Psychological empowerment and creative performance: Mediating role of thriving and moderating role of competitive psychological climate

The vital importance of employees’ creative performance has been repeatedly emphasised in both academic and practitioner research. While prior literature has pointed towards the importance of psychological empowerment as a key antecedent of creative performance, mainly a direct link has been established with equivocal findings. Drawing on the Job Demands-Resources framework and the Conservation of Resources theory, this study seeks to account for the influence of perceived psychological empowerment on creative performance by investigating the underlying mediating and moderating mechanisms. A conceptual model derived from the literature is tested among salespersons in both developing (Pakistan; n = 219) and developed (South Korea; n = 201) country contexts. Our findings across both the samples demonstrate that thriving partially mediates the relationship between perceived psychological empowerment and creative performance. Moreover, the direct effect of thriving and the indirect effect of perceived psychological empowerment on creative performance are found to be weaker under highly competitive climate. However, competitive climate is found to bolster the direct effect of psychological empowerment on creativity across both samples implying that competitive climate can be a double-edged sword. The paper further discusses the academic and managerial implications emerging from the findings.