Proactive Personality and Ambidextrous Creativity: Assessing the Mediating Role of Role Breadth Self-Efficacy and the Moderating Role of Support for Creativity

This research built a theoretical model and tested psychological process and boundary condition linking proactive personality to employees' ambidextrous creativity by introducing role breadth self-efficacy as the mediator and support for creativity as the moderator. Using survey data from 400 executives of start-up companies in China, we found that, as anticipated, proactive personality positively affected ambidextrous creativity. Role breadth self-efficacy fully mediated the effects of proactive personality on ambidextrous creativity. Support for creativity moderated the link between proactive personality and ambidextrous creativity: ambidextrous creativity was higher in response to high proactive personality when support for creativity was high. These results yielded important implications regarding how to improve managers' creative performance at work.