Content area
Full Text
Abstract
Telework as a new and flexible form of working is becoming increasingly popular among professional employees. Notwithstanding the rapid growth of telework among the professional employees, their creativity is surprisingly under explored. Following this gap the present study was intended to examine the effect of autonomy on creativity of professional teleworkers through creative self-efficacy. We conducted a web survey with a self-administered questionnaire among the professional employees engage in telework in software developing companies, Sri Lanka. The survey resulted in 132 effective responses. The results showed that the positive and significant impact of autonomy on creativity of professional teleworkers. Creative self-efficacy fully mediated the effect of autonomy on creativity. This study extends the views of componential theory and self-regulation theory in the context of telework. We discuss the implications of the findings as well.
Key words: creativity, autonomy, creative self-efficacy, telework, professional teleworkers
Introduction
Organizations ability to unleash employees' creativity is concerned as a key to success in dynamic environment. Creativity refers to "products, ideas, or procedures that satisfy two conditions; (1) they are novel or original and (2) they are potentially relevant for, or useful to, an organization" (Oldham & Cummings, 1996, p. 608). The individual creativity is at the heart of subsequent organizational innovations (Oldham & Cummings, 1996; Shalley & Gilson, 2004). In recognizing the critical role of individual creativity, there have been studies that examined creativity at individual level (e.g., Gong, Huang, & Farh, 2009; Perry-Smith and Shalley, 2003; Liu, Jiang, Shalley, Keem, & Zhou, 2016; Shalley, Gilson, & Blum, 2009; Volmer, Spurk, & Niessen, 2012).
Telework has become a popular form of working due to the widespread usage of computers and internet. Telework refers to "an alternative work arrangement in which employees perform tasks elsewhere that are normally done in a primary or central workplace, for at least some portion of their work schedule, using electronic media to interact with others inside and outside the organization' ' (Gajendran & Harrison, 2007, p. 1525). At present many professional employees engage in telework (Taskin & Bridoux, 2010). Creativity is "particularly [important] for the professional worker who uses unseen and unobservable inputs like intellect, the ability to incorporate unique and effective twists should help him or her stand out from the crowd"...