From prevention focus to adaptivity and creativity: the role of unfulfilled goals and work engagement

Effects of Openness on Incremental Versus Radical Creativity and the Moderating Role of Leader Behaviors

Abstract: Although openness to experience has been consistently related to employee creativity, we know less about how this relationship manifests when one makes a distinction between incremental creativity (i.e., minor modifications of existing practices) and radical creativity (i.e., major departures from existing practices). Our present work is driven by two expectations. First, we expect that openness more strongly relates to radical than incremental creativity. Second, we expect that the link between openness and incremental creativity becomes stronger when leaders display closing behaviors (i.e., they control adherence to rules) or they refrain from opening behaviors (i.e., they do not emphasize the importance of free experimentation). To test our propositions, we conducted four studies: one survey study with self-ratings of openness and creativity, one survey study with both self-ratings and other ratings of openness and creativity, one semi-experimental survey study, and one weekly diary survey study. Our studies largely provide support to the idea that openness has stronger links with radical than incremental creativity. Furthermore, our weekly study revealed that the link between openness and incremental creativity is stronger when closing leader behaviors are high and, at the same, opening leader behaviors are low. We discuss our findings and suggest how managerial practice can guide open employees to improve their potential for incremental creativity.

Linking Self-Control to Negative Risk-Taking Behavior among Chinese Late Adolescents: A Moderated Mediation Model

Negative risk-taking behaviors refer to voluntary behaviors that lead to more harm than good. Low self-control is a crucial predictor of adolescents’ negative risk-taking behavior, but its internal mechanisms require further exploration. To reveal the working process underlying the association between self-control and adolescents’ negative risk-taking behaviors, we investigated the mediation of regulatory focus and the moderation of sense of power. A total of 2018 students (37.6% males) from two universities in Guangzhou, China, participated in a survey that investigated their self-control, negative risk-taking behavior, regulatory focus and sense of power. The results revealed that after controlling for the adolescents’ sex and their parents’ educational level, prevention focus partially mediated the association between self-control and negative risk-taking behavior. Moreover, sense of power moderated the association between self-control and prevention focus. Furthermore, the association between self-control and negative risk-taking behavior through prevention focus was stronger among adolescents with a high sense of power than among those with a low sense of power. Therefore, our findings suggest that regulatory focus and sense of power might be the mechanisms that explain how self-control is related to negative risk-taking behavior. These results thus provide a foundation for the prevention of and intervention in adolescents’ negative risk-taking behavior.

Positive Performance Feedback and Innovation Search: New Ideas for Sustainable Business Development

Although the literature suggests that firms tend to adopt “conservative” behavior in the face of positive performance feedback, there are also studies that take the opposite view on the impact of positive performance feedback. Based on the behavior theory of the firm and regulatory focus theory, this study explored the impact of positive performance feedback on innovation search behavior and the boundary effect of CEO regulatory focus to gain insight into the mechanisms of innovation search behavior and to promote innovation for sustainable development. Based on data from 230 biopharmaceutical companies in China, the analysis found that: (1) positive performance feedback had a significant positive effect on depth search behavior and a significant negative effect on breadth search behavior; (2) CEOs’ promotion focus had a negative moderating effect on the relationship between positive performance feedback and depth search behavior and a positive moderating effect on the relationship between positive performance feedback and breadth search behavior; and (3) CEOs’ prevention focus positively moderated the relationship between positive performance feedback in relation to depth search behavior. This study extends the behavior theory of the firm and reveals the mechanism of the differential impact of positive performance feedback on innovation search behavior, which has implications for the study of which innovation search practices should be conducted by high-performing firms to promote sustainable development.

A dual model of coping with and commitment to organizational change: the role of appraisals and resources

Purpose

Organizational change is usually stressful and destabilizing for employees, for whom coping with the induced stress is primordial to commit to the change. This paper aims to unravel how and when change recipients can enact different coping strategies and, ultimately, manifest different forms of commitment to change.

Design/methodology/approach

We propose a theoretical model that identifies challenge appraisal and hindrance appraisal as two primary appraisals of organizational change that fuel, respectively, proactive and preventive coping strategies and, indirectly, affective and normative forms of commitment to change. Moreover, this framework suggests that coping strategies and commitment are influenced by the secondary appraisal of two vital resources – resilience and POS – allowing individuals to react effectively to primary change-related appraisals. Finally, the relationship between coping strategies and the components of commitment to change is proposed to be moderated by employees' regulatory focus.

Findings

Using appraisal theory and conservation of resources theory as guiding frameworks, our integrated model describes the antecedents, processes and boundary conditions associated with coping with the stress of organizational change and how they ultimately influence commitment to it.

Originality/value

This is the first theoretical paper to identify a conditional dual path to disclose the different reactions that change recipients can manifest in response to the stressful aspects of organizational change.