تاثیر ظرفیت جذب، اکتشاف و بهره برداری بر روی خلاقیت فردی: اثر تعدیل کننده بهزیستن ذهنی

Abstract This study proposes a new individual creativity model divided into seven main constructs: creative self-efficacy, individual knowledge, IT support, individual absorptive capacity, exploration, exploitation, and individual creativity. We assumed that creative self-efficacy, individual knowledge, and IT support positively affect individual creativity through the mediating effect of individual absorptive capacity, exploration, and exploitation. Additionally, we examined the moderating effects of subjective well-being by dividing the sample into a high subjective well-being group and a low subjective well-being group. After collecting 706 valid questionnaires from IT companies in South Korea, we applied a structural equation modeling technique to analyze the data. Empirical results reveal the following: (1) creative self-efficacy, individual knowledge, and IT support influence individual creativity through individual absorptive capacity, exploration, exploitation; and (2) subjective well-being moderates the relationship between the two constructs of the research model.

1. Introduction Patent disputes have emerged with the intensified competition among prominent information technology (IT) companies. These companies improve product quality and creative design to secure the rights of technology. The patent battle between Apple and Samsung Electronics over the design and operation of smartphones and tablet computers is escalating and could turn into an all-out war. In today’s fast-paced, knowledge-intensive, and Internet communication environment, information technology (IT) companies are placing more emphasis on creativity and innovation than ever before. Creativity and innovation are critically important for IT companies seeking to survive and thrive in today’s highly turbulent business environments, which have become increasingly complex and dynamic (Chen et al., 2010 and Houghton and DiLiello, 2010). Creativity is defined as the production of novel and useful ideas in any domain, and innovation is defined as the successful implementation of creative ideas within an organization (Amabile, Conti, Coon, Lazenby, & Herron, 1996). In view of the innovation, exploration, and exploitation of IT companies, novel knowledge can increase the potential for variety, flexibility, and novelty in product innovation. Namely, some firms develop more explorative or more exploitive product innovations (Calantone and Rubera, 2012 and Yang and Li, 2011). Nowadays, the support of IT is a common feature of organizational contexts that sustainable corporate governance requires active and extensive knowledge management and creative management. Organizations are investing in various types of information technology to improve knowledge management practices (Choi, Lee, & Yoo, 2010). Also, IT companies encourage their employees to produce creative performance. This requires employees to have more individual knowledge and creative self-efficacy (Kumar and Ganesh, 2011 and Tierney and Farmer, 2011). Creative self-efficacy is the subjective belief that one has personally creative ability. Namely, it indicates the assessed result of creative potential by oneself (Tierney & Farmer, 2002). In addition, firms can develop a sort of absorption capacity for problem-solving despite uncertainty and ambiguity. A difficult situation may make firms utilize external knowledge and problem-solving approaches to design solutions to challenges they face (Weigelt & Sarkar, 2012). All things considered, this study of knowledge management and creative management in the IT industry involves several important factors: IT support, creative self-efficacy, individual knowledge and absorptive capacity. IT companies are now involved in intense competition and are greatly concerned about the well-being of employees who need to manifest their creativity. Since humans have emotions, each person has different subjective well-being (e.g., happiness). Human being want happiness and most managers desire all the members of an organization to feel happy. In addition, managers of IT companies can improve self-esteem, career success, and positive attitudes toward information technology among employees who are low in subjective well-being by formulating appropriate human resource strategies, such as participatory performance appraisals and training (Leung et al., 2011 and Salanova et al., 2004). However, members of an organization do not easily display their own happiness to others. Most organizations do not attempt to identify the subjective happiness of their employees and thus elevate their creativity. Great attention has been paid to the question of subjective well-being and individual creativity. However, relatively few studies have explored “individual creativity through absorptive capacity, exploration, and exploitation according to subjective well-being.” In the present article, we explore the effects of creative self-efficacy, individual knowledge, and IT support on individual creativity through individual absorptive capacity, exploration, and exploitation according to subjective well-being. This research focuses on perceptions of individual creativity by asking the following three questions: (1) Do creative self-efficacy, individual knowledge, and IT support significantly influence individual absorptive capacity? (2) How do individual absorptive capacity, exploration, and exploitation contribute to building individual creativity? (3) How does the level of subjective well-being moderate the relationship between individual creativity and its antecedents, such as creative self-efficacy, individual knowledge, IT support, individual absorptive capacity, exploration, and exploitation?

. Concluding remarks 5.1. Theoretical and practical implications We implemented an empirical test for employees of IT companies to analyze the impact of creative self-efficacy, individual knowledge, and IT support on individual creativity through individual absorptive capacity, exploitation, and exploration. Because fierce competition among IT companies requires teams or individuals to generate creative and differentiated outputs, IT companies are greatly concerned about the well-being of employees who need to manifest their creativity, we divided the participants into two groups based on their level of subjective well-being. We also examined the differences of antecedents’ effects on individual creativity between the two groups (high-level subjective well-being group and low-level subjective well-being group). Empirical results revealed that all participants (N = 706) and the high-level subjective well-being group (n = 519) confirmed the impacts of all paths, whereas the low-level subjective well-being group (n = 145) accepted the impacts of all paths except the effect of IT support on individual creativity through individual absorptive capacity. Employees in IT companies are supported by the information systems of their companies and manifest their individual capacity by sharing and utilizing their knowledge. These employees perform a greater number of creative tasks than employees of other industries. This empirical study has several key findings regarding the effect of subjective well-being. First, IT companies should place more emphasis on the well-being (happiness) of their employees so as to create an environment in which they can manifest a higher level of individual creativity. Such efforts will bring greater levels of innovation and benefits to the companies. Second, in the low-level subjective well-being group, the effect of creative self-efficacy and individual knowledge on individual absorptive capacity were strong, but IT support did not affect individual absorptive capacity. Also, individual absorptive capacity did not affect individual creativity. Hence, IT companies should create an environment that elevates the well-being of the employees but at the same time should set a management strategy to help their IT support positively affect individual absorptive capacity. In other words, IT companies should utilize their IT-related information system to help individuals manifest their capacity in carrying out creative tasks by accumulating, sharing, and utilizing the professional knowledge of individuals and the organization. Third, IT companies may be able to elevate individual creativity only when they create an environment that elevates the individual absorptive capacity. These companies should increase the level of individual creative self-efficacy and individual knowledge and create an environment in which IT support and its utilization can be performed well by the organization. Additionally, companies need to implement educational training programs that can enhance individual creativity. IT companies should help employees manifest their creativity in occupational tasks by elevating their quality of life. Fourth, as exploitation affects exploration and both exploitation and exploration influence individual creativity, institutional devices for exploitation and exploration should be prepared in order to activate them. Moreover, exploitation and exploration should be combined with knowledge circulation that consists of generation, accumulation, sharing, and using knowledge. Then the synergy of the combination will contribute to enhancing individual creativity. Finally, the subjective well-being (e.g., happiness) investigation results may be used when selecting new employees and reshuffling employees in an organization. The employees arranged in a team that requires high creativity will strengthen their individual creativity and thus increase the organizational performance if they feel a higher level of subjective well-being. 5.2. Limitations and suggestions for future research This paper has limitations that should be addressed in future research. First, we did not consider antecedents of individual creativity that may be important. Future research should probe how knowledge sharing, culture, and leadership influence individual creativity. Second, we did not consider many measurement items of well-being. Future researchers should explore how subjective well-being (such as quality of life or life satisfaction) and psychological well-being (such as self-acceptance, personal growth, purpose in life, environmental mastery, autonomy, or positive relations with others) may moderate the relationships among the constructs in the model. Finally, our research design does not enable us to draw change of time lag. In other words, its cross-sectional nature does not take into account when and if a change in individual absorptive capacity, exploitation, exploration, and creativity occurred. Longitudinal analyses would be needed to verify the stability and directionality of such relationship among individual absorptive capacity, exploitation, exploration, and creativity over time.