Job characteristics and millennial employees’ creative performance: a dual-process model

Abstract

Purpose

Based on previous research on millennial employee management in China, this study aims to extend the understanding of the underlining mechanisms and boundary conditions between job characteristics and millennial employee creative performance. Drawing on the self-determination theory and the theory of situation interaction, this study proposes hedonic and eudaimonic well-being as dual mediators, to explain the positive effect of job characteristics on millennial employees’ creative performance. Further, the study proposes that inclusive leadership and achieving styles could separately moderate these two mediation paths.

Design/methodology/approach

The data comprises information on 288 millennial employees in China.

Findings

The results show that both hedonic and eudaimonic well-being mediate the positive effect of job characteristics on millennial employees’ creative performance. The positive effect of job characteristics on millennial employees’ hedonic well-being is stronger when inclusive leadership is stronger; and the positive effect of millennial employees’ hedonic well-being on creative performance is stronger when direct achieving style and instrumental achieving style are stronger. There was no significant moderating effect of inclusive leadership on the relationship between job characteristics and millennial employees’ eudaimonic well-being, and no significant moderating effect of achieving style on the relationship between millennial employees’ eudaimonic well-being and creative performance. Job characteristics exerted a positive indirect effect on employees’ creative performance through employees’ hedonic well-being and that this cascading effect was moderated by inclusive leadership, direct achieving style and instrumental achieving style.

Practical implications

The findings have important implications for both job design practices and employee performance research. Organizations should pay more attention to improving the creative performance of millennials employees through innovative job design or other organizational level motivational drivers. At the same time, the findings in this study align with the findings in Sheldon et al. (2018) study where extrinsic values rather than toward intrinsic values will bring improved hedonic well-being to the individual in the short term. One further practical implication is that if organizations need a short-term boost of creative performance from their millennial employees, organizations can provide more extrinsic motivators. When organizations want to see more long-term creative performance results, intrinsic motivators should be established.

Originality/value

As part of a series of research on Chinese millennial employee management, this paper extends existing research results. First, the authors verify the main effect relationship between job characteristics and employee creative performance. Second, based on the self-determination theory, this study constructs a dual mediation model and tests the mediating effect of hedonic and eudaimonic well-being between job characteristics and employee creative performance. Third, considering the situational characteristics of the study, the authors propose the boundary conditions of the relationship between job characteristics and creative performance from two levels of individual characteristics and leadership types, namely, inclusive leadership and achieving style.

Citation

Zhang, M. and Zhao, Y. (2021), "Job characteristics and millennial employees’ creative performance: a dual-process model", Chinese Management Studies, Vol. 15 No. 4, pp. 876-900. https://doi.org/10.1108/CMS-07-2020-0317