Perception of Innovative Organizational Identity and Cognitive Flexibility: The Mediating Role of Creative Self-Efficacy

Expanding the social identity view of creativity from the situated cognition perspective, this research examined how the perception of an innovative organizational identity influences cognitive flexibility, one of the pathways to creativity, through the mechanism of creative self-efficacy. The results from experimental Study 1 (128 respondents) demonstrated that the perception of an innovative organizational identity is more likely to foster one's belief in their creative abilities (i.e., creative self-efficacy) than the perception of a conventional organizational identity. Experimental Study 2 (163 participants) provided evidence of the positive relationship between creative self-efficacy and cognitive flexibility and the mediating effect of creative self-efficacy in linking innovative organizational identity to cognitive flexibility. Finally, in Study 3 (202 respondents), a survey was conducted at an actual organization to rule out the impact of organizational identification on the proposed mechanism. The results showed that the mediating effect of creative self-efficacy remained significant even when controlling for organizational identification. This work enriches the existing literature on the social identity approach to creativity by proposing that innovative organizational identity is a determinant of creative self-efficacy and cognitive flexibility.