Does Role Conflict Fuel Employee Creativity? Evidence for a Curvilinear Relationship Moderated by Mindfulness
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Purpose – This study aims to clarify to what extent and under what conditions role conflict is positively related to employee creativity. Building on activation theory and conservation of resource theory, we hypothesized an inverted U-shaped relationship between role conflict and creativity in which the relationship is stronger and positive at intermediate levels of role conflict. Additionally, we predicted that this curvilinear path would be moderated by mindfulness, such that the beneficial effects of a moderate level of role conflict would hold only for employees with high levels of mindfulness. \nDesign/Methodology/Approach/Intervention – We conducted two independent studies – a cross-sectional study among 123 employees from an Italian firm and a time-lagged study among 134 employees from various Canadian firms – to test our hypotheses. \nResults – Consistent with our predictions, polynomial regression analysis results provided evidence for an inverted U-shaped relationship between role conflict and creativity. Moreover, when mindfulness was high (versus low), intermediate levels of role conflict were associated with increased creativity. \nLimitations – The self-report nature of our studies raises issues of common method variance. \nResearch/Practical implications – Our findings enhance current understanding of the conditions under which different levels of role conflict boost or impair creativity at work, and offer new insights into how employee can maintain an optimal level of creativity in spite of conflict role demands. \nOriginality/Value – This is the first study to document non-linear relationships between role conflict and employee creativity, as well as to identify mindfulness as a boundary condition shaping the creativity-enhancing effects of role conflict.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.012 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".