Editorial Summary: Creative and Innovative Behaviors in the Modern Workplace: Causes and Consequences

Sheng Huang¹Mike James Mustafa^1*Mathew Hughes²Delia Virga³

• ¹University of Nottingham Malaysia, Semenyih, Malaysia
• ²University of Leicester, Leicester, United Kingdom
• ³Universitatea de Vest din Timisoara, Timișoara, Romania

sharing (Li Yuzhu et al., 2024), and facilitating knowledge acquisition (Li Shuming et al., 2025), 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 Yuzhu et al. (2025), Lee et al. (2024), andYang et al. (2024) suggests that the organization's innovative climate and culture have conditioning effects on both actor-level and contextual factors' that shape employee 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 et al., 2024), transformational leadership and leader's conscientiousness (Jiang Daokui et al., 2024;Wang et al., 2025). Jiang Daokui et al. (2024) examined nonlinear and cross-level dynamics, uncovering the nuanced relationships between factors such as organizational ambidexterity, transformational leadership, and innovation outcomes.From a theoretical prestive, four articles utilized relational and exchange-based theories (Li Yuzhu et al., 2025;Yang et al., 2024;Jiang Daokui et al., 2024;Arshad et al., 2024). 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 et al., 2025;Liu et al., 2024), trait activation theory (Jiang Bing et al., 2024), expectancy theory (Li Shuming et al., 2025), self-determination theory (Liu et al., 2024;Jiang Daokui et al., 2024), and social cognitive theory (Li Yuzhu et al., 2025;Yang et al., 2024) to explore how employees' creative and innovative behaviors are support in the workplace.The collection 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 overqualification 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 collection 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 & Haar, 2022;Tho, 2022). Creativity and innovation are highly cognitively demanding processes that consume personal resources (Serban et al., 2023;Sidelkivska & 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 & Haar, 2022). It encompasses hope, optimism, self-efficacy, and resilience, which are considered fundamental drivers of creative and innovative behavior (Luthans & 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;Lupșa 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 behaviors (De Clercq & 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 & Bilbao-Calabuig, 2023;Zhou & 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 collection remains limited. Therefore, further scholarly efforts are warranted to conduct empirical studies to support and enable organizations to remain competitive and future-ready.