How digital transformation shapes employee creativity: Insights from the ability-motivation-opportunity framework and qualitative comparative analysis

Abstract

As digital technology and innovation-driven strategies become central to corporate strategy, fostering employee creativity has emerged as a critical objective of digital transformation. However, extant research predominantly relies on linear methods and net-effect analyses, failing to adopt a configurational perspective that can elucidate the synergistic mechanisms among the factors shaping creativity during digital transformation. Based on the ability-motivation-opportunity (AMO) framework, this study integrates individual and contextual factors and employs fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to analyze three-wave survey data from 305 employees, thereby identifying the configurational paths that lead to high radical and incremental creativity. This approach addresses a key limitation in current research by capturing the complex, nonlinear causal mechanisms often overlooked by conventional analytical frameworks. The findings reveal that seven factors—digital transformation, digital transformational leadership, harmonious passion, obsessive passion, external search, intuitive cognitive style, and analytical cognitive style—combine to form three distinct configurations for radical creativity and three for incremental creativity. Specifically, harmonious passion is a common core condition for radical creativity, whereas digital transformation and digital transformational leadership act as substitutive antecedents. This study contributes a novel configurational understanding of employee creativity during digital transformation, highlighting the complementary and substitutive roles of AMO elements, and offers practical guidance for firms to stimulate contextually appropriate creativity.