1266: Organizational Politics Harm Employee Creativity by Suppressing Prohibitive Voice (18811)

While previous research has explored various employee outcomes stemming from organizational politics, the significance of creativity, a vital performance outcome valued by both employees and organizations, has received insufficient attention. To complement this existing body of work, we seek to examine how and when organizational politics affect employee creativity. Employing a social information processing perspective, we posit that organizational politics hinder creativity by discouraging employees from attending to work-related issues and expressing their prohibitive voice. Furthermore, we propose that this suppressive effect becomes less salient among employees who have higher levels of creative self-efficacy or attentiveness. Our findings, derived from a multi-wave, multi-source field survey, reveal that organizational politics indirectly undermined creativity through their negative impact on prohibitive voice (even after controlling for other confounding mediating mechanisms). Additionally, we uncover that creative self-efficacy and attentiveness attenuated the adverse effect of organizational politics on prohibitive voice and subsequent creativity, respectively.

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