Tolerate to innovate: an expectancy-value model on error management culture and radical creativity

Abstract

Purpose

This study develops a cross-level moderated mediating model based on expectation-value theory to extend the knowledge on how and when organizational culture motivates employee radical creativity.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on longitudinal, multisource data for 584 R&D employees in 73 organizations, the research hypotheses were tested by a multilevel analysis using hierarchical linear model.

Findings

The results showed that error management culture had a positive effect on employees' psychological safety and radical creativity; psychological safety mediated the effect of error management culture on employee radical creativity. Further, moderated path analysis revealed that employees' promotion focus moderated the positive effect of psychological safety on employee radical creativity and thus strengthened the indirect effect of error management culture on employee radical creativity via psychological safety.

Originality/value

Literature on how organizational culture motivates workplace creativity pays little attention to employees' radical creativity. This study fills this gap by empirically examining the role of error management culture as a critical organizational culture that secures employee radical creativity. It also provides a novel mechanism, i.e., an expectancy-value mechanism to explain the link between organizational context and radical creativity by elucidating the underlying psychological process whereby error management culture drives employee radical creativity and identifying the pivotal moderating role of employees' regulatory focus in the function of error management culture.

Citation

Geng, Z., Xiao, M., Tang, H., M Hite, J. and J Hite, S. (2022), "Tolerate to innovate: an expectancy-value model on error management culture and radical creativity", Management Decision, Vol. 60 No. 7, pp. 2042-2059. https://doi.org/10.1108/MD-03-2021-0387