IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jobhdp/v167y2021icp144-156.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Better to give than to receive (or seek) help? The interpersonal dynamics of maintaining a reputation for creativity

Author

Listed:
  • Carnevale, Joel B.
  • Huang, Lei
  • Vincent, Lynne C.
  • Farmer, Steven
  • Wang, Lin

Abstract

Prior research suggests that the broader social environment in which employees develop, refine, and share their ideas is crucial in promoting creativity. But employees might not always be willing to interact with their coworkers in ways conducive to the development of creative outcomes, particularly if they become overly concerned about establishing and preserving others’ perceptions of their creative ability. Using both field and experimental studies, we integrate the impression management framework and the creativity-relevant helping literatures to investigate the psychological pressures and calculative interpersonal behaviors that stem from employees’ engagement in creative work. Results across three studies provide converging evidence that, due to the arousal of creative reputation maintenance concerns (CRMC), creative individuals (relative to their less creative counterparts) engage in less creativity help-seeking and more creativity help-giving, and these effects are strengthened when individuals have previously received help from others. We discuss the implications and limitations of this work and provide future research directions.

Suggested Citation

  • Carnevale, Joel B. & Huang, Lei & Vincent, Lynne C. & Farmer, Steven & Wang, Lin, 2021. "Better to give than to receive (or seek) help? The interpersonal dynamics of maintaining a reputation for creativity," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 144-156.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jobhdp:v:167:y:2021:i:c:p:144-156
    DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2021.08.006
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749597821000832
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.obhdp.2021.08.006?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Tyler, Tom R. & Blader, Steven L., 2002. "Autonomous vs. comparative status: Must we be better than others to feel good about ourselves?," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 89(1), pages 813-838, September.
    2. Andrew B. Hargadon & Beth A. Bechky, 2006. "When Collections of Creatives Become Creative Collectives: A Field Study of Problem Solving at Work," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 17(4), pages 484-500, August.
    3. Bozeman, Dennis P. & Kacmar, K. Michele, 1997. "A Cybernetic Model of Impression Management Processes in Organizations," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 9-30, January.
    4. Lee, Fiona, 1997. "When the Going Gets Tough, Do the Tough Ask for Help? Help Seeking and Power Motivation in Organizations," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 72(3), pages 336-363, December.
    5. Emich, Kyle J. & Vincent, Lynne C., 2020. "Shifting focus: The influence of affective diversity on team creativity," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 156(C), pages 24-37.
    6. Redmond, Matthew R. & Mumford, Michael D. & Teach, Richard, 1993. "Putting Creativity to Work: Effects of Leader Behavior on Subordinate Creativity," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 55(1), pages 120-151, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Berg, Justin M. & Duguid, Michelle M. & Goncalo, Jack A. & Harrison, Spencer H. & Miron-Spektor, Ella, 2023. "Escaping irony: Making research on creativity in organizations more creative," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 175(C).
    2. Yan, Liuxin & Emil Chai, Valentino & Chi Yam, Kai, 2024. "Demeaning extrinsic motivation leads to increased perceptions of hypocrisy," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 180(C).
    3. Schlund, Rachel & Bohns, Vanessa K., 2025. "“You knew what you were getting into”: Perspective differences in gauging informed consent," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 186(C).
    4. Zhang, Long & Zhang, Chuang & Shen, Ya Xi & Liu, Haiping, 2025. "Why being labeled “creative” triggers employees’ unethical pro-organizational behavior: The role of felt obligation for constructive change and Machiavellianism," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).
    5. Zaggl, Michael A. & Müller, Matthias, 2024. "Creativity reputation allocation in open and distributed innovation," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Parke, Michael R. & Seo, Myeong Gu & Hu, Xiaoran & Jin, Sirkwoo, 2022. "The creative and cross-functional benefits of wearing hearts on sleeves: authentic affect climate, information elaboration, and team creativity," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 124434, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. Mingdan Han & Ran Li & Wenjing Wang & Zehou Sun & Jiaming Zhang & Haokun Han, 2022. "The Effect of Mutual Help Behavior on Employee Creativity—Based on the Recipient’s Perspective," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(18), pages 1-22, September.
    3. Haeussler, Carolin & Vieth, Sabrina, 2022. "A question worth a million: The expert, the crowd, or myself? An investigation of problem solving," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(3).
    4. Sirkka L. Jarvenpaa & Ann Majchrzak, 2010. "Research Commentary ---Vigilant Interaction in Knowledge Collaboration: Challenges of Online User Participation Under Ambivalence," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 21(4), pages 773-784, December.
    5. Lee, Gilsoo & Cho, Sam Yul & Arthurs, Jonathan & Lee, Eun Kyung, 2020. "Celebrity CEO, identity threat, and impression management: Impact of celebrity status on corporate social responsibility," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 69-84.
    6. Zamrudi Zakky & Wicaksono Teguh, 2018. "Promoting the Use of Social Commerce on SME in the Context of Logistics: UTAUT Model Examination," LOGI – Scientific Journal on Transport and Logistics, Sciendo, vol. 9(2), pages 73-82, November.
    7. Panourgias, Nikiforos S. & Nandhakumar, Joe & Scarbrough, Harry, 2014. "Entanglements of creative agency and digital technology: A sociomaterial study of computer game development," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 111-126.
    8. Parjanen, Satu & Hyypiä, Mirva, 2019. "Innotin game supporting collective creativity in innovation activities," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 26-34.
    9. Brian Whitaker & Lindsey Godwin, 2013. "The Antecedents of Moral Imagination in the Workplace: A Social Cognitive Theory Perspective," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 114(1), pages 61-73, April.
    10. Amaral, Christopher & Kolsarici, Ceren, 2020. "The financial advice puzzle: The role of consumer heterogeneity in the advisor choice," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    11. Erhan Boğan & Bekir Bora Dedeoğlu, 2020. "Hotel employees' corporate social responsibility perception and organizational citizenship behavior: Perceived external prestige and pride in organization as serial mediators," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 27(5), pages 2342-2353, September.
    12. Jung, Eunjun & Lee, Changjun & Hwang, Junseok, 2022. "Effective strategies to attract crowdfunding investment based on the novelty of business ideas," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 178(C).
    13. Hao Kong & Warren CK Chiu & Humphrey KW Leung, 2019. "Building creative self-efficacy via learning goal orientation, creativity job requirement, and team learning behavior: The key to employee creativity," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 44(3), pages 443-461, August.
    14. Alder, G. Stoney & Ambrose, Maureen L., 2005. "An examination of the effect of computerized performance monitoring feedback on monitoring fairness, performance, and satisfaction," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 97(2), pages 161-177, July.
    15. Andrew B. Hargadon & Beth A. Bechky, 2006. "When Collections of Creatives Become Creative Collectives: A Field Study of Problem Solving at Work," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 17(4), pages 484-500, August.
    16. Cromwell, Johnathan R. & Harvey, Jean-François, 2025. "A problem half-solved is a problem well-stated: Increasing the rate of innovation through team problem discovery," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 54(3).
    17. Rizova, Polly S. & Gupta, Samir & Maltz, Elliot N. & Walker, Robert W., 2018. "Overcoming equivocality on projects in the fuzzy front end: Bringing social networks back in," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 40-55.
    18. Wu, Qiang & Dbouk, Wassim & Hasan, Iftekhar & Kobeissi, Nada & Zheng, Li, 2021. "Does gender affect innovation? Evidence from female chief technology officers," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(9).
    19. Susanne Ollila & Anna Yström & Marine Agogué, 2013. "Stepping out of the zone of territorial protection enables open innovation collaboration," Post-Print hal-00931185, HAL.
    20. Menike Atapattu & Gayani Ranawake, 2017. "Transformational and Transactional Leadership Behaviours and their Effect on Knowledge Workers' Propensity for Knowledge Management Processes," Journal of Information & Knowledge Management (JIKM), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 16(03), pages 1-23, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jobhdp:v:167:y:2021:i:c:p:144-156. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/obhdp .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.