Wearing Different Hats Enriches Outside the Box Thinking: Examining the Relationship Between Personal Life Activity Breadth and Creativity at Work

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Daniel, Victoria L.; Zhan, Yujie
• 署名单位: Wilfrid Laurier University; York University - Canada
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0021-9010
• DOI: 10.1037/apl0001098
• 发表日期: 2023
• 页码: 1881-1901
• 关键词: work-life enrichment; personal life activity breadth; cognitive developmental resources; creativity at work; construal level

摘要

People wear many salient hats across the different parts of their lives and recent advances in the work-life literature have called attention to the necessary addition of personal life activities to be studied as a unique facet of nonwork to better understand interrole relationships. We therefore draw on enrichment theory to examine why and when employees' participation in personal life activities can positively influence creativity at work through nonwork cognitive developmental resources. Moreover, by integrating insights from construal level theory, this research sheds new light on the ways people think about their personal life activities as playing a discernible role in how people can generate and/or apply resources from their activities. Results of two multiwave studies revealed that people who tend to engage in a greater breadth of personal life activities can gain nonwork cognitive developmental resources (i.e., skills, knowledge, and perspectives) that, in turn, enhance their creativity at work. Personal life construal level also moderated the resource generation stage of enrichment, but not resource application to work; people who adopted lower construal level (i.e., more concretely: how they do activities) were more likely to generate cognitive developmental resources from their participation in personal life activities versus those with higher construal level (i.e., more abstractly: why they do activities). This research meets at the convergence of real-world trends on parallel work and nonwork sides of the interface as well as offers novel and nuanced theoretical insights into instrumental personal life-to-work enrichment processes which can benefit employees and organizations alike.