Research On The Impact Of Job Demand-control Match On Employee Creativity And Its Mechanism

As the market competition becomes more and more intense,the position of enterprise innovation is becoming more and more prominent.Employee creativity,as the main source of enterprise innovation,has been paid more and more attention by enterprises.At the same time,the fierce competition also makes the work of enterprises to gradually increase the job demands for employees,employees are often faced with time pressure,too much tasks,heavy workload and so on.In this case,the working conditions of employees are not optimistic.In order to achieve the goals of both the completion of production and the improvement of employee creativity,enterprises began to adjust to the job desigh of employees,including change the job demands and allow employees to have some extent of job control so that they can be relatively free to determine the method of completing the tasks and in this process,have a certain degree of freedom of time.Therefore,employees in the enterprise face a variety of work conditions comprised up by different levels of job demands and job control.From the perspective of organizational behavior and human resources management,enterprises need to reconsider the relationship between job desigh,namely the job demands and job control,and employee creativity,and design effective incentive systems to utilize job demands and job control for activating employee creativity.Drawing on the concept of fit,match and JDC model,this study puts forwards the concept of job demand-control match,and constructs a research model focusing on the effects of job demand-control match and employee creativity by drawing from the Conservation of Resources theory and the Self-Determination Theory.Based on literature review,this study first refines the definitions of all the core constructs of the study,including job dmand-control match,employee creativity,creative self-efficacy,creative intrinsic motivation,creative process engagement,supervisor support for normal activities,and supervisor support for creativity.And then illustrates the basic assumptions of JDC model and fit theory,the Conservation of Resources theory,and the Self-Determination Theory.In the second step,according to the views of Conservation of Resources theory and the Self-Determination Theory,this study proposes a series of hypotheses,including the main effect of job demand-control match on employee creativity,the multiple mediator model which is used to explain why job demand-control match affects employee creativity.In addition,this study builds the moderati on model and the moderated mediation model to explain the boundary condition of the effects of job demand-control match on employee creativity.This study used surveys and the empirical data to test the research model.The study first used the pre-survey to collect 53 questionaires of employees,and test and adjust the scales according to the primary analysis results of the data.Next,in the formal survey,this study used the method of pairing supervisors with employees,and combining the self-report and other-report technique to collect data.Sample 1 contain 126 employees and Sample 2 contain 204 supervisor-subordinate dyads,and the respondents are employees from different fields such as technology,management,marketing and finance.Employing the quadratic polynomial regression and response surface analytic techniques,the main effect s were tested both by two samples.Combined with the hierarchical regression and bootstrap method,the mediating effects and moderating effects were tested using sample 2.The empirical results show the relationships between job demand-control match and employee creativity.1)If job demand and job control match,employee creativity is higher when job demand is aligned with job control at a high level than that when job demand is aligned with job control at a low level.If job demand and job control do not match,employee creativity is lower when job dmand is higher than job control rather than when job control is higher than job demand.2)Creative self-efficacy and creative intrinsic motivation both serve as meditators in the relationship between job demand-control match and employee creativity,which means job demand-control match can affect employee creativity through the two paths of creative self-efficacy and creative intrinsic motivation.Although creative process engagement can not mediate both the creative self-efficacy-employee creativity relationship and the creative intrinsic motivation-employee creativity.Once considering the moderating effects of supervisor support for normal activities and supervisor support for creativity,the creative process engagement path is also approved.3)Both supervisor support for normal activities and supervisor support for creativity can negatively moderating the effect of creative process engagement on employee creativity.Additionally,both supervisor support for normal activities and supervisor support for creativity can serve as moderators on the second stage of the “creative self-efficacy-creative process engagement-employee creativity” relationship and the “creative intrinsic motivation-creative process engagement-employee creativity” relationship.Based on all these findings,this study finally analysis and discusses their implications,and giving suggestions to companies for improving employee creativity though changing job design and adjust supervisor support system.