Differentiating Creativity And Voice Behavior Of Employees

Under the circumstance of the drastic changes and uncertainty, so many companiesneed to transform development paths by merger, recombination and downsizing. In thiscondition, how to promote organizational development and change effectively was the keyquestion which was concerned by researchers. Specially, many researches pay moreattention to the topic about employee’s creativity and voice behavior.In the organization and management field, employee creativity is a behavioralexpression of the generation of new and potentially valuable ideas concerning newproducts, services, manufacturing methods, and administrative processes. And, as noted,employee creativity is not just to explain whether employees had creative ability, but toexpound employees’ extra behavior expression of the creative ability. In addition,Employee voice behavior is a kind of constructive, change-oriented communicatingbehavior which intends to improve the work ground. However, it’s easy to be misusedabout two concepts because the two were thought to be beneficial to the development ofthe organization. Based on the literatures, there are some similarities on antecedents andconsequences. But, employee creativity is a unique construct, different from voicebehavior. And the construct of employee creativity and voice behavior need muchconceptual clarification, theoretical elaboration, and empirical exploration.Therefore, on their guard (Duan&Zhong,2009; Ma, Jiao, Chen&Jiang,2011), weconstructed our nomological network about employee creativity and voice behavior whichhas different antecedents and consequences. Survey data came from254workers in severalfirms in China. We found some conclusions:(1) A different consequences between creativity and voice behavior. Based on theresult, employee creativity can effectively predicted performance, but cannot improveinterpersonal relationship quality between employee-lead/colleagues. Although, we didn’tconform the hypothesis about employee voice behavior would increase interpersonalrelationship quality between employee-lead/colleagues. But we found that employee voicebehavior not only improve interpersonal relationship quality betweenemployee-lead/colleagues, but also effectively predicted their performance. All in all, therewas a different consequence between creativity and voice behavior. (2) An essential difference between creativity and voice behavior. In the study, wefound that both intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation were driving forces toemployee creativity. However, employee voice behavior (speak up and speak out) was anextra-role behavior which was only driven by intrinsic motivation. In consequence, thedifference between the driving mechanisms was the essential difference between twoconcepts.(3) A different attitudes reaction model between creativity and voice behavior. Thestudy shows that employee would choose to express their suggestion in order to alleviatedissatisfaction, but didn’t want to input to creative activities. However, there wasobviously positive relation between employee satisfaction and creativity. That is employeesatisfaction can effectively promote their creativity. In addition, we also found that therewas obviously U-shaped relation between employee satisfaction and voice behavior. Morespecifically, employee would show more voice behavior when they were in the jobsatisfaction or no job satisfaction condition.Finally, combined some related theories, we discussed the results which were found inour studies. And then, we pointed out the theoretic and practical significances. And also wediscussed the shortage of our research and future research directions.