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Introduction
The 2019-nCoV virus outbreak in early 2020 took Chinese business by surprise when all business was halted. The pandemic also made it possible for Chinese businesses to develop innovative ways to keep their businesses alive. Prior to the outbreak, the drive for innovation was most often reactive instead of proactive in China’s business environment (Li and Reimers, 2015). To provide companies with proper implementation strategies for the future, findings in prior research prompt scholars to further investigate how Chinese companies develop innovative ideas. Chinese organizations are influenced by government policy and societal culture, where most small and medium-sized companies are propelled by the inertia of the most suitable and comfortable way to do business. This implies that company performance is based on the value, culture, experience and behavior that is most comfortable to both employees and leadership. When there is a drastic change in government policy or there are major global market fluctuations, such companies will not be able to react rapidly. This is why employee creative performance is so important for Chinese companies in their daily routines.
From the perspective of management practice, the innovation of an enterprise cannot be separated from the active participation of all employees. Therefore, employee creative performance, where a creative idea, which is beneficial to the overall progress of the organization and its results (Oldham and Cummings, 1996), plays a crucial role in the realization of enterprise innovation and is the inexhaustible source of driving force for continuous creativity (Acar et al., 2019). Employee creative performance is different from employee creative behaviors, but is closely related to it. Its core is performance, which includes not only the starting point and process of creative activities but also the creative results (Janssen and Van Yperen, 2004). In other words, creative performance is an organic entity that covers the entire process from the generation of creative ideas to the taking of actions and the realization of creative results (Janssen and Van Yperen, 2004).
With the current reactive innovative behavior in China, this study suggests that it is more relevant to look at creativity from an individual level, especially when more and more millennials are entering the labor market. Prior research suggests that Chinese millennial employees are driving transformation in businesses...