Daily work characteristics and daily creativity: The moderating role of job satisfaction

Abstract

The current research aimed to investigate the relationship between daily changing work characteristics and daily creativity at work. More specifically, we focused on the separate effects of daily interpersonal support from supervisor and daily-perceived time pressure on creativity. In addition, we investigated the cross-level moderating effect of individual’s attitude toward job in the relation between daily time pressure and daily creativity. In order to perform within-person and cross-level analyses, we used daily diary method and collected responses from 39 full-time workers for 5 working days. Hierarchical Linear Modeling analyses yielded a positive relationship between daily interpersonal support from supervisor and daily creativity, as well as a positive relationship between daily time pressure, the challenge stressor, and daily creativity. Moreover, there was a significant moderating effect of job satisfaction on the relationship between time pressure and creativity. Specifically, for those who are highly satisfied with job, the relationship between daily time pressure and daily creativity was positive while it was not so for those with low job satisfaction. Based on the above findings, we discussed the relationships among daily work characteristics and daily creativity as well as implications, limitations and possible future research issues.