How job complexity fosters employee creativity: a contextualized growth perspective and the mechanism of feedback-seeking

Abstract

Purpose

Drawing on the work design growth model (WDGM), this paper aims to explore the relationship between job complexity and employee creativity through feedback-seeking and the moderating effect of team leaders with a growth creative mindset.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors used an online survey to test the hypotheses. Data was collected in three waves from 74 supervisors and 349 paired employees in China.

Findings

Job complexity had a positive association with employees’ feedback-seeking, which further linked to employee creativity. This indirect effect was stronger in work teams with leaders endorsing a growth creative mindset.

Practical implications

Job complexity has become prevalent in organizations today. Taking daily complexity as a resource for nurturing employee creativity may balance organizations’ costs on formal training and give them more initiatives in long-term development. In addition, as the growth creative mindset is relatively easy to assess and change, it may bring insights in terms of creativity development.

Originality/value

By empirically testing the behavioural mechanism of WDGM, the learning and development perspective of work design offers a new explanation of the relationship between job complexity and employee creativity. The authors further extend WDGM by identifying leaders’ growth creative mindset to be a boundary condition.

Citation

Yang, W., Zhu, J., Xu, S., Liu, Y., Luo, D., Wang, Y. and Yu, J. (2023), "How job complexity fosters employee creativity: a contextualized growth perspective and the mechanism of feedback-seeking", European Journal of Training and Development, Vol. 47 No. 7/8, pp. 830-845. https://doi.org/10.1108/EJTD-03-2022-0024