The purpose of this research is to determine if there is any relationship between employee creativity and job-related motivators, using a case study of hotel employees in Hong Kong. From a sample of 983 employees, canonical correlation indicated there is a relationship between creativity and job-related motivators. Furthermore, the risk-taking dimension under creativity was found to be more correlated to the intrinsic job-related motivators. Intrinsic job-related motivators which include opportunity for advancement and development, loyalty to employees, appreciation and praise of work done, feelings of being involved, sympathetic help with personal problems and interesting work, are found to encourage the hotel employees’ risk-taking behavior. A “See-Saw” model is presented to show the relationship between the two opposing sides: intrinsic motivators and extrinsic motivators versus creativity and risk-taking factors.
Hong Kong is world-renowned for its first class hotels with high service orientation (Kivela and Go, 1996). With the increased global competition and a focus on quality products and excellence in service, there is a need for hotels to be innovative in their approach to improving service delivery. Based on the assumption that motivated staff will provide higher levels of customer care, developing employee creativity is seen as a possible way forward for motivating employees in the industry. The assumption is that a creative person should be self-motivated to work hard if his/her expected motivators (intrinsic or extrinsic) are satisfied.
Creativity emerged as an area of research in the 1950s with the seminal work of Guilford (1950), with further significant research developments taking place from 1990 onwards. Issues such as investigating the relationship between motivation, gender, educational background and creative outputs were explored. This placed creativity research firmly in the field of Psychology and the Arts (Sternberg and Lubart, 1999) as quoted in Sternberg (1999). The importance of studying creativity and its relationship to other factors receives attention from many scholars.
One primary reason for the lack of research into creativity in the hospitality industry is that creativity is usually associated with artistic industries such as film making, drama, painting, music composing, fiction writing, poetry, etc. Historically, hospitality was simply concerned with providing accommodation and food for travelers. Emphasis was placed on the operational routine work of how hotels satisfy travelers for accommodation and food needs. However, the research conducted by Wong and Pang, 2003a and Wong and Pang, 2003b indicates that creative ideas generate business benefits to the hotel industry, and increasingly hospitality is seen as more than fulfilling basic needs and focuses on the wider customer experience.
A further dimension to creativity research relates to culture. Taking Hofstede's (1980) four cross cultural dimensions, the Chinese culture is named as collectivism, high power distance, strong uncertainty avoidance and medium masculinity. In the Western context, previous research has been conducted to discover individuals’, creativity (Amabile, 1985). However, recently, the study of creativity has been applied within oriental cultures (Lau et al., 2004a). Lau et al. (2004b) summarize the study of creativity in the East and West into areas: (1) culture and its influence in creativity; (2) education and development about creativity; and (3) creativity in practice. Rudowicz (2004) studies creativity among Chinese people and Leung et al. (2004) compare creativity and innovation between east and western societies. Puccio and Gonzalez (2004) investigate how to nurture creative thinking using western approaches with the concerns on eastern issues. Cheng (2004) discusses how to progress from the traditional concept in creativity education within the Chinese society.
To expand further research into creativity, the research objectives for this paper are: to explore the creativity levels of HK hotel employees in terms of the risk taking and creativity dimensions, to ascertain the importance of intrinsic versus extrinsic job motivators, and to test for a relationship between creativity and job-related motivators in broad terms and by different job levels. Finally, the research comments on the relevance of creativity in the Chinese cultural setting.
This study will be useful to the local hotel industry by contributing towards what managers understand regarding the motivations of hotel employees, and hence to consider human resources strategies that help to retain quality staff. In addition, there is presently a research gap regarding the role of motivation in the creative process. Creativity has been widely researched from many different perspectives and angles and the present research aims to advance the understanding of the relationship between the hotel employee creativity level and job-related motivators.
Finally, correlations were found between creativity and job-related motivators of Chinese hotel employees. Hoteliers or management may use this finding to further stimulate employees’ creativity by providing more intrinsic and EM. Six suggestions are recommended:
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Culture—creating a macro culture by education, cultivate a “creative” environment, set stimulating policies and programmes and train the employees to be creative.
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Commitment—top management commitment, top-down approach.
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Congratulating success—reward and recognize good ideas and performances. Promoting the advantages of being creative and setting trends and stimulating rules for people to follow.
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Courage—risk-taking, allow mistakes, trial and error.
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Change—accept new things and ideas.
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Communication—intra- and intercommunications, allowing exchange of ideas and recognize publicly.
This over time might become a competitive advantage for the hotel industry. Hotels, which develop long-term plans incorporating creativity may project a better prospect for both the company and the employees.
