A CLIMATE AND PERSONALITY APPROACH TOWARDS CREATIVITY BEHAVIOURS: A MODERATED MEDIATION STUDY

Organisations are interested in how to get the best performance out of their workforce and this study focuses on creativity behaviours. The present study focuses on psychological safety climate, which relates to shared beliefs amongst co-workers regarding the safety for risk-taking in their work teams. We combine this with another organisational factor and a psychological factor towards testing a robust model of employee creativity behaviours. These factors include organisational-based self-esteem (OBSE) as a mediator and climate for innovation as a moderator, and we then examine these in combination (moderated mediation). Using a sample of 269 diverse employees, we find psychological safety climate is positively related to creativity behaviours and OBSE, and OBSE influences creativity behaviours and fully mediates the effect of psychological safety climate. We also find a significant interaction effect, showing that the highest creativity behaviour is registered when there is high psychological safety climate and high climate for innovation. We also find a significant moderated mediation effect whereby the indirect effect of psychological safety climate on creativity behaviours (through OBSE) increases when climate for innovation gets stronger. We discuss the implications for managing people and teams.