The influence of social relationship quality on employee creativity

摘要

Using survey data from 398 professional or technical workers and their direct supervisors in a large automobile manufacturing enterprise, we built and tested a model to connect the quality of two main social exchange relationships (leader-member exchange: LMX, team-member exchange: TMX) and employee creativity. The results of our study showed that both LMX quality and TMX quality positively related to employees' intrinsic motivation, which in turn has a positive influence on employee creativity. Furthermore, moderate effect analysis showed that creative self-efficacy weakened LMX quality's positive effect on intrinsic motivation but had no significant negative moderate effect on TMX quality's influence on intrinsic motivation. Future research directions and limitations of the study were also discussed.