Creativity and social alienation: the costs of being creative

Abstract

Although creativity is a widely praised merit, the psychological costs that an employee may pay for being creative are less examined. The present study advances the research paradigm on the dark side of creativity by focusing on the negative psychological state (social alienation) of creative employees. By building on the studies on the homophily principle and on the cultural perspective of creativity, we investigated why creative employees are more likely to experience social alienation. Drawing on the social capital theory, we point out that social alienation of creative employees depends on their networking ability and harmony enhancement motive. A two-wave survey among 311 employees from 59 Chinese organizations supported the hypotheses. Implications of the findings are discussed for creativity and alienation literature as well as management practice.

Keywords:

• creativity
• harmony enhancement
• networking ability
• social alienation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The study was supported by two grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China [71502167], [71273240]; the Ministry of Education of Humanities and Social Science Project [14YJCZH201]; the Zhejiang Provincial Philosophy and Social Science Planning Project [14NDJC162YB]; the Zhejiang Provincial ‘Qianjiang Talent Plan’ Project [QJC1402011]; the Zhejiang Provincial Soft Science Project [2015C35010] and the Research Program of Education Department of Zhejiang [Y201430901].