Exploring the Intra Entrepreneurship-Employee Engagement-Creativity Linkage and the Diverse Effects of Gender and Marital Status

Abstract

This research examines which of the sub-dimensions of intra entrepreneurship (innovativeness, pro-activeness, risk-taking), and corporate social responsibility (CSR) support affects employee engagement (organizational and job engagement), which leads to employee creativity. The study uses survey data from SME employees in South Korea and applies the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM)-Artificial Neural Network (ANN) approach, to find that innovativeness and CSR support affect creativity through mediating roles of organizational engagement and job engagement, where job engagement plays a mediating role in the relationship between organizational engagement and creativity. The study also examines how employee gender and marital status effects the relative importance of intra entrepreneurship, organizational engagement, and job engagement on creativity. Findings of ANN analysis evaluates the effects per group (male-unmarried, male-married, female-unmarried, female-married) and shows how the importance of organizational engagement, job engagement, CSR support and innovativeness differ for each group. Contribution to theory and practice are discussed.