Workplace Affect and Workplace Creativity: A Review and Preliminary Model

Abstract

Workplace creativity has important organizational and individual implications, and workplace affect seems to influence creative performance on the job. Across studies, however, research examining the relationship between affect and creative performance has yielded inconsistent and sometimes contradictory results. Creativity has been found to be significantly related to positive affective states in some research, but has been tied to negative affective states in others. Various moderators and mediators of affective influences on creativity have been examined in 1 or 2 studies, but systematic reviews and integrative models of research on affect influences on creativity are lacking. In this article, we review the existing research on affect and creative performance and present a theoretical model designed to help integrate results across studies. Implications of our model for future research and for the management of workplace creativity are discussed.