Personality and the creativity of frontline service employees: linear and curvilinear effects

Abstract

Additional information: Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-pro t purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. *Corresponding author AcknowledgmentWe are grateful to Marlene Noronha for her assistance with data collection and the comments of participants of the 2014 AMS World Marketing Congress. Personality and the creativity of frontline service employees: Linear and curvilinear effectsPrevious studies have investigated the relationship between the Five Factor model of personality and creativity. As this model has been criticised for providing a limited account of an individual's personality, this study considers additional personality traits that have recently been investigated in the literature as determinants of employee behaviour. Moreover, we also contribute to the existing body of literature by conducting this study in a services setting, for which we predict personality traits will exert differentiated effects on creativity when compared to other settings. Finally, while past research has focused on linear effects, this study examines the existence of nonlinear effects between personality and creativity. The results indicate that personality traits apart from the Five Factor model have an impact on creativity and that the effects of several personality traits on the creativity of frontline service employees differ from those obtained in other settings. Lastly, the findings also show that five of the personality traits have non-linear effects on creativity, and this may be a stimulus for a new stream of research in the human resources literature.Keywords: creativity; personality; service employees; linear and curvilinear effects Personality and the creativity of frontline service employees: Linear and curvilinear effects IntroductionCreativity refers to the development of ideas about goods, services, processes, and practices, which are novel and likely to be useful to an organisation (Shalley, Zhou, & Oldham, 2004).Whereas creativity reflects the development of these ideas at the individual level, innovation concerns the organisational implementation of such ideas (Amabile, 1996). Due to the belief that creativity is paramount not only to greater customer experiences and customer satisfaction (e.g. Coelho, Augusto, & Lages, 2011;Daly, Grove, Dorsch, & Fisk, 2009), but also organisational innovation and ultimately performance (Amabile, Barsade, Mueller, & Straw, 2005;Chen, Shih, & Yeh, 2011;Jiang, Wang, & Zhao, 2012;Liu, 2013), employee creativity has been attracting growing research attention (e.g. Probst, Stewart, Gruys, & Tierney, 2007). Creativity ...

Innovation at the Service Encounter in Knowledge Intensive Business Services: Antecedents and Boundary Conditions

“…Following previous studies (Dong et al, ; Sok and O'Cass, ), managers were used to evaluate FLEs' behaviors. This approach has been found to provide more accurate assessment of knowledge, skills, and abilities of employees compared to self‐reporting (Anderson, Potočnik, and Zhou, ; Coelho et al, ). Survey A was completed by the service business unit manager at each contacted firm.…”

“…Originality and usefulness of an idea are equally important in development of new offerings (Amabile, ; Coelho et al, ). Coelho et al () believe ideas are novel when FLEs recombine existing ideas or develop completely new ones, and usefulness is when the idea creates value for both the firm and the customer. FLEs in KIBS firms frequently deal with customers with diverse and distinctive needs (Coelho et al, 2016; Reiter‐Palmon and Illies, ; Santos‐Vijande et al, ; Sørensen et al, ).…”

“…FLEs in KIBS firms frequently deal with customers with diverse and distinctive needs (Coelho et al, 2016; Reiter‐Palmon and Illies, ; Santos‐Vijande et al, ; Sørensen et al, ). When FLEs are creative, they develop solutions that address customer needs by looking at problems from an alternative perspective, decomposing premises, and thinking “outside the box.” Creative FLEs are able to adapt the service experience to the customer's unique needs (Stock et al, ; Wilder et al, ) by combining past experience and knowledge or develop new ideas that create extra value for customers (Amabile, ; Coelho et al, ).…”

“…Brown et al, ; Stock et al, ). This knowledge and skill development enables them to achieve a better understanding of customer needs (Coelho et al, ) and design and deliver solutions with innovative features, greater specificity, and quality that solves customer problems at the service encounter. Therefore, if FLEs are both creative and customer oriented, they are better able to develop solutions that solve customer problem at the service encounter.…”

“…Central to the quest to capture benefits from service encounters is frontline employees (FLEs) and the strategic position they occupy (Sørensen et al, ; Sundbo, Sundbo, and Henten, ). This strategic position allows FLEs to access information directly from customer firms (hereafter customers), act proactively on the basis of such information, and creatively develop new ideas that can facilitate the tailoring and customizing of services to solve customer problems (Coelho, Lages, and Sousa, ; Santos‐Vijande, López‐Sánchez, and Rudd, ; Stock, ). The accumulation of these new, creative, and customer driven ideas enhances the capacity of the service firm to build a foundation for future service innovation (Sørensen et al, ).…”