The Curvilinear Relation between Work Predictability and Creativity

ABSTRACT

In this study, we investigate how the level of work control predictability affects employee creativity. Specifically, we examine whether supervisor and coworker support moderate the predictability-creativity relationship. We use survey data from 128 employee–supervisor dyads from a governmental organization in Belgium. Multilevel analyses demonstrated a significant inverted U-curve relationship between predictability and leader-rated creativity, indicating that too little or too much work control predictability contributes less to employee creativity compared to moderate levels of work control predictability. Moreover, supervisor and coworker support moderate this relationship in such a way that for employees who receive low support the inverted U-curve relationship is significantly stronger compared to employees that receive high support. This is the first study that focuses on work control predictability in relation to creative performance.

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Wouter Gryson for gathering the data and sharing them with us.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. We ran a number of t-tests to see if there were significant differences with respect to the total sample of 371 employees and the subsample of 128 employees concerning our key variables. The results show that there are no significant differences with respect to Work control predictability (t(497) = −.49, p = ns), Social support from supervisors for creativity (t(497) = 1.83, p = ns), and Social support from coworkers for creativity (t(497) = 1.85, p = ns).