Psychological Science ›› 2018, Vol. 41 ›› Issue (1): 125-131.

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The Effect of Workplace Negative Gossip on Scientific and Technical Personnel Creativity

Heng-Bo DU1, 2   

  1. 1.
    2. Shandong Institute of Business and Technology
  • Received:2017-03-02 Revised:2017-06-02 Online:2018-01-20 Published:2018-01-20
  • Contact: Heng-Bo DU

职场负面八卦对科技人员创造力的影响机制研究

杜恒波,朱千林   

  1. 山东工商学院
  • 通讯作者: 杜恒波

Abstract: With the increasingly fierce competition in the workplace, workplace "cold" violence is becoming more and more prominent. It caused serious negative impact on the organizations as well as the members, but its influence to employees and organization is little understood. Although researchers have investigated the factors influencing creativity, little research has linked workplace "cold" violence to scientific and technical personnel creativity. Based on the theory of workplace "cold" violence, this study draw into interpersonal trust as mediator and emotional intelligence as moderator, setting up a moderated mediation model to investigate the relationship between workplace negative gossip and creativity and to examine the mediating role of interpersonal trust as well as the moderating role of emotional intelligence playing in the linkages between workplace negative gossip and interpersonal trust under the situation of Chinese organizations. The research involves 327 valid samples, which from scientific and technical personnels of high and new technology industries of Shandong Peninsula. 385 scientific and technical personnel were investigated on workplace negative gossip, emotional intelligence, creativity and interpersonal trust .The effective response rate was 84.9%, the common method bias was not significant in the research. We used AMOS 21.0 to examine construct reliability and average variance extracted of all measurements, the SPSS 21.0 was used to carry out regression analysis. The hierarchical regression and the bootstrapping method show that:(1)Workplace negative gossip has a direct negative effect on the creativity. (2) Workplace negative gossip can indirectly affect creativity through interpersonal trust, which is a mediator, that is to say, interpersonal trust partially mediated the relationship between workplace negative gossip and creativity. (3) Emotional intelligence moderated the relationship between workplace negative gossip and interpersonal trust, the negative effect was stronger when emotional intelligence was lower. (4) The mediating role of interpersonal trust in the relationship between workplace negative gossip and creativity was moderated by emotional intelligence. In other words, the mediating effect of interpersonal trust is stronger only when the level of emotional intelligence is low rather than high. Above all, based on Chinese cultural background, the influence mechanism of workplace negative gossip on creativity was built, which may has important significance in theory and practice for the future research. This study reveal the relationship between workplace negative gossip and the creativity of scientific and technical personnel and the mediating effect of interpersonal trust as well as the moderating effect of emotional intelligence. Thus, this study fills in the gap of the research on the relationship between workplace negative gossip and creativity, contributes to the understanding of the black box between workplace negative gossip and creativity. In order to improve the employees’ creativity, the organization should pay attention to the workplace negative gossip and take preventive actions to reduce the probability of workplace negative gossip. A good communication platform is necessary for the organization, which can increase trust and cooperation. Then, the employees’ creativity can be stimulated. In addition, the organization should focus on employees’ individual factors, such as emotional intelligence.

Key words: workplace negative gossip, creativity, interpersonal trust, emotional intelligence

摘要: 以职场“冷”暴力理论为切入点,采用层级回归和拔靴法对327份样本数据进行分析验证了职场负面八卦对科技人员创造力的影响机制。结论:职场负面八卦对科技人员的创造力有显著的抑制作用,人际信任在上述关系中起到中介作用;情绪智力在调节职场负面八卦和人际信任之间关系的同时,也调节了人际信任的中介作用,而且当科技人员的情绪智力水平较低时,人际信任的中介作用更为显著。

关键词: 职场负面八卦, 创造力, 人际信任, 情绪智力

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