Intellectual stimulation and team creative climate in a professional service firm

Purpose: To investigate the precise role of intrinsic motivation and autonomy in relation to intellectual stimulation in creating a creative climate in a professional services firm. The intention is to discover whether neo-classical approaches in Nordic knowledge-work contexts that have stressed the primacy of employee monitoring and control find support, in order to assist practitioners.
Design/method: We propose and test a model for the relationship of interest. Our theoretical model is tested through analysis of multilevel data gathered across in two iterations over 2 years from 177 employees and 64 teams in one company.
Findings: We find that intrinsic motivation and autonomy fully mediate the relationship between intellectual stimulation and creative climate. Autonomy exercises a stronger mediating effect than intrinsic motivation.
Limitations: The single company research context’s specificity; causal relationships between variables cannot be empirically investigated; the verified research model cannot claim to represent how the organization actually functions, for which qualitative work is required.
Implications: Theories stressing the primacy of employee autonomy are supported over those emphasising a need for management to monitor and control autonomy-seeking employees Originality/value: We contribute by showing the primacy of perceived employee autonomy in creating a creative climate among knowledge workers.

This article is © Emerald Group Publishing and permission has been granted for this version to appear here (https://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/). Emerald does not grant permission for this article to be further copied/distributed or hosted elsewhere without the express permission from Emerald Group Publishing Limited. This is the accepted version of the manuscript "Intellectual stimulation and team creative climate in a professional service firm", published in the journal "Evidence-based HRM: a Global Forum for Empirical Scholarship" available via the journal site at: https://doi.org/10.1108/ebhrm-01-2017-0006

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