Modern organizations widely implement performance appraisal to manage employees’ work, yet the role of performance appraisal for employee creativity remain ambiguous, with positive, negative, or even insignificant relations being reported in literature. The present research aims to address such ambiguity. We introduce multidimensional conceptualization of both performance appraisal and creativity, and draw from self-determination theory and learned industriousness theory to develop a multilevel conceptual framework incorporating diverse linkages between performance appraisal and creativity. Using time-lagged survey data collected from 582 employees working in 49 companies, we found that developmental performance appraisal was positively related to radical creativity through intrinsic motivation, whereas administrative performance appraisal was positively related to incremental creativity through extrinsic motivation. These findings extend our theoretical understandings of performance appraisal-creativity relationship, and offer important practical implications for innovation and creativity management.
