Summary
By adopting a within-person perspective, this study examines the relationship between positive affect in the morning and day-specific creativity and the moderating effect of relationship conflicts (i.e. conflicts which refer to the persons involved).
Daily-survey data were gathered over the course of one working week from 101 employees from the advertising industry. Hierarchical linear modeling showed that relationship conflicts moderated the relationship between positive affect in the morning and day-specific creativity. A higher level of positive affect in the morning was related to higher day-specific creativity only on days low on relationship conflicts.
The results highlight the importance of a work environment without relationship conflicts so that the positive affect – creativity relationship can emerge.
Introduction
Because of the global competition being creative as a company becomes more and more critical for companies’ success (Amabile, 1988; Shalley & Perry-Smith, 2001; West, 2002; Woodman, Sawyer, & Griffin, 1993). To be creative, companies need employees who produce creative ideas. That means ideas, which are both novel and useful for a particular issue (Amabile, 1996; Oldham &
Cummings, 1996).
Research has identified positive affect as a potential antecedent of employee creativity (Madjar, Oldham, & Pratt, 2002; Vosburg, 1998). A meta-analysis of mainly laboratory experiments showed that positive affect enhances creativity in contrast to neutral or negative affect (Davis, 2009). Yet, a field study by George and Zhou (2002) revealed mixed findings. The authors pointed out that the positive affect - creativity relationship emerges only under certain conditions. Considering this inconsistency, Kaufmann (2003a) suggested that future research should focus on possible moderators of the relationship between positive affect and creativity.
We answer this call by investigating relationship conflicts as a moderator of the relationship between positive affect and creativity. Relationship conflicts are workplace conflicts that refer to the personal tastes or values of the involved persons (De Dreu & Weingart, 2003). Scholars assume that relationship conflicts impair team creativity (Hüttermann & Boerner, 2011). Yet, research has not further examined how relationship conflicts might impair creativity. We propose that relationship conflicts impair the beneficial effects of positive affect on creativity and thereby moderate the relationship between positive affect and creativity.
The aim of our study is twofold. First, we want replicate past findings by investigating positive affect as an antecedent of creativity (Binnewies & Wörnlein, 2011). Second, we want to reconcile the inconsistent finding regarding the positive
affect – creativity relationship by pointing out that this relationship emerges only under certain conditions. We contribute to literature by illustrating how relationship conflicts shape the positive affect – creativity relationship.
In order to meet the dynamic nature of creativity (Amabile et al., 2005), we investigated how relationship conflicts moderate the relation between positive affect and creativity at the day level. We conducted a diary study to capture the daily
fluctuations of creativity, positive affect, and relationship conflict. Our design enables us to investigate intra-individual variability of the day-specific relationship between morning positive affect and creativity at work and how this relationship changes according to the degree of relationship conflicts on the respective day.
Creativity
Creativity involves the creation of noval ideas and is the antecedent of a successful implementation of the final innovation in the organization (Amabile, 1988;
West, 2002). Creativity implies the production of ideas that are related to the
organization’s business such as new product ideas or to the organization itself such as new procedures (Amabile, 1988).
Creativity is defined as a continuum (Amabile, 1996). Low levels of creativity comprise, for example, minor adoptions of existing ideas, whereas the production of a radical new idea describes a high level of creativity (Perry-Smith & Shalley, 2003).
Apparently highly creative ideas are less frequent than less creative ideas. The variability of creativity is consistent with the conceptualization of employee creativity as a dynamic construct that varies on a daily basis (Amabile et al., 2005).
Previous research found that group composition, supervisor’s leadership style and behavior of colleagues are related to employee creativity (Eisenbeiss et al., 2008; Madjar, 2005; Shin & Zhou, 2007; J. Zhou, 2003). Scholars consider social
influences such as interactions with supervisors or colleagues as antecedents of creativity (Amabile, 1988; Perry-Smith & Shalley, 2003; Woodman et al., 1993).
Madjar et al. (2002) found that a work environment with helpful colleagues was positively related to the employee’s individual creativity. This relation was mediated by positive affect. This stream of research suggests that social processes within the work environment may be relevant for creativity and thus rises the question about the role of relationship conflicts (Hüttermann & Boerner, 2011).
Positive Affect and Creativity
Positive affect is related to employees’ behavior at work (Forgas & George, 2001; Fritz & Sonnentag, 2009; Isen & Baron, 1991; Seo, Barrett, & Bartunek, 2004).
A considerable number of creativity studies has focused on the relationship between positive affect and creativity (Amabile et al., 2005; George & Brief, 1992; George &
Zhou, 2007; Kaufmann, 2003a).
Positive affect describes an affective state that does not necessarily require attention, but provides an affective tone for a specific situation (George & Brief, 1992). High positive affect is characterized by a pleasant state of feeling excited and active and is associated with high energy, full concentration, and pleasurable
engagement (Watson et al., 1988). The circumplex model distinguishes activating and deactivating affective states (Russell, 1980). Meta-analytic findings revealed that positive affective states are positively related to creativity when they are activating (e.g., happy), but not when they are deactivating (e.g., relaxed) (Baas et al., 2008).
The Broaden-and-Build Theory of positive emotions assumes that positive affect broadens one’s thought and action repertoires and thus leads to novel and creative thoughts and actions (Fredrickson, 1998, 2001). From a neuropsychological
perspective, positive affect is associated with an increased dopamine level (Ashby et
al., 1999). The increased dopamine release enhances cognitive flexibility and thus fosters creativity (Ashby et al., 1999). Positive affect can as well have an
informational (Schwarz & Clore, 1983) and enhance employees’ feeling of safety (Forgas & George, 2001), which in turn can foster creativity (Baas et al., 2008;
Brockner & Higgins, 2001). Positive affect will lead to greater creativity on
subsequent tasks, because employees engage more in divergent thinking and are therefore more likely to come up with creative ideas.
Amabile et al. (2005) collected daily measures of creativity and affect over the course of several weeks. The authors found that positive affect on a given day was positively related to creativity on the next day. In our study, we focus on the day-specific relation between activating positive affect in the morning and creativity during work. Morning affect reflects how people feel when they start to work and are faced with the tasks that are scheduled for the day (Rothbard & Wilk, 2011). We propose that morning positive affect enhances creativity during the subsequent workday.
Hypothesis 1: Day-specific positive affect in the morning will be positively related with day-specific creativity.
Conflicts and Positive Affect
Intragroup conflicts describe situations in which the goals or interests between the involved parties are incompatible or in opposition (Korsgaard, Jeong, Mahony, &
Pitariu, 2008). Regarding the type of disagreement, research differentiates between relationship conflicts and task-related conflicts (Barki & Hartwick, 2004; Jehn, 1995).
Task-related conflicts result from different viewpoints or ideas about task-relevant content and thereby tend to increase task performance (Jehn, 1995; Simons &
Peterson, 2000). In contrast, relationship conflicts comprise conflicts which refer to the involved persons such as personal taste or values (De Dreu & Weingart, 2003)
and result in a perception of interpersonal incompatibly (Simons & Peterson, 2000).
Research on relationship conflicts found a negative relationship with task
performance (De Dreu & Weingart, 2003). Scholars assume that relationship conflicts impair performance by reducing cognitive flexibility, inducing rigid thinking, and
drawing attention away from the task (Pelled, 1996; Simons & Peterson, 2000).
Threatening situation such as relationship conflicts reduce a person’s ability to process new and complex information (Pelled, 1996; Staw, Sandelands, & Dutton, 1981). In these situation people rather rely on well-learned responses than on new ones (Staw et al., 1981). Speaking in terms of creativity, relationship conflicts keep employees from trying out new procedures and ideas. Relationship conflicts can activate a conflict mental model (Carnevale & Probst, 1998). A conflict mental model is associated with increased cognitive rigidity and narrower mental categories
(Carnevale & Probst, 1998). Experimental research shows that expectation or experience of a conflict situation causes decreased performance of a subsequent creative task (Carnevale & Probst, 1998).
Yet, we assume that the experience of relationship conflicts affects employee creativity by shaping the relationship between positive affect and employee creativity.
As mentioned above, scholars argue that positive affect fosters creativity by broadening one’s thoughts and actions and increasing cognitive flexibility
(Fredrickson, 2001; Isen & Baron, 1991). Because positive affect and relationship conflicts have diametrally opposed consequences, we propose that relationship conflicts impair the beneficial effects of positive affect. Relationship conflicts reduce the increased cognitive flexibility and limit the thought and actions that otherwise would be stimulated by positive affect. Additionally, instead of working on the task and produce a creative solution, an employee has to spend time and energy to deal with the non-task related conflict (Pelled, 1996).
We propose that relationship conflicts moderate the relationship between positive affect and creativity. We expect that the experience of relationship conflicts attenuates the relationship between positive affect and creativity.
Hypothesis 2: Day-specific relationship conflicts moderate the relation between morning positive affect and day-specific creativity. The relation will be stronger when day-specific relationship conflicts are low than when day-specific relationship conflicts are high.
Method Procedure and Sample
The sample comprised employees from the advertising industry in Germany.
We chose the advertising industry because in this field being creative is part of the job requirements (Stuhlfaut & Windels, 2012). Employees were contacted via telephone and informed about our study and the procedure of the data collection.
Data were collected with two daily surveys to be completed over five consecutive working days and a general survey. All surveys had to be filled in online. The
employees who agreed to participate received the general survey in the week before the daily survey started. Participation was rewarded with a detailed feedback of the study results. A total of 192 people agreed to participate in the study. Of these 192 people, 161 completed the general survey. Out of these 161 participants, 156 filled in both surveys on a total of 590 days. Protocol data indicated that on 74 days at least one survey was filled in at the wrong time, resulting in valid data of 516 days from 145 persons. Another 44 persons were excluded from the sample because they indicated that they were working without colleagues or a supervisor and could not provide data about the occurrence of relationship conflicts at work.
The final sample was comprised of 101 participants who provided data on a total of 338 days. The majority of participants (65%) were female. Participants’ age ranged from 19 to 56 years (M = 35.09; SD = 9.07). On average, the participants worked 9.76 years (SD = 7.71) in the advertising industry and thereof 4.82 years (SD
= 4.73) for their current employer. More than half of the participants (N = 54) held a college degree.
Measures
The first daily survey had to be filled in the morning before work, the second one immediately after work, mostly in the afternoon. The before-work survey included a measure of positive affect, the after-work survey measures of task conflicts,
relationship conflicts, and creativity. With the general survey we measured the control variable job control and demographic variables. We controlled for job control,
because research identified this variable to be related to employee creativity (Ohly et al., 2006).
Daily Before-Work Survey
Positive affect. We used four items from the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (Watson et al., 1988) to measure positive activating affect (To, Fisher, Ashkanasy, & Rowe, 2011). Participants were asked to indicate to which extend they felt at the moment “excited”, “enthusiastic”, “interested”, and “inspired”. Cronbach’s alpha ranged from .82 to .89 (M = .86).
Daily After-Work Survey
Day-specific creativity. Day-specific creativity was assessed with nine items from Tierney et al. (1999). The items were adapted to a self-rating format (Ohly &
Fritz, 2010). Participants were asked to rate the extent to which they had shown creative approaches during their work time on the respective day. A sample item is
“During my work I generated novel, but operable work-related ideas”. Day-specific Cronbach’s alpha ranged between .86 and .89 (M = .87).
Day-specific relationship conflicts. To measure day-specific relationship conflicts we used the four relationship conflict items of the intragroup conflict scale from Jehn (1995). Participants indicated the presence of day-specific relationship conflicts with their colleagues or supervisor by answering four items on a five point Likert scale (1 = “statement does not apply at all” to 5 = “statement does fully apply).
A sample items is: “Today there were emotional conflicts between me and my
colleagues or supervisor”. Day-specific Cronbach’s alpha ranged from .58 to .92 (M = .83).
Since we measured day-specific creativity and day-specific relationship
conflicts at the same time, we conducted a confirmatory factor analysis to ensure that the measures represent distinct factors. Results show a better fit for a model
comprising two distinct factors, χ2 (64) = 185.20, CFI = 0.921, RMSEA = 0.64, than a one-factor model, ∆ χ2 = 792.4, p < .001.
General Survey
Job control. To measure job control we used a three item scale developed by Spreitzer (1995). Participants reported on three items how much control they had about the way they perform their tasks at work (e.g. “I can decide by myself how to do my work”; Cronbach’s α = .92).
Demographic variables. The participants reported their age, sex, occupation, tenure and level of education.
Data Analysis
Our dataset comprised measures on two levels. On the first level (day level) were the measures of the daily surveys, on the second level (person level) the measures of the general survey. The day-level data were nested within the person-level data. This hierarchical structure requires the data being analyzed with a multilevel approach (Bryk & Raudenbush, 1992). In the regression analyses we group-mean centered the day-level variables which means we centered the day-level predictor variables around their respective person mean to analyze day-specific effects within persons (Hofmann & Gavin, 1998).
Results
Means, standard deviations and correlations are displayed in Table 3.1. We tested our hypotheses using nested hierarchical linear models. The first model (null model) included only the intercept. In Model 1, we entered the person-level (Level 2) variable job control. In Model 2 and 3, we added the day-level (Level 1) variables day-specific relationship conflicts (Model 2) and morning positive affect (Model 3). In Model 4 we included the interaction term morning positive mood x day-specific relationship conflicts. Table 3.2 displays the results.
Table 3.1. Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlations among the Study Variables.
Mean SD 1 2 3 4
1 Morning positive affect 2.40 .73 - -.09 .30**
2 Day-specific relationship conflicts 1.34 .68 -.03 - .07 3 Day-specific creativity 2.27 .80 .33** .13 -
4 Job control 3.67 .88 .10* .09* -.01 -
Note. Correlations below the diagonal are person level correlations (N = 101).
Correlations above the diagonal are day level correlations (N = 338). ** p < .01, * p <
.05.
Model 1 and Model 2 did not improve the model fit compared to the null model when predicting day-specific creativity. Neither job control nor day-specific
relationship conflicts were significant predictors of day-specific creativity. Model 3 led to an improved model fit compared to Model 2. Positive affect in the morning was significantly related to day-specific creativity. Thus, the results support Hypothesis 1.
The interaction term between morning positive affect and day-specific relationship conflicts added in Model 4, contributed to an increased model fit. The interaction between morning positive affect and day-specific relationship conflicts was significant.
Table 3.2. Multilevel Estimates for Models Prediciting Day-specific Creativity (N = 338 days).
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4
Variable Estimate SE t Estimate SE t Estimate SE t Estimate SE t
Intercept 2.29 0.07 3.13** 2.30 0.07 33.13** 2.30 0.07 33.12** 2.29 0.07 33.27**
Job control 0.10 0.08 1.21 0.10 0.08 1.21 0.10 0.08 1.21 0.10 0.08 1.23
Day-specific relationship conflicts
-0.04 0.05 0.72 -0.03 0.05 0.55 -0.02 0.05 0.49
Morning positive affect 0.18 0.08 2.28* 0.18 0.08 2.41*
Morning positive affect x day-specific relationship conflicts
-0.36 0.13 2.70**
- 2 x log 661.80 661.28 656.13 648.94
∆ – 2 x log 1.45 0.52 5.15* 7.19**
df 1 1 1 1
Level 1 Variance .25 .25 .24 .23
Level 2 Variance .39 .39 .39 .39
Note. ** p < .01, * p < .05; Nullmodel: - 2 x log = 663.25, Level 1 Variance = .25, Level 2 Variance = .40.
To test the significance of the simple slopes of this interaction, we selected two different values for the moderator variable relationship conflicts (Preacher, Curran, & Bauer, 2006). We used a value one standard deviation above the mean (high relationship conflicts) and a value one standard deviation below the mean (low relationship conflicts). Results showed that morning positive affect was a significant predictor for daily creativity only on days low on day-specific relationship conflicts (γ = 0.539, SE = 0.112, t = 4.834, p < .001), whereas there was no significant relation on days high on day-specific conflicts (γ = -0.173, SE = 0.114, t = 1.515, ns). Figure 3.1 displays the relation between morning positive affect and day-specific creativity for days high and days low on day-specific relationship conflicts. The results support Hypothesis 2. Day-specific relationship conflicts moderate the relation between morning positive affect and day-specific creativity.
Figure 3.1. Interaction between positive affect and relationship conflicts predicting day-specific creativity.
Discussion
The aim of our study was to investigate the relationship between morning positive affect and day-specific creativity and to point out how this relationship is shaped by the experience of relationship conflicts. We found that positive activating affect was positively related to employee creativity. Our results are in line with previous research and provide further support for the positive affect – creativity relationship (Amabile et al., 2005; Baas et al., 2008).
Furthermore, our results support the assumption that the positive affect – creativity relationship requires fitting circumstances to emerge (George & Zhou, 2002; Kaufmann, 2003a, 2003b). We proposed that relationship conflicts moderate the relationship between positive affect and creativity. Our results revealed that morning positive affect was related to employee creativity only on days low on day-specific relationship conflicts. No relation was found on days high on relationship conflicts. The results are in line with previous research that describes
diamentral-1,6
Low positive affect High positive affect
Low relationship conflicts
High relationship conflicts
opposed effects for positive affect and relationship conflicts. Positive affect broadens the thoughts of a person (Fredrickson, 2001). However, the experience of
relationship conflicts induces rigid thinking (Carnevale & Probst, 1998). Moreover, relationship conflicts and positive affect have contrary effects on employees feeling of safety. While positive affect signals safe situation (Schwarz & Clore, 1983),
relationship conflicts increase social insecurity (Jehn & Mannix, 2001). Thereby, relationship conflicts attenuate the beneficial effects of positive affect on employee creativity. Moreover, we did not find a direct relationship between relationship conflicts and day-specific creativity. This suggests that the effects of relationship conflicts do not impair creativity per se. They rather inhibit the beneficial effects of positive affect. Thus, a workplace without relationship conflicts does not foster creativity itself, but it is necessary so that positive affect can facilitate employee creativity.
Limitations
This study has some limitations. First, the use of self-report measures raises concern of common method variance (Podsakoff et al., 2003). This concern was particular relevant for our study because positive affect is seen as a source of common method variance (Podsakoff et al., 2003). Positive affect causes people to evaluate themselves in a more positive way. Thus, the correlation between positive affect and creativity might rather be due to the more positive self-evaluation than to an actual increased creativity. However, recent meta-analytic research found no increased correlation between positive affect and creativity when studies used self-ratings of creativity compared to non-self-report measures of creativity (Ng &
Feldman, 2012). Nevertheless, we addressed the issue of common method variance by using separate measurement points for morning positive affect on the one hand
and day-specific relationship conflicts and day-specific creativity on the other hand (Podsakoff et al., 2003). Additionally by using person-centered predictor scores our analyses were not confounded by between person biases caused by individual response tendencies (Ilies, Schwind, Wagner, & Johnson, 2007). Rather than differences of the absolute score between persons our focus were changes within persons.
A second limitation is that participants assessed their own creativity. Since our sample comprised employees’ of the advertising industry, one might argue that the creativity measure is biased in terms of social desirability. Participants who give social desirable answers should indicate increased absolute scores of creativity. Yet, we applied a within-person design and focused on the day-specific relationship between positive affect and creativity and not on absolute differences of creativity
A second limitation is that participants assessed their own creativity. Since our sample comprised employees’ of the advertising industry, one might argue that the creativity measure is biased in terms of social desirability. Participants who give social desirable answers should indicate increased absolute scores of creativity. Yet, we applied a within-person design and focused on the day-specific relationship between positive affect and creativity and not on absolute differences of creativity