挑战性压力和阻断性压力对员工创造力的影响:自我效能的中介效应与组织公平的调节效应

The impact of challenge stress and hindrance stress on employee creativity: The mediating role of self-efficacy and the moderating role of justice

压力与创造力的关系一直是组织行为学研究的热点话题,但研究结论并不一致。基于社会认知理论,我们假设自我效能是连接压力与创造力的中介机制。进一步,我们认为挑战性压力对自我效能和创造力的影响取决于员工的分配公平感,而阻断性压力会对员工自我效能和创造力有显著的破坏作用,程序公平有助于缓冲阻断性压力对自我效能和创造力的破坏效应。采用三阶段的纵向研究设计检验上述假设,对来自256对上下级匹配数据的研究结果表明:挑战性压力对自我效能和创造力没有显著的直接影响;分配公平调节挑战性压力通过自我效能对创造力的间接效应:对高分配公平感的员工而言,挑战性压力通过自我效能对创造力的正向间接效应更强。阻断性压力通过抑制员工自我效能进而对其创造力产生显著的负向影响。程序公平对阻断性压力和自我效能以及创造力之间关系的调节效应不显著。

Owing to their distinctive nature, challenge stress and hindrance stress may have different effects on individual creativity. Drawing on social cognitive theory perspective, we conducted a longitudinal empirical study concerning with the relationship between challenge stress and hindrance stress and employees＇ self-efficacy and creativity. We also examined whether these relations were moderated by distributive justice and procedure justice.Data were collected from 256 dyads of employees and their immediate supervisors in two divisions of a large enterprise. The questionnaire for employee in Time 1 included challenge stress and hindrance stress, job complexity,and demography variables. The questionnaire for employee in Time 2 included self-efficacy. Employees＇ creativity was rated by their immediate supervisors in Time 3. Theoretical hypotheses were tested by hierarchal regression analysis with Mplus 6.0. Results of analyzing the matched sample showed that the relationships between challenge stress and both self-efficacy and creativity were not significant, and the relationship between hindrance stress and both self-efficacy and creativity was negative; where distributive justice was high, challenge stress was positively related to creativity via self-efficacy, whereas where distributive justice was low, this indirect relationship was not significant. The moderating effects of procedure justice on the relationship between hindrance stress and both self-efficacy and creativity were not significant. Extending previous studies, this research demonstrated that challenge stress and hindrance stress have unique influences on self-efficacy and creativity, the results clarified the relationship between stress and creativity in workplace from a new perspective. Second, by examining the mediating effect of self-efficacy, the results contributed to our understanding on the mechanism through which stress influence creativity. Finally, through investigating the moderating effect of procedure justice and distributive justice, we confirmed that there are bounded conditions of the effect of stress on employee creativity. Findings broaden understandings of the process by which and the conditions under which challenge stress and hindrance stress influence creativity. Furthermore, the results also revealed that social cognitive theory was more suitable for explaining the relationship between stress and creativity.