Bridging employee curiosity and service creativity: a new lens

Purpose This study develops a framework to examine how, why and when different traits of employee curiosity affect service creativity by considering the roles of knowledge sharing and task autonomy. Design/methodology/approach To reduce common method bias, this work separated the variables investigated into three parts, each of which was randomly used to collect data at three different periods. A total of 822 matched questionnaires obtained from frontline employees of service firms provided useable data for hypothesis tests. A moderated mediation approach was employed to analyse the data. Findings Results are as follows: (1) Deprivation sensitivity, joyous exploration and social curiosity have positive effects on knowledge collecting (KC) and knowledge donating (KD). (2) KD mediates the relationships between the three curiosity traits and service creativity. (3) Task autonomy enhances and suppresses the mediating effects of KC and KD, respectively, on the curiosity–service creativity relationship. Research limitations/implications This study has two main research implications: First, as different types (traits) of employee curiosity have different effects on service creativity, a single-dimensional view of employee curiosity may mask the differences of individual dimension and lead to a oversimplified conclusion. Second, lifting the vein from employee curiosity to service creativity has to consider the roles of knowledge sharing and task autonomy. Originality/value This research is the first to contribute to the service innovation literature by revealing the underlying mechanisms through which different types of employee curiosity affect service creativity and uncovering the moderating roles of task autonomy in the process mechanisms.