Task Uncertainty And Employees’ Radical Creativity

With the increasing complexity of the business environment,the task uncertainty within organizations has increased as well.Task uncertainty has become one of the main job characteristics faced by employees in the workplace.Previous research has largely focused on the negative connotation of uncertainty.It is until recent years has research turned to the bright side of task uncertainty.However,most research were conducted at the project or team level,it remains unclear how task uncertainty influence employees’ psychological states,behaviors,and work outcomes.Particularly,since task uncertainty is regarded as a necessary condition of creative learning,it remains unknown when and how task uncertainty promotes versus inhibits employees’ radical creativity.Therefore,based on the cognitive appraisal theory of stress,this research focused on the “double-edged sword” effects of task uncertainty on employees’ radical creativity.Firstly,task uncertainty,as a stressor containing both risks and opportunities,can be appraised by employees as both hindrance and challenge.While hindrance appraisal inhibits employees’ radical creativity,challenges appraisal can promote it.Secondly,combining the job demands-resources model and the interactionist perspective of organizational creativity,this research explored the moderating roles of empowering leadership and employees’ cognitive flexibility in the process of employees’ cognitive appraisal of task uncertainty.Both empowering leadership and cognitive flexibility can provide abundant cognitive resources for employees to cope with task uncertainty and thus can enhance the positive effect of task uncertainty on challenge appraisal and weaken the positive relationship between task uncertainty and hindrance appraisal.At last,this research further investigated the mediating mechanism between hindrance and challenge appraisal and employees’ radical creativity and proposed that employees’ closing behavior and opening behavior were two different coping strategies.Besides,this research constructed the serial mediation model of cognitive appraisals(i.e.,hindrance appraisal and challenge appraisal)and coping strategies(i.e.,closing behavior and opening behavior)between task uncertainty and radical creativity.This research examined the theoretical model and hypotheses through four empirical studies.The first study adopted the experimental research design.Through two online experiments,Study 1 verified that task uncertainty can be appraised as hindrance and challenge simultaneously,and the hindrance and challenge appraisals of task uncertainty have opposite effects on employees’ radical creativity.Study 2 and Study 3 adopted the multi-source and multi-wave survey method.Using a sample of 380 employees from 85 research and development(R&D)teams,Study 2 found that task uncertainty had a negative indirect effect on radical creativity through hindrance appraisal and a positive indirect effect on radical creativity through challenge appraisal.Employees’ cognitive flexibility had a moderating effect on the direct relationship between task uncertainty and cognitive appraisal and the indirect relationship between task uncertainty and radical creativity.The moderating effect of empowering leadership was insignificant.Using a sample of 406 employees from86 R&D teams,Study 3 found that employees’ closing behavior and opening behavior mediated the relationship between hindrance appraisal and radical creativity,and challenge appraisal and radical creativity,respectively.In addition,Study 3 verified that task uncertainty negatively affected employees’ radical creativity through the serial mediation of hindrance appraisal and closing behavior,and positively affected employees’ radical creativity through the serial mediation of challenge appraisal and opening behavior.Employees’ job control and cognitive flexibility moderated the process.The moderating effect of empowering leadership was insignificant.At last,Study 4 adopted the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis(fs QCA)to identify the multiple equifinal configurations leading to employees’ radical creativity.The results revealed 5 pathways to high radical creativity and 3 pathways to low to medium level of radical creativity.Our findings expanded the research on the antecedents of radical creativity,enriched the understanding of the two sides of uncertainty,contributed to the development of stress research and the application of fs QCA in creativity and innovation research,and provided practical implications for organizations’ uncertainty management as well.Finally,the limitations of this research and the directions for further explorations were fully discussed.