BUS603: Managing People

Differing from former studies, this article has revealed that demands-abilities fit produces a negative impact on employee creativity. Wang and Sun data analysis of 209 employees and their direct superiors has pointed out that the matching degree between job requirements and employee competence is markedly correlated with creativity. Likewise, Zhang and Long have also proved that demands-abilities fit exercises an outstanding and positive effect on employee creativity by stimulating their innovation self-efficacy. Their research focuses on creativity in the work process, and the creativity of this article includes both work processes and daily life.

Many past studies implied that employees with a low fit lacked sufficient motivation to improve their professional skills by indirect imitation and learning, thus failing to gain more experience needed for more creativity. That being the case, when demands and abilities mismatch, does the employee necessarily go through frustration, low self-esteem, indifference, cognitive disorder, or even disharmony which in turn inhibits creativity? Livingstone et al. has discovered a U-shaped relationship between demands-abilities fit and pressure. When the individual's perceived ability falls short of or exceeds the job requirements, the pressure increases; conversely, when the individual's ability matches the job requirements, the pressure is the minimum. That is to say, demands-abilities misfit puts employees under considerable pressure. Despite that, pressure is not always a conundrum, because pressure exposes competitive disadvantages to the individual and forces them to employ new ideas and procedures to solve problems. Being indicators of abilities, education and skills have always been considered as critical factors influencing creativity, on which the research targets at specific domains or specific tasks, such as art, literature, and music. The measurement of creativity in this study does not involve specific domains or specific tasks, but centering on the employee creativity in entire workdays. Demands-abilities fit is a favorable condition for the individual, but it is in this favorable condition that employees may be more inclined to habitual actions and give up on creative actions. On the contrary, when the employee is in a misfit condition, pressure is more likely to inspire employee creativity.

In terms of needs-supplies fit, it turns out that the higher the needs-supplies fit, the greater the employee creativity. When exploring the work context of creativity, Amabile et al. suggest that the degree to which the individual's work resources are assigned is positively correlated with creativity, but this hypothesis has not been proven yet. They believe this may be related to the nature of individual needs and work supplies as well as individual motivation. This study delves into the reasonable level of material treatment provided by the organization perceived by employees, which not only includes the degree of fit, but also implies the sense of fairness of employees. The more reasonable the material treatment provided by the organization perceived by employees, the greater the needs-supplies fit on the one hand, and the stronger the sense of fairness of employees on the other. In spite of being external fit from its nature, the material treatment can effectively raise the individual's self-determination and performance pressure to improve intrinsic motivation and creativity. Moreover, employees will compare their efforts and rewards. If employees perceive that the treatment provided by the organization is fair, the organization and the individual will form a driving force for social exchange, and the employee will work hard to pay back for the organization's care and trust. In such a case, employees may proactively seek creative ideas to improve organizational processes or to develop new products and services.

According to some studies, multicultural experience is conducive to promoting creativity. Yet, few have explored the moderating role of multicultural experience in P-E fit and employee creativity. This study has proved that multicultural experience plays a moderating role in the impact of demands-abilities fit and needs-supplies fit on employee creativity. Although the combination of education and skills with organizational requirements is not conducive to stimulating employee creativity, this negative effect is weaker for employees with high multicultural experience and stronger for employees with low multicultural experience. Because employees with high multicultural experience learn new concepts and ways of thinking in other cultures, it is easier to get rid of the inherent thinking patterns, constantly form new ideas and apply them to the practical process of problem solving. When needs-supplies fit, compared with employees with low multicultural experience, employees with high multicultural experience have the ability to integrate diverse cultures. Together with the proactive work motivation brought by needs-supplies fit, They can better enhance their problem-solving creativity. The inspiration drawn from this study to organizational management is: the organization should attach great importance to the creativity of employees with demands-abilities misfit, as well as to the role of little multicultural experience while in a context of deepening globalization, so as to expand employees' multicultural experience through a variety of approaches.

Limitations and Future Directions

In spite of some valuable research results obtained, there are some limitations that should not be overlooked in this study. The method of self-evaluation has been employed to measure independent variables (demands-abilities fit and needs-supplies fit), dependent variable (creativity), and moderator variable (multicultural experience), of which the analysis results may be influenced by common method variation. In order to avoid the influence of common method variation, process control and statistical test methods were adopted. In the process control, the unnamed questionnaire method is adopted, and the items measuring different variables are randomly arranged and mixed, and the questionnaire is designed by using the reverse problem. In the statistical test, we used Harman's one-factor test, all the items in the questionnaire scale were used for factor analysis, and 5 factors were extracted from the principal component analysis results when the rotation was not rotated, Total Variance Explained is 69.635%. The first factor explained the variation was 25.415%, and the common method variation was not serious. More methods will be used to avoid the influence of common method variation in the future. Due to data limitations, this study has probed into the relationship between personal-environment fit, multicultural experience, and employee creativity from a multicultural perspective. However, multicultural experience is measured only from a bilingual perspective, and it will be measured in multiple dimensions in future. In addition, as pointed out by Zhao Zhiyu et al., "The research on cultural and social psychology has undergone the paradigms of cross-cultural psychology, cultural psychology, multicultural psychology, as well as polycultural psychology emphasizing the influence of intercultural relationships on psychological processes". Under the polycultural psychology paradigm, culture mixing has taken culture and psychology research a step forward. Scholars have carried forward the research tradition of multicultural psychology and have a profound understanding of the forms and categories of intercultural interactions and their social, cultural and psychological consequences. On this account, the next-step research should be carried out on the impact of cultural mixing on employee creativity and its influencing mechanism.