Personal Accomplishment, Mentoring, and Creative Self-Efficacy as Predictors of Creative Work Involvement: The Moderating Role of Positive and Negative Affect

ABSTRACT

This research explores the relationships among personal accomplish- ment, mentoring, affect, creative self-efficacy, and creative involvement. With a sample of working adults (N = 242), structural equation modeling results revealed that the data fit the theoretical model well in that creative self-efficacy fully mediated the relationships between personal accomplishment and creative work involvement and between mentoring and creative work involvement. Hierarchical regression analyses demonstrated that positive affect moderated the relationship between personal accomplishment and creative self-efficacy but negative affect did not, signifying that positive affect may be a necessary situational factor to optimize the personal accomplishment-creative self-efficacy link. In contrast, negative but not positive affect moderated the link between mentoring experiences and creative self-efficacy, suggesting that mentoring experiences associated with negative affect situationally may have been likely to have a significant consequence in weakening creative self-efficacy. The findings expand upon self-efficacy and mentoring theories by highlighting the importance of employing theoretically relevant moderating and mediating variables in research investigating the etiology of possible variables associated with vital workplace outcomes.

KEYWORDS:

• Creative self-efficacy
• creative work involvement
• mentoring
• personal accomplishment

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hyejin Bang

Hyejin Bang (PhD University of Minnesota - Twin Cities), is an Associate Professor in in the Department of Leadership and Professional Studies at Florida International University in Miami, FL, USA. Her research area focuses on workplace attitudes and behaviors, including self efficacy, motivation, leadership, and prosocial behavior.

Thomas G. Reio

Thomas G. Reio, Jr. (PhD Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University), is an Associate Dean of Graduate Studies and Professor in the Department of Leadership and Professional Studies at Florida International University in Miami, FL, USA. His research concerns curiosity and risk-taking motivation, workplace socialization processes, emotions, and incivility.