I Enjoy My Work,I Spark New Ideas:Linking Flow At Work With Employee Creativity In Tourism Consulting Firms

In China,planning in a top-down approach has long been the driving force of tourism development at both national and regional level.Driven by the boom of experience economy and knowledge economy,an increasing number of tourism destinations are going through renewal,regeneration and transformation with the help of knowledge brokers.At the organizational level,employee creativity is widely recognized as the foundation of knowledge creation for organizations,which further leads to successful organization performance,customer satisfaction and long-term growth.However,in tourism and hospitality sectors,employee creativity research is still in its infancy.Drawing from a review of previous literature,the author has identified two research gaps of employee creativity in tourism and hospitality studies.First,most prior efforts dominate on tourism service firms such as hotel,restaurant and travel agency.There is a lack of research in the context of knowledge-intensive tourism consulting firms,which heavily rely on employees' intellectual capacity.Second,due to the special research context of service firms,a large number of previous studies focus on external predictors of creativity,such as job characteristics,organizational environment,leadership and customer participation.For tourism knowledge firms,internal factors need more academic attention,to unravel the underlying mechanism of creativity.To better understand the internal mechanism of employee creativity,this study takes positive psychology as theoretical lens.The fundamental goal of positive psychology is to enrich the scientific understanding of what makes human life fulfilling and flourishing.Following this stream of ideas,Hennessey and Amabile(2009:590),in a comprehensive and influential literature review of creativity,contended that "People are most creative when they are motivated primarily by the interest,enjoyment,satisfaction,and challenge of the work itself-i.e.,by intrinsic motivation." However,to the best of the author's knowledge,only a handful of empirical research respond to this proposition by examining the relationship between positive psychological states and employee creativity.Among those subjective states,work-related flow,characterized by absorption,enjoyment and intrinsic motivation,noticeably fits the notion of Hennessey and Amabile(2009:590).As an important and original theory developed in positive psychology,flow theory describes the optimal experience of an individual being totally immersed in an intrinsically rewarding activity(Csikszentmihalyi,2000).Bakker(2008)introduced the idea of flow to organizational behavior studies and developed the concept of "work-related flow",which consists of three dimensions-absorption,enjoyment and intrinsic motivation.Therefore,the aim of this study is to examine whether work-related flow can predict employee creativity in tourism consulting firms and to explore the individual and contextual antecedents of work-related flow.For individual factors,the author identifies learning goal orientation as a predictor of work-related flow.According to flow theory,a clear and intrinsic-rewarding goal is the most important precondition of flow.Learning orientation,which refers to "one's concern for and dedication to,developing his competence"(Gong,Huang,&Farh,2009),can foster people's interest and passion in work.For contextual factors,the author identifies work autonomy as a predictor of work-related flow.Self-determination theory(SDT),another theory in line with the positive psychology movement,argues that people will achieve a higher level of flourishing if a set of basic psychological needs,namely autonomy,competence and relatedness,are satisfied.The concept of work autonomy not only goes along with the basic need of "autonomy" proposed in SDT,but it is also the core dimension of Hackman and Oldham(1975)'s job characteristic model(JCM).According to JCM,job autonomy can facilitate key psychological states such as meaningfulness,responsibility and intrinsic motivation.Therefore,this study chooses learning goal orientation and job autonomy as personal and contextual predictors of work-related flow,which further leads to employee creativity.To the best of the author's knowledge,this thesis is the first study to examine the relationship between learning goal orientation(LGO,as independent variable),work autonomy(WA,as independent variable),work-related flow(WRF,as mediator)and employee creativity(EC,as dependent variable).To test the proposed conceptual model,the author uses questionnaire surveys to collect data from employees in tourism consulting firms in China.One round of pilot test(n=147)is used to test the reliability and validity of measurement scales.By using structural equation modelling,the formal empirical test,whose participants come from 303 employees in top-tier tourism consulting firms,examines the hypothesized relationship between work-related flow and creativity,as well as the personal and contextual predictors of work-related flow.The results indicate that:(1)Work-related flow significantly predicts employee creativity;(2)Work-related flow plays a partially mediating role between learning goal orientation and employee creativity;(3)Work-related flow plays a partially mediating role between work autonomy and employee creativity;(4)The indirect effect size of work-related flow in "LGO-WRF-EC" path is stronger than in "WA-WRF-EC" path,which means learning goal orientation is a stronger predictor of work-related flow than work autonomy;(5)Compared with learning goal orientation,work autonomy has a stronger direct and total effect on employee creativity in tourism consulting firms.This thesis enriches the understanding of Csikszentmihalyi(2000)'s flow theory by examining the consequence and antecedents of work-related flow.First,it identifies the positive relationship between work-related flow and employee creativity,and the author provides possible theoretical explanations on cognitive and behavioral level.Second,the author identifies the personal and contextual factors of work-related flow and further finds out that learning orientation has a stronger relationship with flow than work autonomy.