Sheng Huang
Mike James Mustafa
Mathew Hughes
Delia Virga- 1Institute of Work, Organisation and Wellbeing, University of Nottingham Malaysia, Semenyih, Malaysia
- 2School of Business, University of Leicester, Leicester, United Kingdom
- 3Department of Psychology, Universitatea de Vest din Timişoara, Timişoara, Romania
Editorial on the Research Topic
Innovative and creative behaviours in the modern workplace: causes and consequences
Rapid technological development has created the need for bold, radical changes (Dwivedi et al., 2023), rendering the future more unpredictable and uncertain. Consequently organizations and individuals must continuously adapt to such situations to remain competitive (Gu et al., 2023). Specifically, individual creative and innovative actions are becoming increasingly important for organizational competitiveness and success (Rietzschel et al., 2024; Woods et al., 2018). This Research Topic explores novel and useful theoretical approaches to enriching our understanding of the mechanisms and processes through which creative and innovative behaviors emerge in organizations.
Receiving over 67 submissions in total, the 10 carefully selected works (see Table 1) represent various countries in Asia and diverse samples, such as general employees, elder workers, organizational leaders, and entrepreneurs. The studies span multiple sectors, including manufacturing, public services, and knowledge-intensive industries, thus providing nuanced insights into the multifaceted drivers of employee creative and innovative behaviors in modern workplaces. By highlighting commonalities and contextual differences, the studies offer valuable guidance for organizations and leaders seeking to foster creativity and innovation from within.
Table 1. Overview of selected articles.
Broadly, the 10 articles illustrate the diverse psychological, organizational, and contextual mechanisms that underpin employee creative and innovative behaviors in the modern workplace. The studies by Jiang D. et al., Arshad et al., and Wang C. et al. demonstrate how human resource (HR) practices can play a pivotal role in shaping organizational innovation. These practices include high-involvement work practices, high-performance work systems, and high-performance HR practices. Additionally, other mechanisms, such as fostering intrinsic motivation (Liu et al.), promoting knowledge sharing (Li Y. et al.), and facilitating knowledge acquisition (Li S. et al.), are identified as effective strategies that managers and HR professionals can employ to cultivate creativity and innovation, even in the absence of technical backgrounds. Moreover, research by Li Y. et al., Lee and Kim, and Yang et al. suggests that the organization's innovative climate and culture have conditioning effects on both actor-level and contextual factors that shape employees creative and innovative behaviors. Specifically, supportive climates and cultures positively condition these relationships, strengthening their impact on creative and innovative behavior. Collectively, such findings offer valuable insights and practical approaches that can guide HR professionals in fostering organizational creativity and innovation from a non-technical perspective.
Notably, the studies also reveal moderated mediation mechanisms through which HR practices and leadership styles influence creative and innovative behavior, including organizational learning (Wang C. et al.), transformational leadership and leader's conscientiousness (Jiang D. et al.; Wang L. et al.). Jiang D. et al. examined nonlinear and cross-level dynamics, uncovering the nuanced relationships between factors such as organizational ambidexterity, transformational leadership, and innovation outcomes.
From a theoretical prestige, four articles utilized relational and exchange-based theories (Li Y. et al.; Yang et al.; Jiang D. et al.; Arshad et al.). This may hold particular significance for employers and managers who need to recognize this common interest in the workplace, as it suggests that individuals value reciprocation when they make efforts to contribute to the organization. One cannot expect employees to deliver top performance without providing them with adequate resources and appropriate rewards—such an expectation is akin to wanting to have one's cake and eat it too. The remaining articles drew on a broad range of psycho-social theories such as job demands—resources (JD-R) theory (Wang L. et al.; Liu et al.), trait activation theory (Jiang B. et al.), expectancy theory (Li S. et al.), self-determination theory (Liu et al.; Jiang D. et al.), and social cognitive theory (Li Y. et al.; Yang et al.) to explore how employees' creative and innovative behaviors are supported in the workplace.
The Research Topic contributes theoretically in two main ways: it combines various levels of analysis—individual, team, and organizational—to offer a comprehensive understanding of the factors leading to creativity and innovation. Additionally, they connect psychological and strategic viewpoints by correlating intrinsic motivation and cognition with performance outcomes at the firm level. From a practical standpoint, the findings suggest actionable strategies for organizations, managers, HR professionals such as creating tailored HR systems that signify commitment to employees; cultivate leadership that promotes motivation and engagement; acknowledge and utilize individual differences like over qualification or a craftsman spirit; and nurture organizational cultures that fostering knowledge sharing and learning, building social capital, and deploying behavioral nudges to enhance creativity and innovation. Such studies bridge theoretical gaps and provide a solid foundation for practical implementation in creativity- and innovation-driven organizations.
While the Research Topic provides solid and comprehensive contributions to both theory and practice, further research is still needed. For instance, studies have shown individuals' psychological capital significantly enhances employee performance, including employee creativity and innovation (Ghafoor and Haar, 2022; Tho, 2022). Creativity and innovation are highly cognitively demanding processes that consume personal resources (Serban et al., 2023; Sidelkivska and Bilbao-Calabuig, 2023), while psychological capital is a major individual psychological resource that acts as a major personal resource in support of employee creative and innovative behavior (Ghafoor and Haar, 2022). It encompasses hope, optimism, self-efficacy, and resilience, which are considered fundamental drivers of creative and innovative behavior (Luthans and Youssef-Morgan, 2017; Newman et al., 2014; Yu et al., 2019). However, there is a lack of understanding regarding the contexts and conditions that underlie the relationships between psychological capital, creativity, and innovation (Loghman et al., 2023; Lupsa et al., 2020). Accordingly, future research would benefit from examining how and when psychological resources can promote creative and innovative behavior in the workplace. In particular, further research is needed to gain a deeper understanding of how proximal factors in an employee's work environment, such as their job, either challenge or hinder their ability to engage in creative and innovative behaviors (De Clercq and Mustafa, 2024). Such efforts can advance our understanding of the conditions and boundaries that facilitate or inhibit the effective translation of psychological resources into creativity and innovation.
In the era characterized by rapid technological change, heightened unpredictability, and growing uncertainty, literature increasingly highlights creativity and innovation as vital drivers of organizational adaptability and long-term success (Sidelkivska and Bilbao-Calabuig, 2023; Zhou and Hoever, 2023). Advancing our understanding of creative and innovative behavior is essential for supporting employers, managers, and HR professionals in navigating these complex challenges. However, the number of empirical research studies in this Research Topic remains limited. Therefore, further scholarly efforts are warranted to conduct empirical studies to support and enable organizations to remain competitive and future-ready.
Author contributions
SH: Conceptualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. MM: Writing – review & editing. MH: Writing – review & editing. DV: Writing – review & editing.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Generative AI statement
The authors declare that no Gen AI was used in the creation of this manuscript.
Publisher's note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
References
De Clercq, D., and Mustafa, M. J. (2024). How transformational leaders get employees to take initiative and display creativity: the catalytic role of work overload. Personnel Rev. 53, 488–507. doi: 10.1108/PR-02-2022-0090
Dwivedi, Y. K., Sharma, A., Rana, N. P., Giannakis, M., Goel, P., and Dutot, V. (2023). Evolution of artificial intelligence research in Technological Forecasting and Social Change: research topics, trends, and future directions. Technol. Forecast. Soc. Change 192:122579. doi: 10.1016/j.techfore.2023.122579
Ghafoor, A., and Haar, J. (2022). Does job stress enhance employee creativity? Exploring the role of psychological capital. Personnel Rev. 51, 644–661. doi: 10.1108/PR-08-2019-0443
Gu, X. J., Tong, D. D., Shi, P. Q., Zou, Y. C., Yuan, H., Chen, C., et al. (2023). Incorporating STEAM activities into creativity training in higher education. Think. Ski. Creat. 50:101395. doi: 10.1016/j.tsc.2023.101395
Loghman, S., Quinn, M., Dawkins, S., Woods, M., Sharma, S. O., and Scott, J. (2023). The comprehensive meta-analyses of the nomological network of psychological capital (PsyCap). J. Leadersh. Organizat. Stud. 30, 108–128. doi: 10.1177/15480518221107998
Lupsa, D., Vîrga, D., Maricutoiu, L. P., and Rusu, A. (2020). Increasing psychological capital: a pre-registered meta-analysis of controlled interventions. Appl. Psychol. 69, 1506–1556. doi: 10.1111/apps.12219
Luthans, F., and Youssef-Morgan, C. M. (2017). Psychological capital: an evidence-based positive approach. Annu. Rev. Organizat. Psychol. Organizat. Behav. 4, 339–366. doi: 10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-032516-113324
Newman, A., Ucbasaran, D., Zhu, F., and Hirst, G. (2014). Psychological capital: a review and synthesis. J. Organ. Behav. 35, S120–S138. doi: 10.1002/job.1916
Rietzschel, E. F., Ritter, S. M., and Baas, M. (2024). “A systematic review of creativity evaluation and creativity selection measurement tasks,” in Psychology of Aesthetics Creativity and the Arts.
Serban, A., Kepes, S., Wang, W., and Baldwin, R. (2023). Cognitive ability and creativity: typology contributions and a meta-analytic review. Intelligence 98:101757. doi: 10.1016/j.intell.2023.101757
Sidelkivska, V., and Bilbao-Calabuig, P. (2023). Conceptualizing cognitive and behavioral elements of individual's creativity and innovation: systematic literature review. Eur. J. Soc. Sci. Res. 21, 190–195. doi: 10.1080/13511610.2023.2231161
Tho, N. D. (2022). Employees' psychological capital and innovation outputs: the roles of job crafting and proactive personality. Innovation 24, 333–353. doi: 10.1080/14479338.2021.1979987
Woods, S. A., Mustafa, M. J., Anderson, N., and Sayer, B. (2018). Innovative work behavior and personality traits: examining the moderating effects of organizational tenure. J. Manag. Psychol. 33, 29–42. doi: 10.1108/JMP-01-2017-0016
Yu, X. F., Li, D. H., Tsai, C. H., and Wang, C. H. (2019). The role of psychological capital in employee creativity. Career Dev. Int. 24, 420–437. doi: 10.1108/CDI-04-2018-0103
Keywords: creativity, innovative behavior, innovation, culture, creative behavior
Citation: Huang S, Mustafa MJ, Hughes M and Virga D (2025) Editorial: Innovative and creative behaviours in the modern workplace: causes and consequences. Front. Psychol. 16:1647616. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1647616
Received: 16 June 2025; Accepted: 19 June 2025;
Published: 04 July 2025.
Edited and reviewed by: Jolita Vveinhardt, Lithuanian Sports University, Lithuania
Copyright © 2025 Huang, Mustafa, Hughes and Virga. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Mike James Mustafa, bWljaGFlbC5tdXN0YWZhQG5vdHRpbmdoYW0uZWR1Lm15