Compulsory Citizenship Behavior and Employee Creativity: Creative Self-Efficacy as a Mediator and Negative Affect as a Moderator

Peixu He; Qiongyao Zhou; Hongdan Zhao; Cuiling Jiang; Yenchun Jim Wu

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01640

Compulsory Citizenship Behavior and Employee Creativity: Creative Self-Efficacy as a Mediator and Negative Affect as a Moderator

Front Psychol. 2020 Jul 21:11:1640. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01640. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Peixu He¹, Qiongyao Zhou², Hongdan Zhao², Cuiling Jiang³, Yenchun Jim Wu⁴

Affiliations

¹ Research Center of Business Management & Oriental Enterprise Management Research Center, Business School, Huaqiao University, Quanzhou, China.
² School of Management, Shanghai University, Shanghai, China.
³ Department of Management, Kedge Business School, Talence, France.
⁴ Graduate Institute of Global Business and Strategy, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan.

Abstract

Workplace stressors were identified to have critical impacts on employee creativity. However, little is known about how and when involuntary citizenship behavior [i.e., compulsory citizenship behavior (CCB)]-induced stress might exert an influence on employee creativity. To fill this knowledge gap, the present study firstly develops a moderated mediation model to investigate the CCB-employee creativity association as well as the underlying mechanism and contextual condition of this relationship. By integrating social cognitive theory such as self-efficacy theory and conservation of resources (COR) theory, we propose that CCB predicts employee creativity through the mediating role of creative self-efficacy (CSE), with the individual characteristics (i.e., personality traits) of negative affect acting as a boundary condition. Using two-wave time-lagged survey data collected from a sample of 251 frontline employees in 10 manufacturing firms in Southern China, the results show that: (a) CSE mediates the negative relationship between CCB and employee creativity; (b) negative affect moderates the relationship between CCB and CSE; (c) negative affect moderates the indirect influence of CCB on employee creativity through CSE. As the level of negative affect rises, this indirect relationship is stronger. Finally, important theoretical and managerial implications and promising avenues for future research are addressed.

Keywords: compulsory citizenship behavior; creative self-efficacy; employee creativity; negative affect; organizational citizenship behavior.