Drawing on the work design growth model (WDGM), this paper aims to explore the relationship between job complexity and employee creativity through feedback-seeking and the moderating effect of team leaders with a growth creative mindset.
The authors used an online survey to test the hypotheses. Data was collected in three waves from 74 supervisors and 349 paired employees in China.
Job complexity had a positive association with employees’ feedback-seeking, which further linked to employee creativity. This indirect effect was stronger in work teams with leaders endorsing a growth creative mindset.
Job complexity has become prevalent in organizations today. Taking daily complexity as a resource for nurturing employee creativity may balance organizations’ costs on formal training and give them more initiatives in long-term development. In addition, as the growth creative mindset is relatively easy to assess and change, it may bring insights in terms of creativity development.
By empirically testing the behavioural mechanism of WDGM, the learning and development perspective of work design offers a new explanation of the relationship between job complexity and employee creativity. The authors further extend WDGM by identifying leaders’ growth creative mindset to be a boundary condition.
