Employee creativity has traditionally been conceptualized as a unitary concept (cf. Zhou & Shalley, 2003). To better reflect the complexity of the phenomena, in this dissertation I followed Madjar and Gilson (2008) to differentiate incremental creativity from radical creativity. Such delineation may help align the employee creativity concepts with the organizational innovation (i.e., incremental innovation and radical innovation) and the organizational learning concepts (i.e., exploitation and exploration). I provided a theoretical rationale for the two-dimensional conceptualization of employee creativity, and validation evidence on the creativity measures developed by Madjar and Gilson (2008)....[ Read more ]

Employee creativity has traditionally been conceptualized as a unitary concept (cf. Zhou & Shalley, 2003). To better reflect the complexity of the phenomena, in this dissertation I followed Madjar and Gilson (2008) to differentiate incremental creativity from radical creativity. Such delineation may help align the employee creativity concepts with the organizational innovation (i.e., incremental innovation and radical innovation) and the organizational learning concepts (i.e., exploitation and exploration). I provided a theoretical rationale for the two-dimensional conceptualization of employee creativity, and validation evidence on the creativity measures developed by Madjar and Gilson (2008).

To examine the nomological network of incremental creativity and radical creativity, I drew on a learning perspective to examine goal orientation as distal antecedent and employee learning as proximate antecedent to incremental creativity and radical creativity. Specifically, I attempted to develop and validate the concepts of exploitative learning and explorative learning. I conceptualized the direct effects of goal orientation on employee learning and employee creativity, and the effects of employee learning on employee creativity. Overall, I presented a mediation model that conceptualized employee learning as the mechanism linking goal orientation and incremental/radical creativity. Next, I proposed an idea implementation perspective and extended the interactionist approach to examine the relationship between employee creativity and job performance. I presented a moderation model and proposed that employee creativity would have stronger effect on employee job performance when there is a match between the type of creativity and the resources for implementing the novel ideas. Job complexity and supervisor support for idea implementation were examined as idea implementation resources in this dissertation. Three pilot studies were conducted to develop and validate the employee learning, and to validate the creativity measures proposed by Madjar and Gilson (2008). The dissertation main study, Study 4, found mixed supports for the proposed mediation and moderation models.

Keywords: goal orientation, exploitative learning, explorative learning, incremental creativity, radical creativity, job complexity, supervisor support for idea implementation, job performance