How job complexity fosters employee creativity: a contextualized growth perspective and the mechanism of feedback-seeking

Purpose Drawing on the work design growth model (WDGM), this paper aims to explore the relationship between job complexity and employee creativity through feedback-seeking and the moderating effect of team leaders with a growth creative mindset. Design/methodology/approach The authors used an online survey to test the hypotheses. Data was collected in three waves from 74 supervisors and 349 paired employees in China. Findings Job complexity had a positive association with employees’ feedback-seeking, which further linked to employee creativity. This indirect effect was stronger in work teams with leaders endorsing a growth creative mindset. Practical implications Job complexity has become prevalent in organizations today. Taking daily complexity as a resource for nurturing employee creativity may balance organizations’ costs on formal training and give them more initiatives in long-term development. In addition, as the growth creative mindset is relatively easy to assess and change, it may bring insights in terms of creativity development. Originality/value By empirically testing the behavioural mechanism of WDGM, the learning and development perspective of work design offers a new explanation of the relationship between job complexity and employee creativity. The authors further extend WDGM by identifying leaders’ growth creative mindset to be a boundary condition.