. We test our model using survey data from 182 supervisor–subordinate dyads collected from China. The results reveal that job control is positively related to employee creativity via creative self‐efficacy. A promotion focus moderates the indirect effect of job control on employee creativity via creative self‐efficacy such that the positive relationship between job control and creative self‐efficacy is stronger among high promotion focus employees, but a prevention focus does not moderate the relationship. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed in this study.