TY - JOUR
T1 - LEADER PERFECTIONISM—FRIEND OR FOE OF EMPLOYEE CREATIVITY? LOCUS OF CONTROL AS A KEY CONTINGENCY
AU - Xu, Linna
AU - Liu, Zhi
AU - Ji, Ming
AU - Dong, Yuntao
AU - Wu, Chia Huei
N1 - Funding Information:
Steve Jobs . . . built the world’s most creative company. And he was able to infuse into its DNA the design sensibilities, perfectionism, and imagination that make it likely to be, even decades from now, the We would like to thank the associate editor, Markus Baer, and three anonymous reviewers for their insightful and constructive feedback during the review process. We also would like to express our appreciation to Zhi-xue Zhang and Minya Xu for their advice and support on an early draft of this article. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Yuntao Dong, Guanghua School of Management, Peking University, Beijing, China 100871. Email: [email protected]. The first two authors contributed equally to this research. This research was supported by grants funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 71632002, 71702003, 72172006, 72102007 and 71672035).
Publisher Copyright:
© Academy of Management Journal.
PY - 2022/12/15
Y1 - 2022/12/15
N2 - This research aims to explain whether leader perfectionism toward employees fosters or hinders employee creativity. From a self-regulation perspective, we theorize that depending on employees’ locus of control, leader perfectionism can influence two regulatory states of employees (i.e., engagement and emotional exhaustion) linearly or curvilinearly, which in turn affect their creativity in opposite directions. In a lab experiment and a multisource, multiwave field study, we found that for internals, leader perfectionism had a curvilinear effect on their engagement (but no effect on emotional exhaustion) and subsequent creativity such that the effect was positive but became weaker when leader perfectionism was extreme. By contrast, we found partial support across the two studies that for externals, leader perfectionism had a positive effect on their emotional exhaustion (but no effect on engagement), which undermined their creativity. We discuss the theoretical contributions of this research and its practical implications for organizations.
AB - This research aims to explain whether leader perfectionism toward employees fosters or hinders employee creativity. From a self-regulation perspective, we theorize that depending on employees’ locus of control, leader perfectionism can influence two regulatory states of employees (i.e., engagement and emotional exhaustion) linearly or curvilinearly, which in turn affect their creativity in opposite directions. In a lab experiment and a multisource, multiwave field study, we found that for internals, leader perfectionism had a curvilinear effect on their engagement (but no effect on emotional exhaustion) and subsequent creativity such that the effect was positive but became weaker when leader perfectionism was extreme. By contrast, we found partial support across the two studies that for externals, leader perfectionism had a positive effect on their emotional exhaustion (but no effect on engagement), which undermined their creativity. We discuss the theoretical contributions of this research and its practical implications for organizations.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85146171798&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.5465/amj.2019.0165
DO - 10.5465/amj.2019.0165
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85146171798
SN - 0001-4273
VL - 65
SP - 2092
EP - 2117
JO - ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT JOURNAL
JF - ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT JOURNAL
IS - 6
ER -