Effect of Chinese employees’ emotional creativity on their innovative performance

On the basis of the social constructivist theory of emotion, we examined the relationship between employees’ emotional creativity and innovative performance in the Chinese business environment, as well as the mediating or moderating roles of intrinsic motivation and supervisors’ support for employee creativity in this elationship. Participants were 546 supervisor-subordinate dyads employed at 18 enterprises in the areas of Changsha, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Hangzhou, and Shanghai in China. We performed factor analysis, correlation analysis, and regression analysis of the collected data, and found that employees’ emotional creativity had significant effects on their innovative performance, and that their intrinsic motivation played a mediating role in the relationship between emotional creativity and innovative performance. We also found that the supervisors’ support for employee creativity positively moderated the relationship between emotional creativity and intrinsic motivation. In addition, the supervisors’ support for creativity acted as a mediated moderator of the relationship between employees’ emotional creativity and innovative performance.