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IJM
40,5
834
Received 15 May 2016
Revised 1 January 2019
Accepted 22 January 2019
International Journal of Manpower
Vol. 40 No. 5, 2019
pp. 834-849
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0143-7720
DOI 10.1108/IJM-05-2016-0108
Creativity-oriented HRM and
organizational creativity in China
A complementary perspective
of innovativeness
Zhigang Song, Qinxuan Gu and Boyi Wang
Department of Management and Organization,
Antai College of Economics and Management,
Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop a measurement of creativity-oriented HRM systems that
improve organizational creativity. This paper also aims to explore the mechanisms between them by
investigating the mediating role of innovative culture and the moderating role of customer orientation.
Design/methodology/approach – The study uses a sample of 82 knowledge-intensive companies with 780
respondents consisting of 145 HR professionals, 512 core knowledge workers and 123 top managers in China.
Exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and regression analysis are used to validate the
measure of creativity-oriented HRM systems and test hypotheses.
Findings – This study finds that creativity-oriented HRM systems are composed of three dimensions, which
are creative skill-enhancing practices, intrinsic motivation-enhancing practices and empowerment-enhancing
practices. These practices significantly improve organizational creativity through innovative culture.
Furthermore, customer orientation moderates the effect of innovative culture on organizational creativity in
such a way that the positive relationship is stronger when customer orientation is high.
Originality/value – This study contributes to the strategic human resource management literature by
developing and validating a measure of creativity-oriented HRM systems. Moreover, it also explores the mechanism
between creativity-oriented HRM systems and organizational creativity based on a complementary perspective of
innovativeness, which underlines the important mediating effect of innovative culture. More importantly, the
authors propose the significance of absorbing knowledge and information from customers and put forward the
moderating role that customer orientation plays, especially in an emerging country context such as China.
Keywords Customer orientation, Innovative culture
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Organizational creativity has been recognized as critical for organizational competitive
advantage and long-term survival (Anderson et al., 2014; Jeong and Shin, 2019). As an emerging
economy, China is going through the transformation from a global manufacturing powerhouse
to an innovation-oriented country as the labor cost advantage gradually diminishes (Li et al.,
2015). Since organizational creativity is defined as the creation of a valuable, useful new product,
service, procedure or process by individuals working together in a complex social system
(Woodman et al., 1993), it is associated with new and better solutions to organizational problems
and upgrading from labor-intensive companies. Thus, organizational creativity is urgently
needed and has been increasingly addressed in China (Li et al., 2015). Despite the importance of
creativity at organizational level, scholars have paid greater attention to individual and team
creativity (Fortwengel et al., 2016; Jeong and Shin, 2019), while studies at organizational level
have primarily focused on organizational innovation (Shin et al., 2013). Although organizational
creativity and organizational innovation are both related to new ideas, creativity should be
treated differently from innovation because innovation involves both generation and successful
The authors would like to thank the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos
71032003; 71402092) and the National Social Science Fund of China (Grant No. 17ZDA057).
implementation of ideas, and creativity can be regarded as the first step to achieve innovation HRM and
(Amabile, 1996; Sarooghi et al., 2015). Therefore, it is necessary to identify the factors that organizational
stimulate organizational creativity. A creative organization relies on its workforce to come up creativity
with creative ideas, yet considerably less research has been devoted to exploring the important
role that human resource management (HRM) plays in facilitating organizational creativity,
compared with other organizational contextual factors (Chang et al., 2014; Jiang, Wang and
Zhao, 2012). We thus focus on HRM as an antecedent of organizational creativity. Existing 835
research has proved the positive effect of strategic HRM (SHRM) on team or individual
creativity, such as high-performance work systems (Liu et al., 2017; Ma et al., 2017) and
high-commitment work systems (Chang et al., 2014). However, Wang and Horng (2002)
demonstrated that some human resource practices within existing SHRM systems were
positively related to employee creativity but some were not. Hence, systematically developing
supportive HRM systems to promote and sustain organizational creativity is essential. Given
this, we propose that creativity-oriented HRM systems, which are defined as a set of HRM
practices that effectively support organizational creativity by enabling employees to come up
with more new and useful ideas, may work better than general HRM practices to facilitate
organizational creativity.
The key purpose of this paper is to explore the construction of creativity-oriented HRM
systems and the mechanism of how creativity-oriented HRM systems affect organizational
creativity. First, based on the componential theory of creativity and the framework of
ability-motivation-opportunity model, we develop and validate a measure of creativity-
oriented HRM systems consisting of multiple complementary practices, and propose three
dimensions of creativity-oriented HRM systems: creative skill-enhancing practices, intrinsic
motivation-enhancing practices and empowerment-enhancing practices. Afterward, we offer
another lens through which to view the black box between creativity-oriented HRM systems
and organizational creativity. It is implied that HRM does not directly lead to organizational
performance, so understanding the transmission mechanism, namely the black box, is
essential to reveal how HRM influences organizational creativity, which is also receiving
increasing interest in the literature (Chowhan, 2016). In line with previous studies that
suggested HRM practices could provide information and influence the beliefs, values and
behaviors of employees, which in turn worked to create desired organizational culture
(Cabrera and Bonache, 1999), we contend that creativity-oriented HRM systems will convey
the importance and value of creativity to the employees and thus create an innovative culture,
which improve organizational creativity eventually.
Last but not the least, we aim to advance the literature by examining the moderating effect
of customer orientation on the relationship between innovative culture and organizational
creativity. According to the complementary perspective of innovativeness, external source of
knowledge is also needed to promote creativity besides the internal capabilities of firms
(Caloghirou et al., 2004). Therefore, the knowledge and information collected from customers
will benefit organizations with innovative culture and facilitate the generation of more useful
and new ideas. Because of the lack of reliable market information from well-established
market research intermediaries and the complex nature of customer demands, companies in
China are not able to rely on market research companies for market information and instead
need to be customer oriented to gather credible market information in order to produce
creative products that reflect customer preferences (Li et al., 2010). Thus, customer orientation
is supposed to be more important for Chinese companies to improve their creativity
performance. Growing evidence has shown that firms in emerging markets including China
are creative and are increasingly able to compete in international markets (Altenburg et al.,
2008), yet theoretical discussions and empirical tests related to organizational creativity in
emerging economies have been limited (Li et al., 2010). China as an emerging economy has
witnessed dramatic and rapid changes over the last few decades where market-based policies
IJM and customer benefit are usually highly valued. It thus presents a suitable empirical context
40,5 for examining the effect of customer orientation on the relationship between innovative
culture and organizational creativity.
The study is organized as follows. We begin by presenting the measurement development of
creativity-oriented HRM systems and how they are related to organizational creativity. Next,
we make efforts to unlock the “black box” between creativity-oriented HRM systems and
836 organizational creativity by explaining the mediating effect of innovative culture. Moreover,
we propose and examine the moderating effect of customer orientation on the relationship
between innovative culture and organizational creativity from the complementary perspective
of innovativeness (see Figure 1). With multisource data collected from 82 knowledge-intensive
companies in China, we then test our theoretical model and present the results. Finally, we
conclude by demonstrating the strategic value of creativity-oriented HRM systems and
discussing the important theoretical and practical implications.

Theoretical background and hypotheses

Creativity-oriented HRM systems and organizational creativity
The existing literature has categorized human resource practices into several sub-dimensions
with the assumption that various parts of HRM systems may have different effects on
employees and one of the most prominent frameworks is the ability-motivation-opportunity
model of SHRM ( Jiang, Lepak, Hu and Baer, 2012). Viewing employee performance as a
function of three essential components (ability, motivation and empowered opportunity to
perform), the ability–motivation–opportunity model has gained increasing attention (Chowhan,
2016; Subramony, 2009). In line with these studies, we adopt ability–motivation–opportunity
model as the framework in constructing creativity-oriented HRM systems. In order to verify the
applicability and to identify what kind of ability, motivation and empowerment HRM practices
are essential for organizational creativity, we look into the literature of creativity and draw on
the componential theory of creativity as another theoretical foundation. The componential
theory of creativity has become one of the most influential theoretical models for creativity
research in organizations (e.g. Zhang and Bartol, 2010). It indicates that employee creativity is
determined by domain relevant skills (including knowledge, expertise, technical skills,
intelligence and talent in the particular domain where the problem solver is working), creativity
relevant skills (including cognitive styles, personality characteristics and disciplined work
styles and skills that are conducive to generate ideas) and intrinsic motivation (Amabile, 1983).
In addition to these internal components, Amabile (1996) further improved the model by
suggesting that external components such as support and empowerment from the organization
are also essential for employee creativity. Accordingly, creativity-oriented HRM systems
should enhance employee creative skills, intrinsic motivation and empower employees with
more opportunities to be creative. We thus propose the three dimensions of creativity-oriented
HRM systems based on the componential theory of creativity: creative skill-enhancing
practices, intrinsic motivation-enhancing practices and empowerment-enhancing practices.
Therefore, we argue that creativity-oriented HRM systems improve organizational creativity
through improving the creative skills of employees, enhancing their intrinsic motivation and
providing them with opportunities to show their creativity. First, creative skill-enhancing
practices are designed to increase employee domain and creativity relevant knowledge, abilities

Customer orientation

Figure 1.
Proposed
conceptual model Creativity-oriented HRM systems Innovative culture Organizational creativity
and skills. Existing empirical studies have provided evidence for the positive relationship HRM and
between collective employee knowledge, abilities, skills and firm-level outcomes, we thus focus organizational
on employee creativity skills since individual creativity can be a powerful source of creativity
organizational creativity ( Jeong and Shin, 2019). Thus, creative skill-enhancing practices ensure
that employees are equipped with the required knowledge and skills to contribute to
organizational creativity. Second, intrinsic motivation-enhancing practices enhance employee
intrinsic motivation, which has been addressed to be essentially important for creativity in 837
organizations (e.g. Zhang and Bartol, 2010). Certain human resource practices, for instance,
proper performance appraisal, have been found to enhance employee intrinsic motivation
(Kuvaas, 2006). Moreover, Malik et al. (2015) showed that particular incentives and rewards can
positively affect intrinsic motivation. With a high level of intrinsic motivation, employees are
more willing to devote themselves to their work, take risks and engage in creative activities,
which are all helpful for organizational creativity.
Last, empowerment-enhancing practices play a critical role in stimulating high-level
creativity. Scholars have suggested that the most HRM practices have synergistic and
performance enhancing effects if they are combined with empowerment-enhancing practices
(Lepak et al., 2006). This set of HRM practices is aimed at facilitating employee participation and
voice using upward feedback mechanisms (Wood and Wall, 2007). With these practices,
employees have more opportunities to be involved in decision-making or to put forward their
thoughts, meaning that more creative ideas can be adopted by organizations, which benefits
organizational creativity. More importantly, these HRM practices will lead to a high level of
employee creative performance in organizations by showing the organizational support for
creative behaviors (Yu and Frenkel, 2013). Above all, with skill-enhancing practices that
improve the creative related knowledge and skill levels of the workforce, motivation-enhancing
practices that provide employees with high level of responsibility and inducements, and
empowerment-enhancing practices that boost employee autonomy and perceived support,
creativity-oriented HRM systems will affect organizational creativity by increasing the collective
creativity of employees. Hence, we propose that:
H1. Creativity-oriented HRM systems are positively related to organizational creativity.

The mediating role of innovative culture

Organizational culture is a system of shared values, beliefs, assumptions and symbols that
produce norms of behaviors and establish the way in which an organization conducts its
business (Marks and Mirvis, 2011; Wallach, 1983). Although it is well accepted that
organizational culture can have important influence on organizational creativity
(Anderson et al., 2014; Martins and Terblanche, 2003), many scholars argued that the
definition of organizational culture is too general to operationalize and responded to it by
subcategorizing or labeling different types of cultures. Wallach (1983) developed a widely
used typology, which defined innovative culture as a creative work environment that was
exciting and dynamic. More specifically, innovative culture is described by the following
adjectives: risk taking, results oriented, creative, pressurized, stimulating, challenging,
enterprising and driving. Since organizational culture reflects members’ common way of
thinking, it influences their behaviors and how they cope with problems (Marks and
Mirvis, 2011). For example, innovative culture encourages employees to take risks;
therefore, they are more willing to try new and potentially better solutions rather
than sticking to routines when dealing with tasks, which is integral to creativity
(Anderson et al., 2014). Furthermore, Ohly and Fritz (2010) suggested that the perceived
challenge faced by employees was associated with more creative and proactive behaviors.
In sum, organizational members in an innovative culture form a shared value about the
importance of creativity and tend to engage in more creative activities in daily
IJM organizational life, which eventually enhances organizational creativity. Thus,
40,5 organizational innovative culture should be directly related to organizational creativity.
HRM systems, whose major functions are developing core values and linking them to
organizational strategies, have always been considered to influence organizational culture
(Marks and Mirvis, 2011). Cabrera and Bonache (1999) asserted the need for the alignment of
organizational culture by integrating knowledge from SHRM with the design of HR practices.
838 HRM practices can shape the values and behaviors of employees, and thus become a means of
creating and sustaining desired organizational cultures. Similarly, Bowen and Ostroff (2004)
argued that a strong HRM system could develop shared meanings and promote collective
responses that were consistent with firm strategies, and thus facilitate the formation of
organizational culture. Therefore, we expect creativity-oriented HRM systems that consciously
aim at altering employees’ schemas about creativity would create an innovative organizational
culture. With creative skill-enhancing, intrinsic motivation-enhancing and empowerment-
enhancing HRM practices, employees will understand that creativity is encouraged and
underlies the value of the organization. For example, to enhance employees’ creative skills,
organizations should invest in organizational members through diverse training, which will
make employees more likely develop creativity relevant skills to fit the organizational goals.
Moreover, intrinsic motivation-enhancing practices such as encouraging employees to focus on
organizational creative goals, prompt the prevalence of shared values and goals (Tsui et al.,
1997). In addition, empowerment-enhancing practices stimulate employees to engage in
creative processes (Zhang and Bartol, 2010), which will shape their behaviors to perform in a
creative way. We, therefore, argue that innovative culture is affected by creativity-oriented
HRM systems.
As discussed above, SHRM studies indicated that HRM practices resulted in higher
performance when they contributed to the organizational environment, which was essential
for organizational outcomes (Bowen and Ostroff, 2004; Lau and Ngo, 2004). Lau and Ngo
(2004) contended that a developmental culture was the missing link between HR systems
and product innovation. Similarly, we argue that creativity-oriented HRM systems play an
important role in creating an innovative culture that is expected to have a significant and
direct impact on organizational creativity. In other words, innovative culture serves as the
necessary intervening factor between creativity-oriented HRM systems and organizational
creativity. This can be conceptualized as a mediating relationship in the sense that
organizational innovative culture acts as the mediator between creativity-oriented HRM
systems and organizational creativity. Hence, we propose that:
H2. Organizational innovative culture mediates the relationship between creativity-
oriented HRM systems and organizational creativity.

The moderating role of customer orientation

According to the complementary perspective of innovativeness, internal organizational
capabilities and resource may not be enough for creativity, and external knowledge is also
needed to complement their own (Caloghirou et al., 2004). Indeed, scholars have addressed the
importance of external knowledge when it comes to organizational creativity (Ardito and
Petruzzelli, 2017). As we mentioned above, with an innovative culture, employees share the
organizational values under which creativity is valued and encouraged. As a result, they are
willing to take risks and generate more new ideas with the intention to change the status quo.
However, these new ideas are not necessarily useful that can lead to customer satisfaction,
which works as an important driver of organizational performance (Davcik and Sharma, 2016).
Since organizations need not only novel, but also useful ideas to be creative (Amabile, 1983),
customer orientation is essential to lead the organizations toward the meaningful way when
organizations are motivated to develop new products or services by an innovative culture.
 As the cornerstone of market orientation, customer orientation reflects a firm’s HRM and
strategic direction to develop sustainable competitive advantage by endeavoring to meet organizational
their customers’ needs (Deshpandé and Farley, 1998). To do so, organizations put creativity
customers’ interests first and make efforts to constantly collect information from them.
Moreover, such firms pay great attention to learning and using information gathered from
customers to help them make decisions when developing creative products or services
throughout the firm’s entire business system (Grinstein, 2008). Hence, customer 839
orientation helps organizations make sure their new ideas are potentially useful, which
means the products and services developed from these ideas are more likely to be
embraced by customers. That is to say, organizations with an innovative culture also need
customer orientation to ensure that the new ideas are more useful, which leads to
creativity ultimately. Especially, consumer demands in emerging markets are complex
and evolves quickly with time (Li et al., 2010). Thus, only with a high level of customer
orientation can companies with innovative culture develop new products that accurately
and constantly reflect customer preferences. In a world of increasing competition and
rapid technological change, an innovation culture motivates companies to learn and to
acquire the abilities to be creative. But their internal capabilities and knowledge base
alone may not be adequate to solve complex problems. New ideas created within
organizations with lower level of customer orientation may be limited and fail to satisfy
the customers, which will eventually result in new product failure in competitive markets,
and impair organizational creativity. Hence, we propose that:
H3. Customer orientation moderates the relationship between innovative culture and
organizational creativity. When customer orientation is higher, the positive relationship
between innovative culture and organizational creativity is stronger.

Methods
Sample and procedure
We collected data from knowledge intensive firms with formal HRM departments in
Shanghai and Shenzhen, China. These two regions of China are high-technology hot spots,
where there is a relatively large concentration of high-tech and R&D firms, which makes
them suitable for our investigation. With alumni connections, we approached the
organizational managers in knowledge intensive companies from various industries. When
the organizational managers agreed to participate in the research, questionnaires were sent
to them as well as the requests about the investigating process. More specifically, to limit
concerns with common method variance, we requested the measures of the independent,
mediating, moderating and dependent variables to be distributed to different data sources.
Human resource professionals reported on the creativity-oriented HRM systems. Core
knowledge workers, middle and senior managers rated innovative culture and
organizational creativity. Top managers rated firm strategic customer orientation.
A total of 93 companies agreed to participate in the investigation at the beginning.
After excluding missing data, a sample of 82 knowledge intensive firms from the software,
pharmaceuticals, computer electronics and automobile industries was retained. The total
number of organizational members participating in the investigation in this final sample
was 780 (averagely 9.51 for each firm): 145 HR professionals (averagely 1.77 for each firm),
512 employees including core knowledge workers (averagely 6.24 for each firm) and 123
top managers (averagely 1.50 for each firm). On average, these firms had been established
for 15.11 years, and 79.3 percent of the firms had more than 100 employees. We also
obtained firm ownership information: state-owned enterprises (19.5 percent), joint
ventures (0.06 percent), foreign-owned subsidiaries (54.9 percent) and domestic private
firms (19.5 percent).
IJM Measures
40,5 Creativity-orientated HRM systems. We measured creativity-orientated HRM systems with an
11-item scale developed and validated based on the procedures proposed by Hinkin (1998) and
Schwab (1980): item development, content validity assessment and factor structure test,
including exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The
response options for these items ranged from 1 ¼ strongly disagree to 5 ¼ strongly agree.
840 To develop the items, we reviewed the literature to identify the pool of HRM practices
that the best fit our definitions of creative skills-enhancing, intrinsic motivation-enhancing
and empowerment-enhancing practices. This review included theoretical work including
Amabile (1983, 1996), Woodman et al. (1993), Lepak et al. (2006) and Jiang, Lepak, Hu and
Baer (2012); and empirical SHRM studies published in leading journals in general
management and HRM including Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied
Psychology, Journal of Management, Human Resource Management and International
Journal of Human Resource Management (Chang et al., 2013; Jiang, Wang and Zhao, 2012;
Shin et al., 2018; Subramony, 2009).
Following Hinkin’s (1998) recommendations, this study developed four to six items for
each dimension based on the conceptual definition of creative skills-enhancing, intrinsic
motivation-enhancing and empowerment-enhancing practices, which led to an initial pool of
15 items. To evaluate the content validity of the original items, we invited three doctoral
students majored in HRM and organizational behavior and four human resource managers,
none of whom were involved in the item development and literature review process. They
reviewed these items and commented on the extent to which they were consistent with the
definitions, and revisions were made accordingly.
The 15 items that passed the above content validity assessment were tested by the data
collected from the 145 human resource professionals. More specifically, there were 73
questionnaires for EFA analysis and 72 for CFA analysis. Before conducting the survey, we
created a Chinese version of the scale following the back-translation procedure suggested by
Brislin (1980). We first asked a bilingual doctoral student to translate the 15 items from
English to Chinese and then asked a second bilingual doctoral student to translate them
from Chinese back into English. Minor disagreements were resolved through discussion.
The three factors of EFA emerged from the analysis turned out to be the best (see Table I).
Factor 1 included four items from intrinsic motivation-enhancing practices scale (α ¼ 0.81,
AVE ¼ 0.50), Factor 2 included four items from empowerment-enhancing practices scale
(α ¼ 0.80, AVE ¼ 0.51), and Factor 3 included three items from creative skill-enhancing

Items EP IMP CSP

We provide opportunities to communicate and cooperate for employees 0.79 0.15 0.16
We encourage employees to suggest creative ideas 0.75 0.38 0.16
We provide opportunities to participate in decision making for employees 0.73 0.26 0.24
We provide opportunities for employees to express voice 0.55 0.34 0.43
We implement both individual and team performance evaluation 0.12 0.79 0.34
We provide both constructive feedback and developmental feedback for employees 0.44 0.72 0.05
We implement both process-oriented and result-oriented evaluation regarding employee
knowledge and skills 0.41 0.68 0.25
We reward employees when adopting their creative ideas 0.32 0.58 0.30
We enable employees to acquire diverse skills through job rotation 0.21 0.16 0.87
Table I.
Exploratory factor We find out what job areas or content that employees are skilled in through job rotation 0.40 0.18 0.78
analysis of We pay attention to diverse knowledge and skills training for employees 0.06 0.44 0.67
creativity-oriented Notes: IMP, intrinsic motivation-enhancing practices; EP, empowerment-enhancing practices; CSP, creative
HRM systems scales skills-enhancing practices
practices scale (α ¼ 0.80, AVE ¼ 0.61). We collected more data from 25 human resource HRM and
professionals in 15 companies following the same procedure as above to conduct CFA. And organizational
the CFA results showed that the 11-item, three-factor first-order creativity-oriented HRM creativity
systems measurement model had a good fit to the data (see Table II along with the CFA
results of other variables): χ2 ¼ 61.64 (n ¼ 97, χ2/df ¼ 1.50), RMSEA ¼ 0.07, CFI ¼ 0.97,
TLI ¼ 0.96, IFI ¼ 0.97. The correlations between each two of the three dimensions were
(0.58**, 0.56**, 0.73**). In addition, the rwg ¼ 0.99, ICC(1) ¼ 0.49, ICC(2) ¼ 0.63. We also 841
developed the nomological network to demonstrate criterion validity showing that creativity-
oriented HRM was positively related to creative self-efficacy (b ¼ 0.19, po0.001). Moreover, to
further demonstrate criterion-related validity in the construct validation process, the next to
do is to empirically test our hypotheses.
Innovative culture. We assessed innovative culture with eight items adapted from
Wallach (1983). Unlike the original adjective lists, we turned them into sentences and asked
respondents to rate their organizational innovative culture (e.g. “Our firm encourages
employees to take risk” and “Our firm is enterprising”). The response options for these items
ranged from 1 ¼ strongly disagree to 5 ¼ strongly agree. The CFA of innovative culture
showed a good fit to the data: χ2 ¼ 30.54 (n ¼ 82, df ¼ 20, χ2/df ¼ 1.53), RMSEA ¼ 0.08,
CFI ¼ 0.95, TLI ¼ 0.93, IFI ¼ 0.96, rwg ¼ 0.96, ICC(1) ¼ 0.29, ICC(2) ¼ 0.72 and α ¼ 0.73.
Customer orientation. We assessed customer orientation with six items adopted from
Lukas and Ferrell (2000). Top managers from the 82 companies were asked to rate their
organizations’ customer orientation (e.g. “We constantly monitor our level of commitment
and orientation to serving customers’ needs” and “Our strategy for competitive advantage is
based on our understanding of customer needs”). The response options for these items
ranged from 1 ¼ strongly disagree to 5 ¼ strongly agree. The rwg ¼ 0.98, ICC(1) ¼ 0.35,
ICC(2) ¼ 0.45, and α ¼ 0.79.
Organizational creativity. We measured organizational creativity with five items adapted
from Lee and Choi (2003). Respondents were asked to rate their firm’s organizational
creativity (e.g. “A lot of novel and useful ideas related to products/services have been
generated within our organization” and “Our organization takes the time to generate novel
and useful ideas related to products/services”). The response options for these items
ranged from 1 ¼ strongly disagree to 5 ¼ strongly agree. The rwg ¼ 0.96, ICC(1) ¼ 0.22,
ICC(2) ¼ 0.59 and α ¼ 0.90.
Control variables. Three control variables, firm size (number of employees), firm age and
the properties of the firms, were included in the analyses as they are frequently related to
innovation and culture (Lau and Ngo, 2004). We divided the properties of the firms into four
types: state-owned firms, private-owned firms, jointly owned firms and foreign-owned firms.

Results
Construct validation
Prior to testing our hypotheses, we performed CFA to evaluate the convergent and
discriminant validity of the constructs measuring creativity-oriented HRM systems,
innovative culture, customer orientation, and organizational creativity. In addition to the

Variables χ2 χ2/df RMSEA CFI TLI IFI rwg ICC1 ICC2 Cronbach’s α

Creativity-oriented HRM systems 61.64 1.50 0.07 0.97 0.96 0.97 0.99 0.49 0.63 0.91
Innovative culture 30.54 1.53 0.08 0.95 0.93 0.96 0.96 0.29 0.72 0.73 Table II.
Customer orientation 14.53 1.82 0.08 0.97 0.95 0.97 0.98 0.35 0.45 0.79 Results of variables’
Organizational creativity 6.43 2.14 0.05 0.99 0.99 0.99 0.96 0.22 0.59 0.90 reliability and validity
IJM baseline model (Model 1), we examined three alternative models (Models 2–4). As shown
40,5 in Table III, the baseline model of four factors showed a more satisfactory fit ( χ2 ¼ 505.44,
df ¼ 382, RMSEA ¼ 0.06, CFI ¼ 0.91, TLI ¼ 0.90, CFI ¼ 0.92) than the nested models.

Hypothesis testing
Table IV reported the means, standard deviations and correlations of all variables and the
842 results showed significant correlations between dependent and independent variables and
limited collinearity between our independent variables.
Next, we tested the hypotheses with Mplus 7.4. For H1 and H2, we used bootstrapping
analysis (2,000 bootstrap samples with 95 percent confidence intervals) (Preacher and Hayes,
2004) for both direct and indirect effects. Bootstrapping analysis has the advantage that it does
not assume the normality of the sampling distribution and it is appropriate for small samples.
As shown of the bootstrapping results in Table V, we found that creativity-oriented HRM
systems were significantly related to organizational creativity (b ¼ 0.28, SE ¼ 0.13, po0.001,
95% CI (0.03, 0.53)), after controlling for firm size, firm age and the properties of the firms. Thus,
H1 was supported. H2 proposes that innovative culture mediates the relationship between
creativity-oriented HRM systems and organizational creativity. The bootstrapping results
indicated that creativity-oriented HRM practices were positively related to innovative culture
(b ¼ 0.47, SE ¼ 0.08, po0.001, 95% CI (0.30, 0.562)), and that innovative culture was positively
related to organizational creativity (b ¼ 0.33, SE ¼ 0.14, po0.05, 95% CI (0.05, 0.61)).
Specifically, the results showed that the indirect effect of creativity-oriented HRM on
organizational creativity through innovative culture was significant (b ¼ 0.33, SE ¼ 0.08) since
the 95% CI (0.02, 0.32) did not contain zero. Hence the results suggested that innovative culture
mediated the relationship between creativity-oriented HRM systems and organizational
creativity, providing support for H2.

Models Factors χ2 df △χ2 χ2/df RMSEA CFI TLI IFI

Model 1 Four factors 505.44 382 1.32 0.06 0.91 0.90 0.92
Model 2 Three factors: innovative culture and customer
orientation combined into one factor 594.43 385 88.99*** 1.54 0.08 0.85 0.83 0.86
Model 3 Two factors: creativity-oriented HRM systems,
innovative culture and customer orientation
combined into one factor 699.89 387 194.45*** 1.81 0.10 0.78 0.75 0.78
Model 4 One factor: all variables combined into one
Table III.
Comparisons of factor 880.37 388 374.93*** 2.27 0.13 0.65 0.60 0.66
measurement models Notes: n ¼ 82. ***p o0.001

M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

1. Firm size 2.94 1.62

2. Company age 15.11 17.22 0.37**
3. State owned 0.20 0.40 −0.08 0.09
4. Pivate owned 0.20 0.40 −0.19 −0.13 −0.24*
5. Jointly owned 0.06 0.24 0.07 −0.09 −0.13 −0.13
6. Creativity-oriented HRM systems 3.72 0.63 −0.12 0.18 0.21 −0.07 −0.01
7. Innovative culture 3.56 0.49 0.03 −0.11 0.09 0.09 −0.20 0.50**
Table IV. 8. Customer orientation 3.97 0.56 −0.01 0.04 −0.06 0.07 −0.05 0.43** 0.39**
Means, standard 9. Organizational creativity 3.78 0.60 0.01 −0.15 −0.03 0.16 0.03 0.36** 0.44** 0.50**
deviations, reliabilities Notes: n ¼ 82. Firm size was measured as 1 for “less than 50”; 2 for 50–100; 3 for 100–500; 4 for 500–1,000; 5
and correlations for more than 1,000. *p o0.05; **po 0.01
Path B SE Lower and upper 95% CI limits
HRM and
organizational
Test of direct relationships creativity
Creativity-oriented HRM→innovative culture 0.47*** 0.08 (0.30, 0.62)
Innovative culture→organizational creativity 0.33* 0.14 (0.05, 0.61)
Creativity-oriented HRM→organizational creativity 0.28* 0.13 (0.03, 0.53)
Test of indirect relationships 843
Creativity-oriented HRM→innovative culture→ 0.15* 0.08 (0.02, 0.32)
organizational creativity
Notes: n ¼ 82. Bootstrap sample size 2,000. CI, confidence interval. Unstandardized regression coefficients Table V.
reported. Firm size, firm age and the properties of the firms were controlled for all analyses. *po 0.05; Results of
***po 0.001 mediation analyses

H3 predicts that customer orientation moderates the relationship between innovative

culture and organizational creativity. The results in Table VI demonstrated that interaction
of innovative culture and customer orientation (see Model 3) predicted organizational
creativity (b ¼ 0.42, p o0.05). This provided support for H3.
In other words, high/low customer orientation will strengthen/weaken the relationship
between innovative culture and organizational creativity. To facilitate the interpretation of the
interaction, as Aiken and West (1991) recommended, we plotted the simple slopes for the
relationship between innovative culture and organizational creativity at one standard deviation
above and below the mean of customer orientation. The results, shown in Figure 2, suggested
that in keeping with H3, customer orientation strengthened the association between innovative
culture and organizational creativity. To test this interpretation, we statistically compared the
two slopes to zero. As expected, when customer orientation was high, intrinsic motivation
significantly predicted higher levels of creativity (b ¼ 0.61, SE ¼ 0.11, t ¼ 5.35, po0.01). When
customer orientation was low, innovative culture did not predict organizational creativity,
as the slope did not differ significantly from zero (b ¼ 0.14, SE ¼ 0.16, t ¼ 0.87, pW0.05).

Discussion and implications

Drawing from the componential theory of creativity, our study develops and validates a
three-dimension construct of creativity-oriented HRM systems: creative skill-enhancing
practices, intrinsic motivation-enhancing practices and empowerment-enhancing practices.
The results show that creativity-oriented HRM systems are positively related to
organizational creativity through innovative culture. Furthermore, customer orientation
strengthens the effect of innovative culture on organizational creativity. Our findings
extend the literature on both SHRM and creativity.

Variables Organizational creativity

Firm size 0.04

Company age −0.00
State owned 0.01
Private owned 0.19
Jointly owned 0.31
Innovative culture 0.38**
Customer orientation 0.35**
Innovative culture×customer orientation 0.42* Table VI.
△R2 0.03* Results of
Notes: n ¼ 82. *p o0.05; **p o 0.01 moderation analyses
IJM 1

40,5 0.8

0.6
Organizational creativity

0.4
844
Low customer orientation
0.2
High customer orientation

Figure 2. 0
The moderating effect
of customer –0.2
orientation on the
relationship between
–0.4
innovative culture and
organizational
creativity –0.6
Low innovative culture High innovative culture

First, although previous research has demonstrated that certain HR practices benefit
creativity in organizations (Chang et al., 2014; Wang and Horng, 2002), we provide a
systematically developed construction of creativity-oriented HRM systems in
answering the call of Chang et al. (2013) for more attention to the exact SHRM systems
that are instrumental in developing competitive advantages. For example, previous
research has explored the positive effects of flexibility-oriented HRM systems (Chang
et al., 2013). In this paper, we address a gap in the SHRM literature about the link between
creativity-oriented HRM systems and organizational creativity based on the componential
theory of creativity with ability-motivation-opportunity framework of SHRM. Given
existing inconsistent findings of the relationship between general HRM practices
and creativity (e.g. Wang and Horng, 2002), creativity-oriented HRM systems will
improve organizational creativity through enhancing employee creative knowledge and
skills, intrinsic motivation and empowering them more opportunities to participate
in creative activities. The exploration of creativity-oriented HRM systems also contributes
to the creativity literature because it suggests another useful approach to improving
organizational creativity which is crucial to organizational performance. As to the
managerial practices, organizations should adjust their HRM systems to the creativity-
oriented HRM systems which are composed of creative skill-enhancing, intrinsic
motivation-enhancing and empowerment-enhancing practices in order to direct employees
to generate more creative ideas. Managers should understand the importance of employee
creative skills and pay attention to improving them through creative skill-enhancing HRM
practices such as extensive training and job rotation. Furthermore, intrinsic motivation-
enhancing HRM practices such as rewarding creativity and providing developmental
feedbacks should be used to stimulate a high-level employee intrinsic motivation.
This study also indicates the need of a better utilization of the empowerment-enhancing
HRM practices to offer employees opportunities to involve in decision making and exhibit
their creativity such as providing employees opportunities to voice and participate in
decision-making processes.
Second, our research is conducted at the organizational level. Although scholars agree
that organizational creativity is an important factor in organizational improvement, studies
discussing organizational level creativity are relatively limited compared with individual
and team level creativity research (Fortwengel et al., 2016; Shin et al., 2013). Further, much of
the work that demonstrated how organizational factors might influence organizational HRM and
creativity has examined individual employee perceptions (e.g. supervisory empowering organizational
leadership in Zhang and Bartol, 2010). Recently, scholars have emphasized the impact of creativity
HRM systems on higher-level outcomes (e.g. Ma et al., 2017). In this study, we explore how
firm-level institutional factors by focusing on creativity-oriented HRM systems, may foster
an organizational innovative culture beneficial to organizational creativity.
Third, we explore the influence process of creativity-oriented HRM systems on 845
organizational creativity with a sample from knowledge-intensive companies in China.
This paper thus contributes to the field by exploring the mediating and moderating
mechanisms that operate between creativity-oriented HRM systems and organizational
creativity in emerging economies. For mediating mechanisms, we answer the call of
Bowen and Ostroff (2004) for looking into the role that organizational culture plays in the
relationship between HRM systems and organizational performance, and demonstrate
how creativity-oriented HRM systems can enhance organizational creativity through
innovative culture. Scholars have made it clear that HRM systems are linked to employee
attitude and behaviors (Messersmith et al., 2011). We extend these studies by showing that
creativity-oriented HRM systems can cultivate shared beliefs among all employees and
help to create an innovative culture within the organization. In this way, managers should
attach importance to creating an innovative culture through creativity-oriented HRM
systems, since it is culture that is directly related to organizational creativity. Creativity-
oriented HRM practices such as diverse training and creativity reward could be used
to convey the information on how much the organization values creativity. Moreover,
by empowering employees opportunities to exhibit creativity, managers are able to
encourage them to take risk and challenge themselves, which in turn help employees form
the shared values and beliefs of an innovative culture that ultimately improves creativity
at the workplace.
Moreover, we highlight the important role of customer orientation as a moderator from
the complementary perspective in innovativeness and show how customer orientation
strengthens the relationship between innovative culture and organizational creativity.
As Liao (2011) suggested, research linking HRM systems with firm strategies is still
limited. With the sample from China, we prove that a more customer-focused strategy
facilitates firms to improve their creativity performance during the period of transition
from a planned economy to a market economy. Firms with innovative culture will pay
attention to meeting customer demands, which will ensure their new ideas are more useful,
and thus achieve a higher level of organizational creativity, compared with firms that
have lower levels of customer orientation. This study thus extends current SHRM and
the organizational strategy literature in an emerging economy. Therefore, we suggest
organizations should focus on activities that help shape a customer-oriented strategy.
Especially, in emerging economies such as in China, where market economy is relatively
new to organizations, organizations should be fully aware of how information and
knowledge from customers are essential for organizational creativity. To guarantee that
new products/services of organizations can satisfy the customers and eventually benefit
organizational development, organizations should emphasize on customer needs and
invest resources in collecting, identifying and using the information from customers,
so that they can sustain competitiveness in the global market-based economy.

Limitations
This study also has several limitations. First, the study applied a cross-sectional design that
limited our capacity to infer causal relationships. Although our arguments are consistent
with theory, we acknowledge that alternative causal inferences may be possible. Second,
when we developed the measure of creativity-oriented HRM dimensions, we constructed the
IJM factor structure with the same sample as hypotheses test. Since the sample is limited, future
40,5 studies should examine the construct and make it more robust. Moreover, with a larger
sample, the mediated moderation model should be further examined to make more
contributions. For example, customer orientation can potentially moderate the mediating
effect of innovative culture. Finally, we used the high-technology sector to test our
hypotheses, which may limit the generalizability of our findings.
846
Conclusion
HRM systems are critical for organizations to facilitate creativity. In our study, we
develop the measure of creativity-oriented HRM systems and examine the relationship
between them and organizational creativity. We make efforts to shed light on the
mechanisms between them as well. This study has provided the creativity-oriented
HRM systems as a way to benefit organizational creativity based on the componential
theory of creativity. We also suggest that organizations should pay attention to both
internal (i.e. innovative culture) and external (i.e. customer orientation) resources to be
more creative from the complementary perspectives of innovativeness, especially
the important role of customer orientation in emerging economies such as China to keep
the creative efforts on the right track. We encourage more validation of creativity-oriented
HRM systems and more exploration of the mechanisms between creativity-oriented HRM
systems and organizational creativity. To obtain a high level of organizational creativity,
it is critical to understand the construction of creativity-oriented HRM systems and
how they work.

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Further reading 849

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Corresponding author
Qinxuan Gu can be contacted at: qxgu@sjtu.edu.cn

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