Research On The Impact Mechanism Of CEO’s Adaptive Perfectionism On Organizational Creativity And Employee Creativity

As our national industrial structure continuously transforms and upgrades, the market environment is increasingly complex and turbulent, and organizational creativity has became an important impetus for firms’ sustainable development. Stimulating and integrating individual’s creative behavior effectively within an organization will contribute to the improvement of the overall organizational creativity and enhance the competitiveness of firms. There is a lot of research on the measurement of individual creativity, but the research on how to measure organizational creativity is few. Therefore, we conducted the study to define the concept and the dimension of organizational creativity and then developed and tested the scale of organizational creativity.On one hand, leadership is the key factor to promote organizational creativity; CEO, as the top manager of the enterprise, is bound to play a key role in the promotion of organizational creativity. On the other hand, the characteristics of the CEO will pass down to different levels and then further affect behavior of lower level employees(Ou et al., 2014). Based on that situation, we investigated the impact mechanism of CEO’s adaptive perfectionism on organizational creativity and individual creativity. We have conducted three studies to explain these research questions.Study 1: The measure development of organizational creativity. Based on componential model of creativity, we defined organizational creativity as the creation of a valuable, useful new product, service, idea, procedure or process by individuals working together in a complex social system, which includes three dimensions such as organizational motivation to create, organizational creativity-relevant capacity and organizational creativity-relevant process. Combining in-depth interviews, we developed the measurement scale of organizational creativity based on the relevant measurements of organizational creativity climate, knowledge management, and organizational motivation leading to innovation in previous literature. We have also analyzed the validity and reliability of the scale. The results of exploration factor analysis showed that the scale of organizational creativity includes organizational motivation to create, organizational creativity-relevant capacity and organizational creativity-relevant process. The results of confirmation factor analysis, reliability and exploration validity of the scale are acceptable.Study 2: Investigate the impact mechanism of CEO’s adaptive perfectionism on organizational creativity based on upper echelons theory. The results of examining the relationship between CEO’s adaptive perfectionism, organizational learning orientation and organizational creativity showed that CEO’s adaptive perfectionism had a positive impact on organizational learning orientation and organizational creativity. The results of analyzing the relationship between organizational learning orientation and organizational creativity showed that organizational learning orientation had a positive effect on organizational creativity. The results of the mediating effect of organizational learning orientation showed that organizational learning orientation had a partial mediating effect on the relationship between CEO’s adaptive perfectionism and organizational creativity. The results of moderating effect of charismatic leadership showed that when CEO’s charismatic leadership was high, CEO’s adaptive perfectionism had a strong positive effect on organizational learning orientation. On the contrary, when CEO’s charismatic leadership was low, CEO’s adaptive perfectionism had a relatively weaker positive effect or even negative effect on organizational learning orientation. Further analysis found that CEO’s charismatic leadership moderated the indirect relationship between CEO’s adaptive perfectionism and organizational creativity via organization learning orientation.Study 3: Investigate the impact mechanism of CEO’s adaptive perfectionism on individual creativity based on social information processing theory. The results of examining the relationship between CEO’s adaptive perfectionism and high job demand climate showed that CEO’s adaptive perfectionism had a positive impact on high job demand climate. The results of relationship between high job demand climate and employee creativity showed that high job demand climate had a positive impact on employee creativity; furthermore, CEO’s adaptive perfectionism had a positive indirect effect on employee creativity via high job demand climate. The results of moderating effect of Competence showed that when Competence was high, high job demand climate had a strong positive effect on employee creativity. When Competence was low, high job demand climate had a weaker positive effect employee creativity. Further analysis found that Competence positively moderated the indirect relationship between CEO’s adaptive perfectionism and employee creativity via high job demand climate.Based on the above research results, this paper has made theoretical contributions in the following three aspects. First, the concept development and the construction test of organizational creativity. This research redefined the concept based on componential model of creativity and the in-depth interview and developed the related measurement to verify the structure of organizational creativity, which makes up for the insufficient research on measurement of organization creativity. Second, it revealed the mechanism of CEO’s adaptive perfectionism on organizational creativity. It verified the relationship between CEO’s adaptive perfectionism, organizational learning orientation and organizational creativity. It also verified the moderating effect of CEO’s charismatic leadership on the relationship between CEO’s adaptive perfectionism and organizational learning orientation, and the moderating effect of organizational learning orientation on the relationship between CEO’s adaptive perfectionism and organizational creativity. It showed that CEO can promote the organization’s creativity via appropriate perfect requirements combined with charismatic leadership. Our research results extended research on upper echelons theory. Third, we demonstrated the indirect relationship between CEO’s adaptive perfectionism and employee creativity via high job demand climate, and that Competence moderated the relationship between high job demand climate and employee creativity. This can enrich the research on the multilevel influence of CEO and provide markers for CEO to improve employee creativity.