The impact of anger on creative process engagement: The role of social contexts

• Date: 01 May 2018
• Author: Qin Zhou,Aristides I. Ferreira,Carla Gomes Costa
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2249
• Published date: 01 May 2018

RESEARCH ARTICLE

The impact of anger on creative process engagement: The role

of social contexts

Carla Gomes da Costa

1

|Qin Zhou

2

|Aristides I. Ferreira

1

1

Business Research Unit, ISCTE ‐Instituto

Universitário de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal

2

Durham University Business School, Durham

University, Durham, U.K.

Correspondence

Qin Zhou, Durham University Business School,

Durham University Durham, U.K.

Email: qin.zhou@durham.ac.uk

Summary

Drawing on the cognitive persistence perspective of creativity and conservation of resources the-

ory, we investigated how 2 social contexts (perceived relationship conflict and coworker support

for creativity) influence the relationship between anger and creative process engagement(CPE) in

organizations. We tested our hypotheses using 422 daily surveys from 98 participants, collected

over 5 consecutive workdays. The results show that anger perceived relationship conflict and

coworker support for creativity interact to influence CPE. Specifically, when relationship conflict

is high, the anger–CPE relationship is positive for employees who receive high coworker support

for creativity, but negative for those who receive low coworker support for creativity. In contrast,

when relationship conflict is low, the anger–CPE relationship is positive but does not differ at

high versus low coworker support for creativity.

KEYWORDS

anger, coworkersupport for creativity,creative process engagement,perceived relationship conflict

1|INTRODUCTION

As employee creativity or the generation of new and useful ideas to

improve products, services, and processes has become an important

source of competitive advantage (Anderson, Potočnik, & Zhou, 2014;

Drazin, Kazanjian, & Glynn, 2008; Zhang & Bartol, 2010), organizations

are increasingly seeking to cultivate employee creativity. To bring

creative ideas into fruition, employees not only need to actively

engage in internal cognitive processes (e.g., identifying and defining

problems, searching relevant information, and generating new ideas),

but also effectively interact with significant others such as coworkers

(Amabile, Conti, Coon, Lazenby, & Herron, 1996). Organizations thus

face the challenge of how to foster individual creative processes in

an increasingly interdependent work environment.

Given its implications for facilitating creative processes and

outcomes (Amabile, 1996; Gilson & Shalley, 2004; Zhang & Bartol,

2010), creative process engagement (CPE), has attracted much

research attention. CPE refers to a motivational process in which

individuals seek “cognitively, behaviorally and emotionally”to produce

creative outcomes (Drazin et al., 2008, p. 269). A number of empirical

studies have explored antecedents and boundary conditions of CPE

(e.g., To, Fisher, Ashkanasy,, & Rowe, 2012; Zhang & Bartol, 2010;

Q. Zhou & Pan, 2015). Although much is now known about CPE and

despite the documented influence of emotions on work engagement

(Kahn, 1990), the question of how employees' affective experiences

at work influence their motivation to engage in creative processes still

remains poorly understood (Ashkanasy & Dorris, 2017; Brief & Weiss,

2002; Drazin et al., 2008; To, Tse, & Ashkanasy, 2015). In particular,

previous studies have neither adequately addressed the motivational

and behavioral implications of discrete emotions such as anger for

CPE (Amabile, Barsade, Mueller, & Staw, 2005; Baas, De Dreu, &

Nijstad, 2008; Brief & Weiss, 2002; Davis, 2009; Raghunathan &

Pham, 1999), nor have they fully taken social contexts into account

to identify the circumstances under which emotions may or may not

lead to CPE (Davis, 2009; González‐Gómez & Richter, 2015; To

et al., 2012). Examining how anger, one of the most frequently

experienced and recognized discrete emotions in organizational con-

texts (Averill, 1982), influences CPE in different social contexts would

shed light on the unclear impact of emotions on CPE.

Although most of the research on anger in organizational contexts

has focused on negative workplace behaviors (e.g., Barclay, Skarlicki, &

Pugh, 2005; Geddes & Callister, 2007; Rodell & Judge, 2009),

researchers have recently debated whether anger can be functional

and adaptive leading to positive workplace behaviors such as creativity

(Gibson & Callister, 2010). Indeed, anger has been shown to be predic-

tive of creativity in laboratory settings (Baas et al., 2008). However,

Received: 16 November 2015 Revised: 29 September 2017 Accepted: 22 October 2017

DOI: 10.1002/job.2249

J Organ Behav. 2018;39:495–506. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job 495