Creative performance pressure as adouble‐edgedsword for creativity: The role of appraisals and resources

Abstract

Creativity, or the generation of novel and useful ideas or products, is widely viewed as the cornerstone of organizational innovation and success. However, high pressure to be creative may have mixed implications for employee creativity. In this article, we first systematically conceptualize the nature of the concept of creative performance pressure. Next, building on transactional stress theory, we investigate (a) how creative performance pressure influences employee creativity through different appraisals (i.e., challenge and hindrance) and (b) the moderating role of a job and personal resource (i.e., servant leadership and promotion focus) in the stressor appraisal process. In Study 1, we developed a creative performance pressure scale and assessed its psychometric properties across two samples (N = 181 for Sample 1; N = 253 for Sample 2). In addition, using multi-wave, multi-source data (Study 2), we tested our hypotheses in a Chinese sample (N = 206). The results demonstrated that creative performance pressure can have both positive and negative effects on employee creativity through challenge and hindrance appraisals, respectively. Servant leadership moderated the effect of creative performance pressure on challenge and hindrance appraisals, by transmitting the beneficial and detrimental effects of creative performance pressure to creativity, respectively. Similarly, promotion focus moderated the relationship between creative performance pressure and hindrance appraisal. We discuss future research directions and offer several practical implications for both organizational leaders and human resource (HR) practitioners.

The Effects of Routinization on Radical and Incremental Creativity: The Mediating Role of Mental Workloads

“…Unfortunately, the importance of routinization has been overlooked since it has been related to tedious and simple repetitive tasks; thus, it is considered the opposite of job complexity [ 11 , 12 , 13 ]. However, the recent results of warning studies indicate that challenging and complex tasks can hinder creativity by causing stress at work and strains such as cognitive overload [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 58 , 59 ]. These issues have increased the interest in routinization among researchers [ 9 , 11 , 12 , 13 ].…”

Effects of Performance Pressure of Junior Faculty in Universities on Organizational Socialization: The Moderating Role of Organizational Support and Job Autonomy

“…For instance, job autonomy can increase job 38 and life 39 satisfaction thereby reducing employee turnover. 12 For faculty members of colleges and universities who are knowledgeable workers, job autonomy can reduce knowledge hiding behaviors and accelerate knowledge exchange as well as dissemination among organizations.…”

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The double-edged sword effect of performance pressure on public employees: The mediation role of mission valence

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