Feeling Good, Being Intentional, and Their Relationship to Two Types of Creativity at Work

Abstract

In recent years, scholars have empirically demonstrated that creativity can be described as radical or incremental creativity. In efforts to better understand the nomological networks underlying radical and incremental creativity, this study explored the role that positive emotions directly and indirectly plays in predicting each type of creativity. Further, whether the nature of these mediated relationships varied differentially as a function of employees’ tendency to also engage in such purposeful activities as monitoring their creative behaviors and deepening their expertise was also explored. The resultant moderated-mediation model was tested in a field study of 129 professional employees in a large North American consumer products organization. Results indicated that positive emotions influence incremental and radical creativity differentially through fun, and that the degree to which individuals engage in monitoring impacts their levels of creativity. Implications and future directions for research and practitioners are discussed.