An Empirical Analysis of the Effect of Social and Emotional Intelligence on Individual Creativity Through Exploitation and Exploration

Abstract

This study proposes an individual creativity model that consists of personal psychological characteristics and creative processes. In other words, we investigate how emotional and social intelligence positively, effectively, and successfully lead to harmonized human relationships in the existing social order, affecting the creative process and individual creativity. We study how exploration and exploitation are related to personal psychological characteristics and individual creativity. In order to achieve the purpose of the study, we assume that the creative process includes both exploitation and exploration, where exploitation is considered an existing use of a solution and exploration involves the development of new solutions. To verify the validity of the research model, we empirically analyze the survey results that show how personal psychological characteristics are related to the creative process and individual creativity. Using a structural equation model (SEM) to analyze 447 valid questionnaires collected from employees in the Korean IT industry, we find that personal psychological characteristics, measured by social and emotional intelligence, significantly affect the creative process and individual creativity. Another interesting finding is that exploration reinforces individual creativity, while exploitation does not directly strengthen individual creativity.