Building creative self-efficacy via learning goal orientation,creativity job requirement,and team learning behavior: The key to employee creativity

Abstract

This study examined the antecedents of an individual’s creative self-efficacy (CSE) using a sample of 41 semiconductor design teams. Drawing from social cognitive theory, we expected that a dynamic interaction of an individual’s learning goal orientation, creativity as a job requirement, and team learning behavior would build CSE. In addition, employing the combinational perspective, we conjectured that consistency among the three antecedents would enhance CSE, and subsequently, creative performance. As predicted, results showed that effects of learning goal orientation and job requirement on CSE were subject to other members’ learning behavior. A significant three-way interaction supported the position that individual–contextual congruence facilitates the development of CSE, while incongruence of these factors impedes such development. Implications for theory and human resource practices are discussed in light of these findings.

JEL Classification: M54, O32

Keywords

Creative self-efficacy creativity as a job requirement employee creativity learning goal orientation team learning behavior

1. Introduction

Creativity, the generation of new and useful ideas, is considered to be critical to individual performance, as well as organizational innovation or effectiveness (Gong et al., 2009; Shalley et al., 2004; Zhou and Su, 2010). Managers and scholars have worked to identify the ingredients that promote greater individual creativity. Creative self-efficacy, the perception that one has the capability to produce creative outcomes (Tierney and Farmer, 2004) is one of these ingredients. This perception has been linked to creative performance across diverse settings and different levels of analysis (Tierney and Farmer, 2011). However, people’s efficacy beliefs differ from one culture to another. Some cross-cultural studies found that the Chinese, who are considered as typically collectivistic, reported significant lower efficacy than those from individualistic countries (Schwarzer and Born, 1997).

Creative self-efficacy has also served as a critical mediating mechanism linking a variety of individual and contextual factors to employees’ creative performance (e.g. Gong et al., 2009; Tierney and Farmer, 2011). With the recognition that in organizations, individuals are embedded in a team context, recent attention has been paid to the importance of individual–contextual interactions that may influence creativity (George and Zhou, 2007; Hirst et al., 2009, 2011). Despite the central role of creative self-efficacy as the determinants of individuals’ creative endeavors, these studies have not examined the individual–contextual interactions relevant to creative self-efficacy. Specifically, although Hirst et al. (2009, 2011) have examined cross-level effects in individual creativity, they did not address whether the cross-level effects of individual differences (i.e. learning goal orientation) and the team context (i.e. team learning behavior) plays a role in promoting creative self-efficacy. This is a gap to be filled because the social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986) is based on the idea that individuals’ cognition is co-determined by the interplay between personal factors and environmental influences. However, many of the previous studies have overlooked this theoretical foundation and failed to examine the determinants of creative self-efficacy. Using an interactionist view, we propose that since people oriented toward learning are motivated to develop their competencies, they are likely to seek opportunities for experimentation and learning. Therefore, learning goal-oriented individuals may develop creative self-efficacy in a learning team context that promotes collective problem solving and reflection (Edmondson, 1999).

Our above proposed interaction effect is consistent with Lee et al.’s (2004) combinational perspective in examining contextual influences on creativity. Rather than examining incremental or additive models of behavior, they suggest considering contributing factors that are consistent with one another for generating new and useful ideas. The combinational approach suggests the need to look at how contextual conditions interact (i.e. their consistency or inconsistency), while the componential perspective (Amabile and Mueller, 2008) considers independent effects with the implicit or explicit assumption that such effects are additive (and not interactive). According to the combinational approach, we will also investigate the influences of consistency between other contextual conditions to creative endeavors, such as the creativity as a job requirement, that is, an individual’s perceptions that one is expected or required to generate work-related ideas (Unsworth et al., 2005: 542) and team learning behavior.

The purpose of this study then is to develop and test the cross-level contextual influences and individual differences on creative self-efficacy in a team context using the combinational perspective (Lee et al., 2004). Our study contributes to the literature on creative self-efficacy in a number of ways. First, based on the theoretical foundation of social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986)—the interplay between personal factors and environmental influences co-determines an individual’s cognition—our approach will provide a comprehensive picture of what factors contribute toward creative self-efficacy by incorporating both types of influences in our model. In addition, the notion of consistency is critical. Scholars and practitioners may focus on one or two factors and to assess their impacts on individual’s creative self-efficacy. However, this focused approach might overlook how the effect of each factor be consistent with one another to affect individual’s efficacy beliefs. Learning goal orientation and creativity job requirement are the two important self-regulating mechanisms working through different cognitive perspectives to influence the efficacy levels of individuals. Furthermore, team learning behavior, the ongoing process of asking questions, feedback seeking, reflecting on results, creation, and knowledge sharing in teams (Argote, 1999; Edmondson, 1999) do not have a direct effect on team efficacy (Edmondson, 1999). Rather, it may need cross-fertilization from the individual’s own learning orientation and contextual cues to be creative. In doing so, we contribute to the social cognition theory by examining the interplays of personal and environmental influences on one’s creative self-efficacy. Also, we respond to the call for more multilevel studies to better understand the development of an individual’s creative self-efficacy (Tang et al., 2017) as well as the call for more research to identify team factors and examine how creative self-efficacy is conducive to or inhibited by peer pressure (Tierney and Farmer, 2011; Zhou and Shalley, 2008).

Second, we extend previous work of the combinational perspective on the consistency or inconsistency of organizational attributes to characteristics of teams and hence advance our knowledge on how creative self-efficacy can be enhanced in team contexts. According to Lee et al. (2004), inconsistency in these attributes might even be detrimental, and they found that under some conditions, inconsistency resulted in less experimentation, a behavior essential for innovation. Would employees’ creative self-efficacy, a precursor of creativity or innovation, be harmed by a lack of consistency? Would consistency synergistically enhance employees’ creative self-efficacy? The findings of this study can advance our understanding of creative self-efficacy formulation and how team learning behavior, job requirement, and individual attribute interactively play a role in efficacy development.

Third, a few studies found preliminary evidence supporting the mediating role of creative self-efficacy between dispositional factors and creative performance (e.g. Gong et al., 2009; Tierney and Farmer, 2011). The limited number of positive findings may be due to the focused approach previous works used. Self-efficacy is, theoretically, co-determined by both individual factors and contextual conditions. Hence, this study aims to validate the critical role of congruence among different factors on formulation of efficacy and the vital role of creative self-efficacy as the intermediate psychological process to employee creativity.

Finally, given the essential role of creative self-efficacy in creativity, our proposed model suggests practical interventions to foster employees’ creative self-efficacy.

2. Literature review and hypothesis development

2.1. Social cognitive theory

Social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1977, 1986) postulates that human behavior is neither merely driven by inner forces nor by external stimuli. Instead, behaviors or efficacy beliefs are formed in a social context with a dynamic and reciprocal interaction of behaviors, the cognitive and personal factors, and environmental events (Bandura, 1988, 1997; Beghetto and Karwowski, 2017). In this theory, Bandura (1977, 1988) not only proposed that self-efficacy comes from several different sources such as mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, and social persuasion, he also emphasized that these sources or determinants operate interactively to influence efficacy beliefs. Therefore, social cognitive theory serves as the over-arching theory which guides the selection of predicators of efficacy beliefs in this study and more importantly, it lays the theoretical foundation of the interactionist model of creative self-efficacy.

2.2. Learning goal orientation and creative self-efficacy

Learning goal orientation, a stable trait-like construct is commonly defined as the desire to learn and develop a new competence, to improve and to do one’s best, and to achieve a higher level of ability and talent (Dweck, 1986). This definition postulates that people with a learning goal orientation are less likely to attribute unfavorable outcomes to their lack of ability. Instead, they tend to interpret a past experience, even if it is a failure, as something that can be learnt from (Dweck, 1989, 1999). A person’s past performance is one of the sources which influences efficacy development (Bandura, 1977). Therefore, learning goal-oriented individuals who interpret positively of their past experiences are expected to have higher self-efficacy and this positive relationship has been supported by several studies (e.g. Phillips and Gully, 1997; Steele-Johnson et al., 2000). As a key self-regulatory mechanism governing motivation and a precursor to performance attainment, higher self-efficacy would then lead to better performance (Bandura, 1977; Wood and Bandura, 1989).

Creative self-efficacy, the belief that one has the ability to produce creative outcomes, is a creativity-specific motivational state build from social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1977; Wood and Bandura, 1989). It determines employees’ level of motivation—how much effort they will allocate to a task which requires elements of novelty and how long they will sustain their effort under trying conditions. It is deemed to be a strong and proximal predictor of creative performance (Tierney and Farmer, 2002, 2004, 2011). Despite the demonstrated importance of creative self-efficacy, little research has been conducted to investigate what promotes individuals’ self-efficacy in the domain of creativity. The recent work of Tierney and Farmer (2011) provides evidence to support the state-like nature of this motivational construct. They found that an employee’s sense of creative efficacy is malleable and can fluctuate with changes in individuals’ dispositions, job requirement, and other socially embedded factors.

Learning goal orientation has been theorized and examined as a dispositional antecedent to creativity-related outcomes (Gong et al., 2009; Janssen and Van Yperen, 2004). Creativity generation demands knowledge-based abilities and skills in tackling new things or ideas, and therefore, learning and developing new knowledge and skills are essential to creativity (Amabile, 1983, 1996). Thus, an individual’s learning goal orientation should be related to actions intended to improve an individual’s competencies (Gong et al., 2009). Learning goal-oriented people make every effort not only to achieve current tasks but also to develop the capabilities to handle future tasks (Button et al., 1996; Farr et al., 1993; Martocchio, 1994). Those who have successfully accomplished the current creativity requiring tasks have also learned the skills and knowledge required and that will help prepare them psychologically for bigger challenges in the future. Outcomes of effective learning provide feedback to individuals who will then reappraise their capabilities and competencies leading to a positive spiral of change in their creative self-efficacy.

2.3. Creativity as a job requirement and creative self-efficacy

Unsworth et al. (2005) described creativity as a job requirement as individuals’ perceived expectations from the job to generate creative work-related ideas. Such job requirement serves as creativity prompt (George, 2007) and a means of communicating to employees that creativity is an expected job outcome (Shalley and Zhou, 2008; Yuan and Woodman, 2010). When being creative is a job requirement, people are likely to believe that generating, adopting, and implementing creative ideas will benefit their work (Yuan and Woodman, 2010). Such a job requirement can reduce ambiguity and provide task cues to generate creative responses, and the focus on creativity will help develop creative self-efficacy (Gist and Mitchell, 1992; Tierney and Farmer, 2011; Zhou et al., 2012).

Specifically, when internalized a requirement for creativity becomes a standard that people use in evaluating their self-concept, they will be pushed to focus on the creative aspects of their tasks. This happens by applying one’s attention to processing diverse information and acquiring new skills. Also, by constant self-monitoring, people make a comparison between the gap in their current performance levels and their internalized standard of creativity. If a performance discrepancy is detected, they will deploy effort to bridge the gap, and if necessary, allocate additional resources to eliminate the discrepancy. These self-monitoring activities will provide useful feedback to their self-concept (DeShon et al., 1996). In sum, people’s creative self-efficacy should be enhanced when they feel that they have performed according to their internalized standard of creativity.

While learning goal orientation has been recently researched in the area of employee creativity (e.g. Hirst et al., 2009; To et al., 2012), creativity as a job requirement, by comparison, is often neglected though its motivational effect on creativity is deemed by some as the most direct and immediate contributors to employee creativity (Unsworth et al., 2005). Indeed, a converging pattern of research findings has emerged, showing that creativity as a job requirement is related to many positive work outcomes. For example, requirements for creativity or expectations for employees’ creative output were found to be positively associated with psychological empowerment (Shalley et al., 2000), innovative behavior (Scott and Bruce, 1994), and change (Morrison and Phelps, 1999). Although little has been done to examine effects of job requirement for creativity on employees’ creative self-efficacy, we believe that creative job requirement should have a positive impact on employees’ creative self-efficacy.

2.4. Team learning behavior and creative self-efficacy

As teams are widely used to carry out both complex and creative jobs in organizations, individuals’ accomplishments are influenced not only by characteristics of individuals and tasks but also by the social environment of their team. Edmondson (1999) proposed team learning behavior as an ongoing process through which team members discuss and solve problems as well as collectively engage in reflective decision-making, asking questions, seeking feedback, and discussing errors or unexpected outcomes of actions. This process was conceptualized as actual learning behaviors among team members. She did not explicitly referred team learning behavior to concepts such as “team climate” or “shared learning orientation.” Nevertheless, Hirst et al. (2009) pointed out that such a collective learning process should provide a social environment which facilitates social persuasion and vicarious learning. When members observe their peers engaging in learning activities and recognize that experimentation and exploration behaviors within their team are valued and supported, they will also try to do something new and risky (Rosenthal and Zimmerman, 1978). Therefore, to Hirst and his colleagues, team learning behavior creates a context facilitating knowledge sharing, role modeling, and social persuasion. According to the social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1977, 1986), such social environment can strengthen the efficacy beliefs; hence, we can expect that team learning behavior is conducive to the development of creative self-efficacy.

2.5. Creative self-efficacy in a congruent context

Social cognitive theory explains that individuals’ efficacy belief is formed by the dynamic interplay between the internal and external factors. While this premise guides us to identify each antecedent in this study and explains the interaction among them is the key to efficacy, how the consistency or inconsistency among these antecedents may affect efficacy has not been addressed by this theory. According to Lee et al.’s (2004) combinational perspective, contextual factors will have a greater impact on creativity when they are consistent with one another. The combinational perspective goes beyond a conventional interactional approach focusing only on incremental contributions of attributes and examines how consistency of combined social and individual factors would affect creative endeavors. This perspective suggests that when organizational conditions are consistent, such that “… when normative values, instrumental rewards, and evaluative pressure all encourage experimentation, there will be more experimentation than when the organizational conditions are inconsistent” (p. 314). Although prior research has called for a combinational perspective to develop a dynamic understanding about creativity (e.g. George, 2007; Hennessey and Amabile, 2010; Chang et al., 2014), few studies have adopted the combinational perspective in creativity research, and no research to date has examined how the consistency of combined personal and social effects would impact creative self-efficacy. Drawing on both social cognitive theory and combinational perspective, personal factors and environmental influences should be aligned in the same direction to support development of creative self-efficacy.

Bandura (1986) mentioned that an individual’s self-efficacy is determined by social factors such as role modeling (i.e. normative values) and verbal persuasion (i.e. evaluative pressure), features which prevail in a team passionate about its learning behavior. For those who have the desire to learn and develop new competencies, working in a team that all members engaging in experimentation and feedback seeking will facilitate learning goal-oriented members’ motivation to learn, acquire new knowledge, and further develop their competence. As a result, when team learning behavior is high, those with a learning goal orientation will develop greater creative self-efficacy.

In addition to team influences, Shalley et al. (2009) suggested that to better understand how to encourage individuals engaging in creative efforts, “it is important to examine the nature of a job in concert with the natures of the individual who is performing the work and the context within which the work is performed” (p. 493). Creativity as a job requirement provides the cues, expectations, and prompts essential to the building up of team members’ creative efficacy beliefs. This prompt offers an added but different source of social information to guide the employee’s creative performance. The effects of creative prompts provided by the job requirement for creativity, when consistent with team learning behavior, will be a resource for creative learning because they both convey expectations regarding a process of learning and the generation of creative ideas. Such consistency encourages further social learning so that when team members observe their peers engaging in learning activities, and when learning is valued and supported by their peers, together with the priority and cues provided by the requirement for creativity, the learning goal-oriented employees’ sense of creative efficacy will increase.

On the contrary, lack of consistency—when some strengthen the sense of capability in creativity and others discourage that—can produce confusion and uncertainty. In this situation, one factor will render the other ineffective. For instance, a learning goal-orientated employee who works in a team that discourages experimentation and collective learning activities but his or her job requires high creative output may feel confused and unsafe because he or she receives inconsistent messages from the team and job requirement. Also, Lee et al. (2004) argued that confusion or suspicion created by inconsistency may lead to risk aversion, behavioral inhibition, suppression of activity, avoidance, lack of openness, and an inability to try novel behaviors. Inconsistency among the three sources we identified thereby will result in lower perceptions of one’s capability to produce creative outcomes.

Lee et al.’s (2004) combinational perspective also predicted that individuals will involve in more creative behaviors when organizational conditions consistently discourage experimentation than the inconsistency condition. They assumed that in consistently discouraging conditions, employees are clear about the rules and constraints and this may enhance their psychological safety in contrast with uncertainty created by inconsistent conditions. However, mixed results of inconsistency on experimentation were found in their study that under high evaluation pressure, individuals were less likely to experiment when the other two organizational conditions are inconsistent, whereas under low evaluation pressure, individuals experiment more in the inconsistency situation. Therefore, the detrimental effect of inconsistency might not be as serious as what Lee and her colleagues have anticipated. Instead of arguing that the inconsistency is the worst situation for creativity-related outcomes, we expect that if all influences consistently discourage learning, creation, and knowledge sharing, and feedback seeking, individuals are least likely to develop efficacy in creativity.

Based on the above discussions, we predict that

H1. There will be a three-way interaction between learning goal orientation, creativity as a job requirement, and team’s learning behavior on creative self-efficacy. Specifically, on one hand, the highest level of creative self-efficacy is expected when individuals are learning goal-oriented, perceive creativity is required by their jobs, and work in a team context favorable toward learning. On the other hand, the lowest level of creative self-efficacy is expected when individuals are not learning goal-oriented, creativity is not expected by their jobs, and work in a team context unfavorable toward learning.

2.6. The mediating role of creative self-efficacy

To be successful in creative performance, an individual has to possess the necessary capabilities for the task and operate in a setting where contextual factors are consistent with one another. A favorable combination of these elements would lead to a durable belief in oneself as being able to exercise control over events and to achieve the desired goals. This efficacy belief in one’s creativity is a prime and proximal contributing factor to a person’s creative performance (Tierney and Farmer, 2002).

So far, there have been a few empirical studies on self-efficacy as regard to creativity. These past investigations mainly focused on training methods in self-efficacy and innovative problem solving (Gist, 1989), antecedents to creative self-efficacy and creative performance (Tierney and Farmer, 2002, 2004), and creative self-efficacy as a mediator of individual learning goal orientation and leadership with employee creativity (Gong et al., 2009; Mittal and Dhar, 2015). Therefore, we propose that controlling for the main effects of learning goal orientation, creativity as a job requirement, team learning behavior, and their three-way interaction, creative self-efficacy should have a positive impact on employee creativity. Hence, we hypothesize the following (Figure 1):

H2. Creative self-efficacy mediates the relationship between three-way interaction of individual and team characteristics and employee creativity.

3. Method

3.1. Research setting and procedures

Data were collected from a Hong Kong–listed semiconductor company. The company’s main business is the development of new IC products. The growth and the survival of the company depend on how many innovative new IC products can be successfully introduced and subsequently sold in the market. As a result, creativity in new product development is considered to be a core value and a competitive advantage of the company.

Surveys were sent to 46 teams of the company, consisting of 200 team members and 46 supervisors. All the new IC product development–related engineers were invited to participate in this survey. One author visited the company and collected the questionnaires on-site. All the respondents participated in this study are voluntary. Their answers and personal information were kept confidential. We successfully matched 41 supervisors’ questionnaires with 179 members, which resulted in a final sample of 41 teams. Among the 179 team members, 78.1% were male and 88.2% of the team members held university degrees or post-graduate degrees. The mean tenure of the members in the company and in the team was 45.8 and 36.4 months, respectively. As for the supervisors, 93.3% of them were male and 90.9% of them held bachelor degrees or above. They reported an average organizational tenure and team tenure of 72.9 and 56.1 months, respectively.

Two sets of questionnaires were prepared. An “Employee Questionnaire” was designed for team members to provide information such as their learning goal orientation. A “Supervisor Questionnaire” was designed for their immediate supervisors to assess the creative performance of each team member. Questionnaires were administered separately to the employees and their supervisors at various times inside the company. Each completed questionnaire was marked with a coded identification number in order to match each team member’s questionnaire and the supervisor’s ratings.

3.2. Measures

All survey items were administered in English and were formatted in a Likert scale from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (7).

3.2.1. Learning goal orientation

The individual difference in learning goal orientation was measured by a 9-item scale adapted from Van Yperen and Janssen’s (2002) study. A sample item is “I feel most successful in my job when I learn something that motivates me to continue.” Cronbach’s alpha was .87 and the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) indicated a reasonable fit of a one-factor model (χ²(27) = 57.97, comparative fit index (CFI) = .95, incremental fit index (IFI) = .95, Tucker-Lewis index (TLI) = .92, root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) = .08).

3.2.2. Creativity as a job requirement

Yuan and Woodman’s (2010) 5-item scale was used to measure the creativity job requirement on employees. A sample item is “My job requires me to try out new approaches to problems.” Cronbach’s alpha was .72 and the CFA indicated a reasonable fit of a one-factor model (χ²(5) = 11.71, CFI = .97, IFI = .97, TLI = .93, RMSEA = .08).

3.2.3. Creative self-efficacy

Creative self-efficacy was measured by Tierney and Farmer’s (2002) 3-item scale. An example is “I have confidence in my ability to solve problems creatively.” Cronbach’s alpha of the measure was .73. CFA indicated a satisfactory fit (χ²(2) = 2.44, CFI = .99, IFI = .99, TLI = .99, RMSEA = .02).

3.2.4. Team learning behavior

A 5-item measure derived from Edmondson’s (1999) scale was used to assess team learning behavior. A sample item is “This team frequently seeks new information that leads us to make important changes.” Cronbach’s alpha was .71. CFA indicated a reasonable fit (χ²(5) = 6.85, CFI = .98, IFI = .98, TLI = .97, RMSEA = .04). ICC1 was .21 and ICC2 was .52. Furthermore, r_wg was calculated across teams of .94, which indicated adequate within-team agreement (James et al., 1993).

3.2.5. Employee creativity

Team members’ creativity was assessed by their functional team supervisors using a 9-item scale adopted from Tierney et al.’s (1999) study. A sample item is “This employee tried out new ideas and approaches to problems.” Cronbach’s alpha for this measure was .90 and the one-factor model was confirmed by CFA (χ²(9) = 15.49, CFI = .99, IFI = .99, TLI = .98, RMSEA = .06).

3.2.6. Control variable

Team size has been found to relate to employee creativity in previous studies (e.g. Tierney and Farmer, 2002). Thus, we controlled for the effect of team size which ranges from 3 to 7 in our sample.

3.3. Discriminant validity and common method variance

A five-factor model where items were loaded on learning goal orientation, creativity as a job requirement, creative self-efficacy, employee creativity as well as team learning behavior, respectively, fits the data well (χ²(220) = 331.61, CFI = .93, TLI = .91, RMSEA = .04). We then tested a one-factor model which forced all items to a latent factor and the results showed that the one-factor model fits the data poorly (χ²(230) = 1004.51, CFI = .49, TLI = .49, RMSEA = .11), with a chi-square change (Δχ²(10) = 672.90, p < .001). In addition, we tested the following models and compared the fit indices with the five-factor model. (1) A four-factor model placed items of team learning behavior and learning goal orientation on one factor and other items on their theorized factors fit the data less than the five-factor model (χ²(224) = 403.18, CFI = .88, TLI = .86, RMSEA = .05), with a significant chi-square change (Δχ²(4) = 61.57, p < .001). (2) A four-factor model where items of team learning behavior and creativity as a job requirement and the remaining items were loaded on their theorized factors fit the data less than the five-factor model (χ²(224) = 384.82, CFI = .89, TLI = .87, RMSEA = .05), with a significant chi-square change (Δχ²(4) = 53.21, p < .001). (3) A three-factor model forced items of learning goal orientation, creativity as a job requirement, and team learning behavior on one factor and the remaining items on their theorized factors fit the data less than the five-factor model (χ²(227) = 463.97, CFI = .85, TLI = .81, RMSEA = .06), with a significant chi-square change (Δχ²(7) = 132.36, p < .001). (4) A four-factor model placed items of creative self-efficacy and employee creativity on one factor and the others on their theorized factors fit the data less than the five-factor model (χ²(224) = 511.22, CFI = .81, TLI = .77, RMSEA = .07), with a significant chi-square change (Δχ²(4) = 179.61, p < .001). These results suggested some evidence of discriminant validity.

Furthermore, to examine the extent to which common method variance was a concern, following the suggestion by Podsakoff et al. (2003), we tested a model that had indicators loaded on a latent method factor and their theorized factors. The results (χ²(201) = 299.13, CFI = .93, TLI = .91, RMSEA = .05) indicated that common method variance did not pose a serious threat to the validity of our results and conclusions.

4. Results

Table 1 presents the means, standard deviations, correlations, and reliabilities of the measures. We used hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) to test our cross-level hypotheses. Following Preacher et al.’s (2006) recommendations, we group-mean centered all individual-level (level 1) variables. Team-level (level 2) variables were grand-mean centered. Table 2 summarizes HLM results. First, the null models were tested where no predictors were included. The analyses revealed 17% of the variance in creative self-efficacy and 45% in creativity that resided between teams. A significant chi-square for the error variance that is estimated at the group level indicated that there is systematic variance in the intercept across teams (τ₀₀) for creative self-efficacy (τ₀₀ = .16, p < .01) and employee creativity (τ₀₀ = .31, p < .01).

Table 1.

Means, standard deviations (SD), correlations, and reliability of the measures.

Variables	Mean	SD	1	2	3	4	5	6
1. Team size	4.39	1.05	–
2. Learning goal orientation	5.19	0.71	−.01	(.89)
3. Creativity as a job requirement	5.25	0.80	.11	.42**	(.72)
4. Creative self-efficacy	5.25	0.77	−.06	.44**	.40**	(.73)
5. Team learning behavior	4.83	0.53	.06	.18**	.22**	.15*	(.71)
6. Employee creativity	4.78	0.82	.07	.09	.24**	.21**	.11	(.90)

N = 179 (level 1, individuals); N = 41 (level 2, teams). Cronbach’s alpha values are given in parentheses.

p < .05; **p < .01.

Table 2.

Hierarchical regression results.

	Creative self-efficacy		Employee creativity
	Model 1	Model 2	Employee creativity
Variables
Null model
Intercept	5.25 (.06)***	5.25 (.06)***	4.77 (.10)***
Level 1
Intercept	5.26 (.06)***	5.26 (.06)***	4.77 (.09)***
Creativity as a job requirement (CJR)	.28 (.08)**	.28 (.08)**	.20 (.05)**
Learning goal orientation (LGO)	.31 (.06)***	.26 (.06)***	−.12 (.08)
Level 2
Team size	−.06 (.05)	−.06 (.05)	.02 (.07)
Team learning behavior (TLB)	.22 (.10)*	.22 (.11)	.13 (.17)
Two-way interaction
LGO × TLB		−.02 (.10)	.34 (.08)***
CJR × TLB		.20 (.10)*	−.07 (.13)
CJR × LGO		.04 (.08)	−.01 (.06)
Three-way interaction
LGO × CJR × TLB		.44 (.19)*	.27 (.16)
Mediation
Creative self-efficacy			.15 (.06)*

N = 179 (level 1, individuals); N = 41 (level 2, teams). Standard errors are given in parentheses.

p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.

Several multilevel analyses were conducted to test the proposed hypotheses. Model 1 shows the main effects of learning goal orientation, creativity as a job requirement and team learning behavior on individual’s creative self-efficacy. All of them were positively related to creative self-efficacy (learning goal orientation: γ = .31, p < .001; creativity as a job requirement: γ = .28, p < .01; team learning behavior: γ = .22, p < .05).

We then tested the three-way interaction as predicted by Hypothesis 1. The results indicated that the three-way interaction on creative self-efficacy was significant (γ = .44, p < .05). We plotted the high and low levels of each variable (1 standard deviation above and below the mean). Figure 2 depicts the pattern of moderated results related to Hypothesis 1. We further examined the simple slopes according to Preacher et al.’s (2006) approach. Under the most consistent condition in which both creativity as a job requirement and team learning behavior are high, learning goal orientation is positively related to creative self-efficacy (β = .48, p < .01). In addition, the highest level of reported creative self-efficacy is observed when all three conditions are consistently high. In an unfavorable team learning context together with low requirement for creativity, learning goal orientation is also positively associated with creative self-efficacy (β = .42, p < .01). The reported creative self-efficacy, however, is generally lower than under the condition of high team learning behavior and creative as a job requirement. Besides, the lowest level of reported creative self-efficacy is observed when all three conditions are low. Under the circumstances of an unfavorable team context for learning, but employees’ job requires them to be creative, learning goal orientation is not related to creative self-efficacy (β = .13, n.s.). Similarly, when employees’ job does not require creativity, but the team context is in favor of learning behavior, the relationship between learning goal orientation and efficacy belief is not significant (β = .03, n.s.). Hypothesis 1, accordingly, was supported.

To test Hypothesis 2, which predicts that creative self-efficacy mediates the three-way interaction and creativity relationship, we used the method suggested by Tofighi and MacKinnon (2011). RMediation computes confidence intervals for the mediated effect. Table 2 shows that after we controlled for all individual-level, team-level, and interactional effects in models 1 and 2, creative self-efficacy was significantly related to employee creativity (γ = .15, p < .05). In addition, the relationship between the three-way interaction and creative self-efficacy was also significant (γ = .44, p < .05). We then submitted the values of the two paths to the RMediation program and have the lower and upper 95% confidence limits of .003 and .159 that did not contain zero. The indirect effect of the three-way interaction on employee creativity via creative self-efficacy was significant and thus Hypothesis 2 was supported.

5. Discussion

In this study, we constructed and tested a cross-level model to examine how combinations of individual–contextual factors would affect the efficacy beliefs in creativity and consequently lead to higher creativity. Findings of this study confirmed both hypotheses. Learning goal orientation, creativity as a job requirement, and team learning behavior contributed positively to the development of creative self-efficacy. In addition, a significant three-way interaction lends support to the tenet of the combinational perspective (Lee et al., 2004); that is, team members’ creative self-efficacy is highest when there is high consistency among factors but lower when such consistency is absent.

5.1. Theoretical implications

Our research offers several major implications for theory and research on creative self-efficacy. First, although learning goal orientation and creativity as a job requirement are two important antecedents of efficacy belief, they have seldom been examined together and have never been used jointly to predict creative self-efficacy. By incorporating them into our model, we can now obtain a more comprehensive picture of what builds creative self-efficacy. As hypothesized, both antecedents are conducive to self-regulation that helps employees, on one hand, to focus on learning, and, on the other hand, to focus on job requirement, enabling employees to act flexibly in response to learning opportunities and changing circumstances. Based on feedback generated during the process, employees will identify performance gaps and recognize the need to acquire new skills and additional knowledge. Over time, this will build their creative self-efficacy. Our results corroborate previous findings on how learning goal orientation (e.g. Gong et al., 2009) and creative expectations (e.g. Tierney and Farmer, 2011) would affect the development of creative self-efficacy in the work setting. In addition, we also found that a dialogical team setting which enables reflective communication and experimentation would have a direct impact on efficacy beliefs in creativity. The role of team context played on efficacy development has not been adequately examined even though it has been commonly understood that development of efficacy occurs in social contexts where there are similar others serving as role models and where people receive encouragement by significant others (Bandura, 1986). The present finding that a supportive team learning context builds members’ efficacy in creativity filled an important gap in the literature.

Second, we responded to the call for more research to identify team factors to examine how individual’s creative self-efficacy is conducive to or inhibited by peer influences (Tierney and Farmer, 2011; Zhou and Shalley, 2008). Findings of our cross-level research show that learning goal orientation and creativity as a job requirement work best on creative self-efficacy in a favorable team learning context. As predicted by our three-way interaction hypothesis, when consistency among the two self-regulating antecedents and team learning context is high, employees’ creative self-efficacy is the highest but lowest under the situation of all factors discourage development of self-efficacy. In other words, the ideal configuration for creative efficacy development is to communicate clearly what are the performance expectations on creativity to those who are oriented to learning and to put these like-minded people working in a team encouraging mutual learning and experimentation. Our present research has, to some extent, replicated and extended this combinational perspective which focuses mainly on the organizational-level conditions and innovation outcomes to individuals’ efficacy belief in creativity using a mixture of individual and contextual variables. Our research fills an important gap by showing how team-level attributions when combined with other individual antecedents would affect the development of creative self-efficacy and achieve optimal creative outcomes.

Our findings also addressed the implied detrimental effect resulting from lack of consistency among contributing factors to creativity outcomes. As proposed by the combinational perspective, by merely improving one organizational condition without changing others gives rise to inconsistency and such a piecemeal or incremental approach “… may do more harm than good, because it creates uncertainty in which individuals do not know which factor will shape the organization’s response to their actions” (Lee et al., 2004: 312). While the benefits of adopting a “synergistic” approach are conceptually sound and empirically validated in our findings, the suggested detrimental effect as a result of inconsistency of individual–contextual factors is not as obvious as it seems in the case of creative self-efficacy. Inconsistency might have mitigated impacts on creative self-efficacy but not in a single incident in our findings showing that inconsistency would result in a significant decrease of efficacy belief. Therefore, it seems more prudent to argue that efficacy enhancement can be expected by improving individual contributing factors and such improving efforts might result in some forms of inconsistency but detrimental outcomes, if any, are not as serious as suggested; though, the best results can only be achieved under the optimal configurations of all contributing factors. In this regard, we would consider the two perspectives are not incompatible but complementary to each other and both are useful for researchers and practitioners to understand and to enhance creative self-efficacy.

Our third contribution to the literature has something to relate to learning goal orientation. While learning goal orientation has been widely proposed to be a major factor contributing to creative performance (e.g. Van Yperen and Janssen, 2002) and to a lesser extent, creative self-efficacy (e.g. Gong et al., 2009), researchers have cautioned the mechanisms through which learning goal orientation contributes to creativity-related outcomes are indeterminate at best. Past findings are inconclusive in the sense that some studies have found a positive relationship between learning goal orientation and employee creativity (Gong et al., 2009; Hirst et al., 2009; Janssen and Van Yperen, 2004); other studies have not come up with such positive relationships (Redmond et al., 1993; Simmons and Ren, 2009; Suh, 2002). Among studies which reported a positive relationship, researchers noted that individuals’ orientation to learning should neither be too strong nor too weak and its effects on creative performance were subject to the intricacy of social contexts (Hirst et al., 2009).

Our findings show that learning goal-oriented employees’ creative self-efficacy can be slightly enhanced for those who perceive job requirement on creativity are less clearly defined and delivered and under an unfavorable team learning condition. Therefore, it appears that learning goal orientation will make an impact on individuals’ efficacy belief when either there is a high, or counter intuitively, in a low congruent situation—a special case of consistency. But the level of efficacy enhancement in this particular condition is comparable to the other five less than perfect consistent conditions (i.e. high in one condition but low in the other) and is markedly lower than the most consistent condition (i.e. high in all conditions). Therefore, it seems that the potential contribution of learning goal orientation to creative self-efficacy depends, to a great extent, on the presence of other collaborating factors. Neither a favorable team learning context alone nor the sole presence of creativity job requirement would facilitate learning goal-oriented members to develop their self-efficacy in creativity. But when these facilitating factors are favorable, learning goal-oriented members stand a great chance of developing their creative efficacy to the fullest. This pattern of findings is in line with the prediction of the combinational perspective.

We did, though not hypothesized, find a significant two-way interaction effect between learning goal orientation and team learning behavior on creativity (γ = .34, p < .01). Figure 3 depicts the pattern of moderated results. The results of simple slope test showed while goal orientation and team learning consistency does not induce a positive impact on employee creativity (β = .06, n.s.), a lack of consistency between the two, that is, a strong learning goal orientation and an unfavorable team learning context would actually produce a detrimental effect (β = −.30, p < .05) as predicted by the combinational perspective. Specifically, the relationship between goal orientation and employee creativity is not positive when team learning behavior is favorable but negative when it is unfavorable.

Indeed, too strong of a learning orientation would distract members’ focus on performance outcomes when their learning orientation is not supported and reinforced by other team members. Like other performance outcomes, creative outcomes are often the result of collaborative effort among members (Gilson and Shalley, 2004; Kurtzberg and Amabile, 2001). Without a proper team learning environment, a learning goal-oriented member may find it difficult to get his or her ideas thoroughly refined and successfully implemented. Under such an unfavorable team condition, learning goal-oriented members would focus on their own learning goals and pay less attention and effort in achieving creative outcomes.

Compared to learning goal orientation, we found creativity as a job requirement, a more promising factor contributing to creative self-efficacy and employee creativity. Similar to learning goal orientation, creative expectation contributes positively to creative self-efficacy. Creativity as a job requirement also contributes directly to creativity and this direct contributing effect remains even controlled for all other factors in the model including creative self-efficacy (γ = .20, p < .01). Yet, the direct link between learning goal orientation and creativity was not found. In sum, our findings show that creativity as a job requirement seems to be a more robust antecedent to the development of creative self-efficacy and the advancement of creative outcomes.

5.2. Managerial implications

Our research offers valuable insights for management practices. Practical-minded managers who want their employees to think out of the box may need to think about what makes them creative in the first place. Our findings highlight employees’ efficacy belief in creativity to be a key self-regulating mechanism in motivating and sustaining effort in their pursuit of creative solutions. Thus, it is crucial for managers to make every attempt to facilitate a suitable environment within which employees can become efficacious in their creative capabilities. As such, we propose that managers should encourage employees to adopt a learning goal orientation approach to work but, at the same time, instill in their minds the creative requirements for the appropriate implementation of their tasks. A clear understanding of the job requirement on creativity can help employees to direct their focus toward creative outputs. Hence, we recommend organizations to communicate such an expectation to their employees. This can be done through redrafting job descriptions to include creativity as a job requirement or having supervisors discuss with employees various creativity requirements. In addition, managers need to ensure the consistency in these environmental conditions, as when some conditions enhance efficacy belief but others do not, this might not help employees build their creative self-efficacy. The best way to start is to cultivate a team climate where team learning orientation is salient and team learning behavior is promoted among team members who recognize the need to perform creatively in their jobs.

5.3. Limitations and directions for future research

The sample of teams (N = 41) is relatively small. The statistical power would be enhanced if a larger sample were employed to test the cross-level interactional relationship. However, Hirst et al.’s (2009) study used 25 teams. They suggest that the use of aggregated team-unit perceptions tends to cancel out random variance in individual responses and are likely to yield more accurate representation of team context.

The second limitation is our cross-sectional design, which does not allow casual conclusions in the relationship among the interactions of the three factors, individual’s creative self-efficacy, and their creativity. Although employee creativity data were collected separately from their supervisors, it was within a same time period. The cross-sectional design prevents us to study the reciprocal relationships of behavior, environment, and personal factors. As Wood and Bandura (1989) mentioned in their study, “it takes time for a causal factor to exert its influence and to activate reciprocal influences” (p. 362). Future research in this area should consider a longitudinal design or a study of the measured data at different time phases of the creative process in order to examine the reciprocal relationships of the different sources, to establish directionality in the relationship of the variables and to understand when the studied variables lead to the optimal level of creative performance (e.g. Farh et al., 2010). Besides, individual- and team-level data were collected from the employees. The perceived creative performance of the employees was subjectively evaluated by supervisors. This separation of raters is considered an improvement in self-reporting and reduces the common method bias of the data. However, this is still a subjective measurement with the possibility of biased data from raters. As the respondents are R&D knowledge workers with clear creative deliverables, objectively measured creative outcomes (e.g. number of patents, products, or designs) can be used to measure employee creativity in future studies. Future research can also examine other team contexts (i.e. team psychological safety) and their consistency or lack of consistency with individual effects on employees’ efficacy beliefs.

Third, although our findings indicated the critical role of creativity as a job requirement on employees’ efficacy development, these findings cannot provide insights into what if some employees fail to meet their job requirement on creativity. Unfortunately, we may not be able to examine the effect of such failure of meeting creativity requirements on efficacy development using the current sample. According to the demographic information, the average company tenure of our sample is 45.24 months, suggesting that engineers participated in the study have passed the adaptation period, which is usually 6 months to 1 year (Feldman and Brett, 1983) and they have managed to perform their jobs to standard. In addition, the fairly high scores on creative self-efficacy (mean of 5.25, on a 7-point scale) also showed some evidence that only those who can meet the job requirements stay. Engineers who could not meet the standard had quitted their job and thus were not included in our sample. Accordingly, future research works are suggested to sample more employees who indicate having difficulties to meet their creativity standards. This allows us to address the possibility of such failure and to study its effect on creative self-efficacy development.

Finally, most research has treated creative self-efficacy rather simplistic, having just one dimension with a few items focusing mainly on creative thinking self-efficacy. However, some researchers (e.g. Abbott, 2010; Tang et al., 2017) argued that future research can study creative self-efficacy from multiple dimensions instead of one to better understand efficacy belief and to what mediates the expression of creativity. Finally, the present research was conducted in a more collectivistic culture and revealed that the interactions of having a learning goal, knowing creativity, is expected by their jobs and working in a team favorable toward learning builds Chinese employees’ efficacy in creativity. However, does this configuration also benefit creative self-efficacy formulation in a more individualistic culture? Future studies, therefore, are recommended to replicate our findings in other cultures.

Footnotes

Final transcript accepted 4 July 2018 by Peter Jordan (AE Organisational Behaviour).

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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