Organizational identification perceptions and millennials' creativity: testing the mediating role of work engagement and the moderating role of work values

Purpose Millennial-generation employees need to stimulate their creativity to produce innovative ideas, services and products for organizations to flourish and succeed. The main purpose of this research was to discover the mechanism through which organization identification influences employees' creativity in the Chinese organizational context. Particularly, we proposed the mediating role of work engagement and the moderating role of work values in the relationship. Design/methodology/approach A questionnaire survey was utilized to collect the data from 281 employees working in China. Hierarchical regression was utilized to analyze the data. Findings The findings reveal that organizational identification significantly influences the creativity of millennial employees; work engagement plays a positive mediating role between organizational identification and employee creativity. Moreover, work values of millennial generation employees, specifically utilitarian orientation, intrinsic preferences, interpersonal harmony and innovation orientation have a positive moderating effect between work engagement and employee creativity. Originality/value This study recognizes and analyzes the mechanism underlying the influence of organizational identification and recommends that work engagement is a crucial mediator of the complicated relationship between organizational identification and employee creativity. Consequently, this study is the key effort for millennial employees' work values and engagement to explore employee creativity in Chinese cultural context and also suggests important theoretical and practical implications.