Distinct effects of intrinsic motivation and extrinsic rewards on radical and incremental creativity: The moderating role of goal orientations

• Author: Arif Nazir Butt,Jin Nam Choi,Muhammad Abdur Rahman Malik
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2403
• Published date: 01 December 2019
• Date: 01 December 2019

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Distinct effects of intrinsic motivation and extrinsic rewards on

radical and incremental creativity: The moderating role of goal

orientations

Muhammad Abdur Rahman Malik

1

|Jin Nam Choi

2

|Arif Nazir Butt

1

1

Suleman Dawood School of Business, Lahore

University of Management Sciences, Lahore,

Pakistan

2

Graduate School of Business, Seoul National

University, Seoul, South Korea

Correspondence

Jin Nam Choi, Professor of Organizational

Behavior, Graduate School of Business, Seoul

National University, 1 Gwanak‐ro, Gwanak‐gu,

Seoul 151‐916, South Korea.

Email: jnchoi@snu.kr

Summary

Previous studies have investigated the role of intrinsic motivation and extrinsic

rewards in enhancing employee creativity. However, the possibility that these moti-

vational factors affect the creativity of different types remains largely unexplored,

particularly in the organizational settings. Moreover, the potential that personality

traits may moderate the function of these motivational factors toward creativity

is another underresearched area. By drawing on the person–situation interaction

perspective, we propose that both intrinsic motivation and extrinsic rewards predict

creativity but of different types. Thus, we diverge from the view that creativity is a

uniform criterion domain by adopting the distinction between radical and incremen-

tal creativity. Our empirical analysis of 220 independent employee–supervisor

dyads confirmed that intrinsic motivation and extrinsic rewards predict radical

and incremental creativity, respectively. Moreover, the effects of intrinsic motiva-

tion on radical and incremental creativity are more positive for employees with

higher learning goal orientation. By contrast, the effect of extrinsic rewards on

incremental creativity is more positive for employees with higher performance goal

orientation. This study offers elaborate and nuanced perspectives and insights into

the role of different motivational processes in the development of different types

of creativity.

KEYWORDS

extrinsic rewards, goal orientation, incremental creativity, intrinsic motivation, radical creativity

1|INTRODUCTION

Employee creativity is a critical success factor for contemporary orga-

nizations (Anderson, Potočnik, & Zhou, 2014). Given the increasing

appreciation for workplace creativity, organizations design various

interventions to promote employee creativity (Amabile, 1996), and

researchers exert considerable efforts to identify its predictors (Hirst,

Knippenberg, & Zhou, 2009; Malik, Butt, & Choi, 2015). Despite the

intensity of this research stream, creativity researchers must continue

resolving several unsettled issues. A recent issue relates to the classi-

fication of different types of creativity and the identification of

antecedents and boundary conditions of each creativity type (Malik

& Butt, 2017). Another issue concerns the importance of intrinsic

motivation versus extrinsic rewards in promoting creativity (Gerhart

& Fang, 2015). The current study aims to combine these debates

and address them by studying the effects of intrinsic motivation and

extrinsic rewards on different types of creativity and by identifying

the boundary conditions within which these effects occur.

For decades, creativity has been conceptualized and operational-

ized as a unidimensional construct, often defined as the generation

of novel and useful ideas (Amabile, 1996; Shalley, Zhou, & Oldham,

2004). However, recent scholars increasingly discussed distinct types

Received: 4 June 2017 Revised: 19 April 2019 Accepted: 26 June 2019

DOI: 10.1002/job.2403

J Organ Behav. 2019;40:1013–1026. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job 1013