Employee creativity is crucial for organizational innovation and survival. Although previous studies have examined the impacts of organizational design on enterprise innovation, few studies to date have investigated how organizational design influence employee creativity, which is a core driver of innovation. Based on the theory of attention allocation, this study examined the relationship between organizational design and radical creativity and incremental creativity, dedicating to the possible mediating role of knowledge scanning in the relationship. We conducted a longitudinal research with one month time lagged at three time points. Data were collected from 429 dyads of employees and their immediate supervisors in 36 units. Analysis of the time-lagged data revealed that centralization has a negative indirect effect on radical creativity via external scanning, and a negative indirect effect on incremental creativity via internal scanning. In contrast, connectedness has a positive indirect effect on radical creativity via external scanning, and a positive indirect effect on incremental creativity via internal scanning. Unexpectedly, the indirect effect of formalization on creativity was not contingent. These results extend previous studies by examining the mediating effect of knowledge scanning of employees, and clarify the mechanism through which organizational design influences different types of creativity.
