Interpersonal harmony and creativity in China

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2001
• Published date: 01 July 2015
• Author: Kwok Leung,Tingting Chen,Fuli Li,Zhanying Ou
• Date: 01 July 2015

Interpersonal harmony and creativity in China

TINGTING CHEN

1

, KWOK LEUNG

2

, FULI LI

3

*AND ZHANYING OU

4

*

1

Department of Management, Lingnan University, Tuen Mun, Hong Kong

2

Department of Management, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong

3

School of Management, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, Shaanxi, China

4

School of Business Administration, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou, China

Summary This research examined the influence of interpersonal harmony on employee creativity in China. The dualistic

model of harmony differentiates harmony enhancement, a genuine desire for a harmonious and mutually

beneficial interpersonal relationship, from disintegration avoidance, a tendency to avoid the disruption of

an interpersonal relationship to protect self-interest. A survey in China showed that the harmony enhancement

motive had a positive relationship, and the disintegration avoidance motive had a negative relationship, with

creativity mediated by creative effort. Reward for creativity showed different moderating effects on the two

mediated relationships, such that it mitigated the positive relationship between harmony enhancement and

creativity mediated by creative effort, and buffered the negative relationship between disintegration avoidance

and creativity mediated by creative effort. We replicated some major findings with a multi-wave survey study

and provided direct evidence for the underlying mechanisms that account for the opposite relationships

between the two harmony motives and creative effort. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Keywords: harmony motives; creative effort; creativity; reward for creativity

Interpersonal Harmony and Creativity in China

As the business environment is increasingly dynamic and demanding, companies that seek a competitive edge rely

on creativity from individual employees (Gong, Zhou, & Chang, 2013). Research on employee creativity, defined as

the generation of novel and useful ideas for products, services, or work procedures (Amabile, 1996; Oldham &

Cummings, 1996), has proliferated over the past decade, and a variety of organizational, team, and individual ante-

cedents have been identified (for reviews, see Zhou & Shalley, 2011; Shalley, Zhou, & Oldham, 2004). More re-

cently, some studies compare individual creativity across nations and explore cultural factors that are related to

individual creativity (e.g., Kim, 2007; Morris & Leung, 2010; Zhou & Su, 2010). These studies contribute to a more

comprehensive understanding of the antecedents of individual creativity.

In the nascent area of culture and creativity, the relationship between Chinese culture and creativity has received

considerable attention. Some cross-cultural studies report that Chinese students generally score lower than their West-

ern counterpartsin creativity tests (e.g.,Jaquish & Ripple, 1984; Jellen & Urban, 1989; Ng,2001; Wong & Niu, 2013),

supporting the conjecture that Chinese culture obstructs creativity (Kim, 2009). However, some studies found that

Chinese students performed as well as, or even outperformed, their Western counterparts in creativity tests (e.g., Chan

et al., 2001; Chenet al., 2002; Niu & Sternberg, 2002; Rudowicz, Lok, & Kitto, 1995;Van Harpen & Sriraman, 2013).

These mixed findingssuggest a complex relationship between Chinese cultural characteristics and thecreative propen-

sity of Chinese. Furthermore, most cross-cultural research on creativity is conducted with students, and it is important

to examine the relationship between Chinese culture and creativity in organizational settings.

*Correspondence to: Zhanying Ou, 230 Wai Huan Xi Road, Guangzhou Higher Education Mega Center, Guangzhou, China, 510006. E-mail:

zhyou@gzhu.edu.cn or Fuli Li, School of Management, Xi’an Jiaotong University, No. 28, Xianning West Road, Xi’an, Shaanxi, China, 710049.

E-mail: fuli@mail.xjtu.edu.cn

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 06 February 2014

Revised 24 December 2014, Accepted 06 January 2015

Journal of Organizational Behavior, J. Organiz. Behav. 36, 648–672 (2015)

Published online 6 March 2015 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/job.2001

Special Issue Article

The effects of some Chinese cultural characteristics on individual creativity have been studied, such as relational

orientation tapped by face and renqing (Leung, Chen, Zhou, & Lim, 2014), zhongyong (Yao, Yang, Dong, & Wang,

2010), and benevolent leadership (Wang & Cheng, 2010). These indigenous Chinese concepts are novel to the

Western literature and may provide new theoretical insight into individual creativity (Leung & Wang, in press).

To extend this line of research, the present investigation aims to identify an important yet under-researched charac-

teristic of Chinese culture—harmony—and explore its relationship with creativity of employees.

Harmony is a central value in Confucianism, and the Analects states that “Of the things brought about by the rites,

harmony is the most valuable”(Lau, 1983). The maintenance of harmonious relationships with other social actors is

a core characteristic of Chinese culture (Abbot, 1970; Hwang, 1987). The Confucian value of harmony is often in-

voked to explain the tendency of Chinese people to conform and deemphasize creativity (Kim, 2007; Niu, 2012).

Creativity involves significant interpersonal risk and may evoke conflict and tension with others (Janssen, 2003),

so that people emphasizing interpersonal harmony may hesitate to invest effort in creative activities because of their

worry about interpersonal risk. The account that interpersonal harmony suppresses creativity in Chinese culture may

seem reasonable, but we argue it is over-simplistic because interpersonal harmony is not single faceted (Huang,

1999; Hwang, 1997–1998; Leung, Koch, & Lu, 2002). Our research attempts to unravel the nuanced relationship

between harmony and creativity by scrutinizing two distinct dimensions of harmony—harmoy enhancement and

disintegration avoidance—and their different relationships with creativity.

Based on a review of classical Confucian doctrines, Leung and colleagues (Leung, 1997; Leung & Brew, 2009;

Leung, Brew, Zhang, & Zhang, 2011; Leung et al., 2002) concluded that the Confucian notion of harmony presup-

poses the value of differences and advocates the maintenance of harmony through active reconciliation of differ-

ences, which often “embodies disagreement and open debate”(Leung et al., 2002, p. 201). This Confucian notion

is very different from the notion of harmony commonly ascribed to Chinese people, namely, the tendencey to con-

form and avoid conflict. To capture these conceptual differences, Leung et al. proposed a dualistic model of har-

mony, which distinguishes two dispositional orientations regarding how individuals manage their interpersonal

relationships. Harmony enhancement is consistent with the conceptualization of harmony in classical Confucianism.

It represents an approach tendency toward the establishment of genuinely harmonious and mutually respectful inter-

personal relationships and orients people toward active and productive handling of disagreements and conflict. In

contrast, disintegration avoidance is concerned with the negative consequences of a strained relationship and repre-

sents an avoidance tendency toward conflict and interpersonal disintegration. This harmony motive is primarily self-

serving and functions to protect oneself from the negative consequences of relationship disintegration. The dualistic

model of harmony is supported in China and Singapore (Lim, 2009) and in a sample of European Australians (Leung

et al., 2011). The construct of harmony enhancement is also supported in a sample of European Americans (Wei, Su,

Carrera, Lin, & Yi, 2013).

The two Chinese harmony concepts have been shown to have opposite relationships with innovative performance

mediated by perceived safety in communication (Wang, Leung, & Zhou, 2014). We seek to extend the research on

harmony and employee creativity in three significant ways. First, taking reference of classical Confucianism and

drawing from the theoretical analysis developed by Leung and his colleagues (e.g., Leung & Brew, 2009; Leung

et al., 2002; Leung et al., 2011), this research examines the effects of the two harmony motives on creativity from

the perspective of how they orient people toward the different handling of disagreements and conflict. Based on the

social regulation framework (e.g., Elliot, Gable, & Mapes, 2006; Gable, 2006; Gable & Impett, 2012) to be de-

scribed later and the conceptualizations of harmony motives, we identify creative effort as a key mediating mecha-

nism and develop a new theoretical perspective for the opposite effects of the two harmony motives on creativity.

Creative effort captures the different propensities of the two harmony motives to promote or suppress active,

productive problem solving when conflicting views and ideas are encountered, thus shedding new light on how

the emphasis of harmony in Chinese culture can both promote and obstruct creativity. The confirmation of the dif-

ferential effects of the two harmony motives also provides new insight into their conceptual distinctiveness.

Second, following the person–situation interactionist view (Shalley et al., 2004; Zhou & Hoever, 2014) and situ-

ational strength theory (Meyer, Dalal, & Hermida, 2010; Mischel, 1977), we examine whether reward for creativity,

INTERPERSONAL HARMONY AND CREATIVITY 649

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 36, 648–672 (2015)

DOI: 10.1002/job