Crafting job demands and employee creativity: A diary study

People are more creative on some days than others. Studying how individuals generate creative ideas from day to day could contribute to knowledge regarding the causes of such within-person variations and have practical implications for improving employee creativity across time. By adopting a dynamic resource allocation perspective and a repeated-measure diary design, we developed and examined a theoretical model focusing on the within-person processes of employee creativity. Specifically, we hypothesized that momentary role-breadth self-efficacy predicts daily changes in increasing job challenges, which, in turn, predicts daily changes in employee creativity, and that the latter relationship is accentuated by decreasing hindering demands. Results, based on 818 pairs of matched morning-afternoon observations from 91 employees over 10 workdays, provided support for our predictions. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these results for improving employee daily creativity.