Learning or relaxing: How do challenge stressors stimulate employee creativity?

Abstract

As important situational factors in the workplace, challenge stressors play an important role in stimulating employee creativity. This study used self-efficacy and emotional exhaustion as intervening processes to delve into the impact of promotion and depletion mechanisms of challenge stressors on employee creativity. According to the theory of resource conservation, the study explores the moderating effect of learning and relaxing at work on the promotion and depletion mechanisms of challenge stressors. Fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis was conducted to analyze the effect of a combination of factors on employee creativity. A total of 240 valid paired-samples were collected from employees of three enterprises in information technology, finance, and evaluation services industries. This study drew the following conclusions. Challenge stressors have a direct positive effect on employee creativity, self-efficacy and emotional exhaustion have partial mediating effects on the relationship between challenge stressors and employee creativity, learning positively moderates the relationship between challenge stressors and self-efficacy, and qualitative comparative analysis reveals three configurations that improve employee creativity.