New job – new ideas: the relationship between tenure and perceived creative climate

Abstract

Human resource development (HRD) practices are intertwined with organizational creative climate (CC). Understanding the factors that influence CC is important since CC influences not only employees' possibilities to share and develop ideas, but also potentially employees' decision to leave their current organization. This study focuses on how perceptions of CC is related to tenure in organizations by analysing perceived CC in a random sample of unionized Swedish white-collar workers (n = 1303). It finds tenure to be negatively related to perceived CC for the first few years of employment. The level of knowledge required for a position does not moderate this relationship, but more knowledge-intensive work in itself tends to be associated with higher levels of perceived CC. Implications for HRD are discussed.

Keywords:

• tenure
• creative climate
• creativity
• socialization
• white-collar workers
• union membership

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge that this research was funded by HELIX VINN Excellence Centre and Unionen. Furthermore we want to thank Peter Auer, Raymond Trau, Anna Lövgren, the editor of this journal, and three anonymous reviewers for valuable comments and feedback. Errors and omissions remain our responsibility alone.

Notes

1. Sif merged with Sweden's Salaried Employees' Union, on 1 January 2008 to become Unionen.