Employee Radical and Incremental Creativity: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Employee creativity is essential for contemporary companies to survive and gain competitive advantages. Although previous studies have made efforts to identify organizational factors that improve or hinder employee creativity, a better understanding is still needed regarding the differences between radical and incremental creativity, especially the different mechanisms of how organizational factors impact two types of creativity. To address this issue, we aim to provide a systematic review through which to identify different antecedents that affect radical and incremental creativity, respectively, based on componential theory of creativity. At first, we clarified the definitions and measurements of radical and incremental creativity. Then, we categorized the antecedents of radical and incremental creativity to develop an integrative framework. Last but not least, we identified the different organizational factors regarding how to improve radical and incremental creativity. We also address several future research directions.