Impact of job control on employee creativity: The moderating effect of cognitive irritation

Abstract

Managing employees' stress and creativity is an important part of business administration. Based on the Variation-Selection-Retention theory of creativity, this study expands the research viewpoint to the outside of job context by discussing the moderating effect of cognitive irritation on the relationship between job control and employee creativity. To test proposed model, we collected empirical data from 267 employees in Korea. The model constructed was tested with hierarchical regression. The empirical results showed that job control has a positive effect on the employee creativity; cognitive irritation as a moderator can strengthen the positive relationship between job control and employee creativity. Implications for enhancing the employees' control and guiding their irritation properly in organizations are discussed.