Research On The Influence Of Proactive Personality On Employee Creativity From A Social Exchange Perspective

Facing the rapidly changing environment under the new round of scientific revolution,innovation leads the integration of technology-oriented cross-border resources.As the premise of innovation,creativity in workplace has become the core factor of the global competition of today’s organizations because it can generate novel and useful ideas about products,procedures or services and provide the raw materials.Organizational innovation generally starts from creative thinking and proactive behavior at the individual level.Employees are an important part of the innovation process,representing a creative pool with potential to develop and promote innovation at multiple levels.Employees’ creative ideas and subsequent implementation effort together constitute innovation.Thus,scholars and practitioners are exploring approaches to improve employee creativity.Personality traits are identified as the main individual level factors related to employee creativity.The essence of personality is the relative uniqueness of a person’s thought and behavior,which provides a powerful answer to the creativity bias caused by individual differences.Traditional research emphasizes the significance of personality changes based on the Big five model in the process of cultivating employee creativity.However,more studies believe that more personality structure should be considered to promote the practice of human resource management.Proactive personality,as the key driving force of organizational effectiveness,has received widespread attention.The fuzziness of the concept about the influence of proactive personality on employee creativity needs to be clarified due to the lack of induction.For instance,how can proactive employees better handle workplace partnerships,weigh the impact of leadership and organizational norms,and use limited resources to promote innovative performance?Therefore,it is critical to consider how to use proactive personality to stimulate employee creative performance in the work environment.In view of above problems,this paper defines the basic constructs of proactive personality and employee creativity.Morever,this paper constructs a moderated meditated model of employee proactive personality affecting employee creativity from the three dimensions of relational,normal and resourcal in social exchange theory.This study selects the dyads data of 292 supervisor-subordinate of innovative teams/working groups in technology-oriented enterprises,R&D institut ions and research universit ies as samples,integrating social cognit ive theory and conservation of resource theory,and coordinating to solve the influence mechanis m of proactive personality on employee creativity.The research contents are as follows:First,this paper uses conditional process method to analyze the path and boundary mechanism of employee proactive personality affecting employee creativity from the relational perspective of social exchange theory.The results show that: firstly,employee proactive personality has a positive impact on employee creativity,and the baseline hypothesis of this study is demonstrated.Secondly,employee proactive personality has a positive impact on employee informal leadership status,and employee informal leadership status mediates the positive relationship between proactive personality and employee creativity.Thirdly,leader-member exchange moderates the positive relationship between employee proactive personality and informal leadership status.When leader-member exchange is at a higher(rather than a lower)quality level,employee proactive personality has a stronger positive impact on employee informal leadership status.Finally,leader-member exchange moderates the indirect effect of employee proactive personality on employee creativity through informal leadership status.Specifically,this indirect positive effect is stronger when leader-member exchange is at a higher level rather than lower.Second,this paper uses conditional process method to analyze the path and boundary mechanism of employee proactive personality affecting employee creativity from the normal perspective of social exchange theory,integrating social cognit ive theory(selecting the representative variable of creative self-efficacy).The results show that: for employee creativity,there is a three-way interaction among proactive personality,transformational leadership and professional ethical standards on employee creativity.Specifically,when transformational leadership and professional ethical standards are at a higher level,the positive correlation between proactive personality and creativity is stronger.Additionally,employee creative self-efficacy mediates the three-way interaction of proactive personality,transformational leadership and professional ethical standards on employee creativity.When the transformational leadership and professional ethical standards are at a higher level,the indirect impact of employee proactive personality on employee creativity is the stronger through employee creative self-efficacy.Last,this paper uses condit ional process method to analyze the path and boundary mechanism of employee proactive personality affecting employee creativity from the resourcal perspective of social exchange theory,integrating social cognit ive theory(selecting the two core variables of temporal leadership and domain knowledge).The results show that: firstly,proactive personality positively influences knowledge sharing,knowledge sharing positive ly affects employee creativity,and knowledge sharing mediates the positive relationship between employee proactive personality and employee creativity.Secondly,temporal leadership positively moderates the direct effect of employee proactive personality on knowledge sharing,and the indirect effect of proactive personality on employee creativity through knowledge sharing in the first stage.When the followers’ evaluation of temporal leadership is higher(lower),direct and indirect effects will be more(less)positive.Thirdly,domain knowledge positively moderates the relationship between knowledge sharing and employee creativity,and the indirect effect of proactive personality on employee creativity through knowledge sharing in the second stage.When employees have higher knowledge level and richer knowledge reserve in the field,the positive correlation between knowledge sharing and employee creativity is stronger.Accordingly,proactive personality has a stronger indirect effect on employee creativity.In summary,based on social exchange theory,this paper comprehensively weighs the conditional process of employee proactive personality affecting employee creativity under mult iple paths and boundary condit ions.By revealing the direct and indirect correlation process between employee proactive personality and employee creativity,as well as the boundary conditions affecting the process,this study promotes the expansion and integration of theories in organizational behavior and psychology,enriches the fruits of personality and creativity,and provides valuable managerial inspirations and practical references for exploratory research on personality traits and creative behaviors.