Role of Creative Climate, Manager Attitude, and Financial Constraint on Creative Deviance at Workplace

Examining factors that lead employees to engage in creative deviance is important to provide valuable insights for organizations aiming to foster a culture of innovation, adaptability, and sustained success in the competitive business environment. As a source of competitive advantage in today's global market, employees are encouraged to be creative when performing their work. Encouragement of creativity, however, may lead to employees' creative deviance. By theorizing and testing the situational factors that lead to this behavior, we explain the phenomenon of creative deviance that has not yet been much studied. Based on the Social Information Processing Theory and the Strain Theory, we examine the relationships between creative climate, manager attitude, and financial constraint on creative deviance. Quantitative approach was used in this study to test the proposed hypotheses. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to analyze the 225 usable data from private-sector employees in Malaysia. Findings showed that creative climate is related to creative deviance both directly and indirectly through manager attitude and financial constraint. Further research should extend our study by including other predictors, mediators, and moderators to enhance the understanding of creative deviance phenomenon.