The Relationship Between Adaption-innovation Cognitive Style And Incremental Creativity And Radical Creativity:a Sensemaking Perspective

Employee creativity is an important source of enterprise competitive advantage and a key antecedent for employee performance.In the field of creativity,the relationship between cognitive style and creativity has been a hot topic in scientific circle for a long time.Given those abundant studies,there are still some inconclusive findings to be clarified.In this study,I examined the underlying mechanisms through which and the boundary conditions under which adaption and innovation cognitive style impact incremental creativity and radicalcreativity respectively from a comparative perspective.In the first part,this study reviews theliterature on adaption-innovation cognitive style,goal orientation,knowledge retrieval,incremental creativity and radicalcreativity.First,I summarized the research regarding adaption-innovation cognitive style and creativity,including the discussion of the conceptualization of adaption-innovation cognitive style,the composition of creativity,and so on.Second,basing on the literature review,I identified the inconsistent conclusions and several gaps and limitations of prior research.Third,drawing on sensemaking perspective,I discussed the mechanism through which cognitive style influence creativity,then I developed the hypothesis and theoretical model based on these discussions.In the second part,I collected longitudinal data from 214 dyads of employees and their immediate supervisors.The results indicated:(1)Compared with those with innovation cognitive style,the employees high on adaption cognitive style have higher level of incremental creativity.The prove(performance)goal orientation moderated the relationship between adaption cognitive style and incremental creativity,where prove(performance)goal orientation was high,adaption cognitive style was more positively related to incrementalcreativity.(2)Compared with those with adaption cognitive style,the employees high on innovation cognitive style have higher level of radical creativity.The learning goal orientation moderated the relationship between innovation cognitive style and radical creativity,where the learning goal orientation was high,innovation cognitive style was more positively related to radical creativity.(3)External scanning mediated the impact of innovation cognitive style on radical creativity.(4)Internal scanning mediated the impact of adaption cognitive style on incremental creativity.In the final part,I summarized the theoretical contributions,practical indications,limitations of this study and the directions for future study.