The dark side of creativity: its connection to work-family conflict

ABSTRACT

Creativity has its ‘dark side.’ This study investigated the relationship between employee creativity and work-family conflict drawing on boundary theory. Data were collected from 1074 participants who were full-time employees. By employing PROCESS macro, we found the relationship between employee creativity and work-family conflict is fully mediated by psychological detachment difficulty. We also found that family-work conflict moderates the effect of creativity on psychological detachment difficulty such that for those who experience lower family-work conflict, the effect of creativity on the mediator (i.e. psychological detachment difficulty) is stronger than for those who experience higher family-work conflict.

KEYWORDS:

• Work-family relation
• work-family conflict
• family-work conflict
• creativity
• psychological detachment difficulty

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the base of humanities and social science and logistics research center in University of Henan province under grant number 2017-JD-04.

Notes on contributors

Lei Xie

Lei Xie, Ph.D is an Assistant Professor at Texas State University. His research interests include team collaboration, leadership, organizational learning/change, knowledge management, and International Human Resource Development. He earned his Ph.D and Master’s degree from Texas A&M University.

Guangping Li

Guangping Li, Ph.D is an Associate Professor of Management at Henan University of Technology. He is the associate dean of School of Management and also the vice president of Human Resource Development Research Association of Henan Province, China. Prior to joining academia, he worked for several companies including China Construction Bank and BenQ Guru Consulting Institution. His research focuses on organizational behavior and human resource management.