Organizational Commitment and Creativity: the Inuence of Thinking Styles *

Abstract

of both internal individual factors and external environmental factors on creativity. The nd- ings help shed light on how we can cultivate and further tap creativity. With the increasing role of culture in the study of psychology in the recent decade, researchers have now begun to turn their attention to the study of how cul- ture can inuence creativity. Answering this question in a scientic way is of profound signicance to the ongoing educational reform in China. Based on the unique thinking style of Chinese people and focusing on knowledge work- ers engaged in creative activities, our study explored the relationships among thinking style, organizational commitment and creativity of Chinese employ- ees. We theorized that the thinking style of connection and change would inuence employee creativity both directly and indirectly. Data analysis from a sample of 134 Chinese subordinates supported our hypothesis, indicating that connection was correlated positively to creativity, whereas change was corre- lated negatively. Furthermore, connection was found to have a moderating eect on the relationship between organizational commitment and creativity;