Research On The Two-dimension Structure Of Perceived Diversity And Its Impact On Employee Creativity

With the alternation of the generations in domestic labor market and the localization strategy of Chinese international enterprieses,the human resources management in Chinese enterprises have become more and more diversified.On the one hand,this diversification trend provides the foundation of continuous innovation which enables enterprises to respond effectively to the complex and changing external environment.On the other hand,the management of the enterprises has to face higher requirements.There have been a lot of attentions and controversy about the impacts and mechanism of diversity,especially on creativity.According to the theory of social categorization,social identity and similarity-attraction,some scholars considered that team diversity leads to team faultline and individual negative reflection.However,from the perspective of information and decision making,diversity provides richer cognitive resources,and then improves organizational and employee creativity.Thus,deeply discussion is necessary on the mechanism of diversity on employee creativity,which can offer enterprises suggestions about how to reduce the negative effects of diversity on employee creativity and enhance the positive effects.To clearify the effect and mechanism of diversity,scholars have begun to pay attention to the role of diversity in the individual level,as a supplement to the exploration on team level.They sperate employees' perception of diversity with objective diverstiy,and regard perceived diverstiy as an important factor affecting the output of employees.Based on this,this study discusses the relationship between perceived diversity and employee creativity.However,There are some disagreements among existing perceived diversity research about the concept and measurement;there are no widely accepted conclusions,as how perceived diversity affects employee creativity;also,the boundaries when perceived diversity affect creativity are not clear yet.Therefore,it is necessary to explore the internal constructions of perceived diversity and their impacts on employee creativity from the perspective of individual employees.This research explored the dimensionality division of perceived diversity from the perspective of perceived objects,and built an model of the impact of perceived diversity on employee creativity based on it.First,on the basis of literature analysis,this study identified two dimensions of perceived diversity: perceived team heterogeneity and perceived self-to-team dissimilarity by the qualitative analysis based on the data collected by semi-structure interview.And the model about how these two dimensions impact employee and team outputs was preliminarily bulit.Then,according to the variationalselection-retention theory and social categorization-information elaboration model,this paper explored the relationship between perceived diversity and employee creativity,also proposed a series of hypotheses,including the direct effect of perceived team heterogeneity on employee creativity;the direct effect of perceived self-to-team dissimilarity on employee creativity;the interactive effect of perceived team heterogeneity and self-to-team dissimilarity on employee creativity;and the mediating role of information sharing,in order to reveal the complex relationships and mechanism between perceived diversity and employee creativity.After that,the cognitive transaction theory was introduced to construct the moderated model and the moderated mediation model with the challenging-hindrance stress as the moderators in the first stage,in order to study the boundary condition of the relationship between perceived diversity and employee creativity and the mediating effect of information sharing under different types of stress.Finally,self efficacy theory was introduced to construct the moderated model and the moderated mediation model with the creative self efficacy as the moderators in the second stageIn this research,qualitative analysis and questionnaire survey were used to conduct empirical analysis.In the qualitative analysis,through the semi-structured interviews of 21 employees of three enterprises,the data from the members' perception of diversity in three team and its influence are summarized.Through concept describing and case analysis,the differences on the attribution and effect between perceived team heterogeneity and perceived self-to-team dissimilarity are induced.The study also found that perceived team heterogeneity and perceived self-to-team dissimilarity can have different effects on individual behavior and team outpute through information sharing.In the questionnaire survey,two waves of questionnaires were distributed.The first survey collected 51 valid employee data,used to conduct the pre-test of the main concepts.According to the test results,the relevant scale has been adjusted.The second survey obtained 317 valid data from different positions in technology,management and marketing in northeast area of China.The interactive,mediating,moderating and moderated mediating effects were tested by hierarchical regression and bootstrapping.The empirical results reveal the relationship between the two-dimensional structure of perceived diversity and employee creativity and its boundary conditions.(1)perceived team heterogeneity positively affects employee creativity.(2)perceived self-to-team dissimilarity negatively affects employee creativity.(3)The interaction between perceived team heterogeneity and perceived self-to-team dissimilarity positively affects employee creativity.(4)Information sharing plays a mediating role between perceived diversity and employee creativity.(5)Challenge stress enhances the positive relationship between perceived team heterogeneity and information sharing,and hindrance stress reduces this relationship.Meanwhile,the mediating role of information sharing between perceived team heterogeneity and employee creativity is also moderated by challenge and hindrance stress in the first stage.(6)The challenge stress reduces the negative relationship between perceived self-to-team dissimilarity and information sharing,and hindrance stress does not significantly moderate the relationship between perceived selfto-team dissimilarity and information sharing.Meanwhile,the mediating role of information sharing between perceiving self-to-team dissimilarity and employee creativity is also moderated by challenge stress in the first stage.There is no significant moderating effect of hindrance stress on the mediating effect of information sharing between perceived self-to-team dissimilarity and employee creativity.(7)Creative self efficacy enhances the positive relationship between information sharing and employee creativity,and moderates the mediating role of information sharing between perceived diversity and employee creativity.Based on the results of empirical analysis,this research provides suggestions for managers and policy makers in terms of team diversity,employee creativity,and job stress management.