Enhancing employees’ creativity is of great significance for organizations. However, whether, how and when occupational calling enhances employees’ creativity has largely been ignored. To fill this gap, our study draws on mindfulness theory and proposes a dual-stage moderated mediation model by introducing a mediating mechanism of mindfulness and boundary conditions of ability to focus and inclusive leadership. Survey data were collected from 297 respondents using a multi-source time-lagged design. Our research findings revealed a significant positive influence of occupational calling on mindfulness, which in turn positively affects employees’ creativity. Furthermore, ability to focus (as a synergistic enhancer) in the first stage and inclusive leadership (as an effective facilitator) in the second stage were found to amplify these positive effects. All in all, our study provides significant theoretical and practical implications for scholars and practitioners who seek to promote employees’ creativity.
Liu et al. (2026) studied this question.