Flexible Work Arrangements and Employee Creativity: Insights from Job Characteristics and Attribution Theories

Organizations have implemented flexible work arrangements (FWAs) as an intervention to improve employees’ task motivation, organizational attitudes, and proactive behaviors. The present study investigates the distinct effects of two prevailing dimensions of FWAs (flextime and flexplace) on employee creativity with varying levels of proactivity (radical versus incremental creativity). Drawing on job characteristics theory, we identify employees’ sense of responsibility as the mediator and their FWA-targeted attributions as the moderating contingency. These hypotheses were tested using data collected from 170 leader-member dyads. Our analysis revealed that flextime is significantly related to radical and incremental creativity through the sense of responsibility, whereas flexplace shows no significant effects. In addition, the indirect effect of flextime on employee creativity through the sense of responsibility is greater for radical creativity than for incremental creativity. The results also demonstrated that the indirect effects of FWAs on the two creativity types are positive and significant when constructive FWA attribution is high and when exploitative attribution is low. The current analysis clarifies and offers meaningful insights into the differential functions, intervening mechanisms, and conditions for the effects of distinct FWA dimensions on employee creativity in the workplace.