Workplace pressure moderates perception of threat or opportunity and employee creativity after downsizing

Abstract

I examined subjective experience of creativity after downsizing with 348 employees in high-tech companies. I found that if employees regard downsizing as an opportunity they exhibit greater creativity after downsizing than when they consider downsizing a threat. Workload pressure moderated the relationship between threat perception and self-perceived creativity in such a way that, when workload was light, employees who viewed downsizing as an opportunity experienced greater creativity than when workload was heavy. I also found a 3-way interaction between threat perception, workload pressure, and challenging work such that the 2-way interaction for creativity between threat perception and workload pressure was more significant when work was more challenging. © Society for Personality Research.