Organizational Commitment and Creativity: the Influence of Thinking Styles

Yubo Hou

Ge Gao

Fei Wang

Tingrui Li

and

Zhilan Yu

Creativity has long been a popular research question among psychologists. Studies in the past few decades have explored the effect of both internal individual factors and external environmental factors on creativity. The findings help shed light on how we can cultivate and further tap creativity. With the increasing role of culture in the study of psychology in the recent decade, researchers have now begun to turn their attention to the study of how culture can influence creativity. Answering this question in a scientific way is of profound significance to the ongoing educational reform in China. Based on the unique thinking style of Chinese people and focusing on knowledge workers engaged in creative activities, our study explored the relationships among thinking style, organizational commitment and creativity of Chinese employees. We theorized that the thinking style of connection and change would influence employee creativity both directly and indirectly. Data analysis from a sample of 134 Chinese subordinates supported our hypothesis, indicating that connection was correlated positively to creativity, whereas change was correlated negatively. Furthermore, connection was found to have a moderating effect on the relationship between organizational commitment and creativity; and the influence of change on employee creativity was partially mediated by organizational commitment. Our findings are of great theoretical and practical significance for understanding the mechanisms the effect of thinking style.