Demystifying the Role of Slack Resources and Paradox Mindset for Organizational Creativity in Family and Non-Family Firms

Purpose: The objective of the article is to explain mutual relationships between paradox mindset, slack resources, and organizational creativity in family and non-family businesses. The paper focuses on identifying similarities and differences between these two types of organizations. Design/methodology/approach: To investigate the relationships of our paper, we conducted empirical quantitative research on the sample of 343 Polish family and non-family businesses. The data were gathered in the fall of 2019. To assess the differences between family and non-family companies, we followed the recommendations of SEM multigroup analyses; thus, two estimations were made for every model – one where relationships between variables were restricted, and one where variables were unrestricted. Findings: We conclude that slack resources, financial and material, in particular, explain the variability of organizational creativity (operationalized in two dimensions: as creative novelty and as creative usefulness) to a great extent in both types of organization. At the same time, the paradox mindset leads to increased creative novelty in family businesses while it is unimportant in their non-family counterparts. Overall, the differences between the models of determinants of organizational creativity in family and non-family firms are not statistically significant in the present study. Research limitations/implications: The research results prove that slack resources are a necessary condition of organizational creativity in both family and non-family businesses. We believe that future research on the determinants of organizational creativity dimensions in family and non-family firms should consider more determinants, including organizational culture, strategy, mission, resource availability, organizational learning, and change management. Originality/value: The contribution of our study lies in developing the paradox mindset theory by conducting an analysis at the level of the entire organization, which has not attracted the attention of researchers so far. This study also provides arguments for the validity of the conceptualization and measurement of the paradox mindset in a one-dimensional approach.