关键词: 创造性人格, 学习目标导向, 绩效证明目标导向, 内在动机, 员工创造力

Abstract: Creativity-the generation of useful and novel ideas-produced by individuals in the workplace has been recognized as a primary source for innovation within the organization, and thus is important for sustainable development and competitive advantages. In terms of this, more attentions are paid for employee creativity. Among them, existing literature indicated that personality is a critical factor that explains the differences of individual creativity and some characteristics do influence creativity. But researchers found that individuals with creative personality may not produce creativity. Thus, to promote employee creativity, we intended to explore the mechanism of how creative personality leads to employee creativity. At first, we reviewed the preliminary literatures and identified relative theories about creative personality and creativity. Secondly，we developed a moderated mediation model to examine the mechanism between creative personality and employee creativity including the mediating effect of goal orientation and the moderating effect of intrinsic motivation based on motivated action and achievement motivation theory．Thirdly，we examined our hypotheses by using a sample of 251 subordinate-supervisor dyads from 13 companies in China. The results showed that: (1) Creativity personality can reliably predict employee creativity (β=.591，p<.01) while employee’ s learning goal orientation and performance approach orientation partially mediated the relationship between the two; (2) Intrinsic motivation not only enhanced the influence of employee’ s learning goal orientation(β=.37，p<.01) and performance approach orientation(β=.31，p<.01) on employee creativity, but also positively moderated the indirect relationships between creative personality and employee creativity via goal orientation. What’s more, this study also indicated that the indirect effect of creative personality on employee creativity through performance approach goal orientation was no longer significant(r=.032, p<0.05) while through learning goal orientation was still significant (r=.032, p<0.05) under low level of intrinsic creativity. This study not only extended existing literatures about personality and employee creativity by exploring the mechanism how creative personality lead to creativity, but also shed a light on management practices to improve employee creativity. Firstly, from the selection standpoint, companies should pay attention to personality when recruiting employees since individuals with creative personality may produce creativity. And specific job description helps organizations recruit more qualified applicants who are interested in the job. Secondly, organizations should focus on the goal orientation development of employees with creative personality. On the one hand, it’s important to develop a climate that felicitate learning and provide knowledge accesses through training for creative employees to enhance their learning goal orientation; on the other hand, organizations should advocate the importance of creativity and reward employees who obtain creative achievements. In this way, creative employees with performance approve orientation will focus on creative work in order to approve their ability. At last but not least, managers should be fully aware of the importance of intrinsic motivation. Only with intrinsic motivation and then focus on their tasks in the workplace can employees with creative personality show high level creativity. Thus, management practices such as optimizing job design and empowering leadership behaviors could be taken to promote their intrinsic motivation. The results showed that: (1) Creativity personality can reliably predict employee creativity in the work place(β=.591，p<.01) while employee’ s learning goal orientation and performance approach orientation partially mediated the relationship between the two; (2) Intrinsic motivation not only enhanced the influence of employee’ s learning goal orientation(β=.37，p<.01) and performance approach orientation(β=.31，p<.01) on creativity in the workplace, but also positively moderated the indirect relationships between creative personality and creativity in the workplace via goal orientation. What’s more, this study also indicated that the indirect effect of creative personality on creativity in the workplace through performance approach goal orientation was no longer significant(r=.032, p<0.05) while through learning goal orientation was still significant (r=.032, p<0.05) under low level of intrinsic creativity. This study not only extended existing literatures about personality and creativity in the workplace by exploring the mechanism how creative personality lead to creativity, but also shed a light on management practices to improve creativity in the workplace. Firstly, companies should pay attention to personality when recruiting employees since individuals with creative personality may produce creativity in the workplace. Secondly, organizations should focus on the goal orientation development of employees with creative personality. On the one hand, it’s important to build learning organization and provide knowledge accesses for creative employees to enhance their learning goal orientation; on the other hand, organizations should advocate the importance of creativity and reward employees who obtain creative achievements. In this way, creative employees with performance approve orientation will focus on creative work in order to approve their ability. At last but not least, managers should be fully aware of the importance of intrinsic motivation. Only with intrinsic motivation and then focus on their tasks in the workplace can employees with creative personality show high level creativity. Thus, management practices such as optimizing job design and meeting their needs could be taken to promote their intrinsic motivation.

Key words: creative personality, learning goal orientation, performance approach orientation, intrinsic motivation, employee creativity