Another day, another chance: Daily workplace experiences and their impact on creativity

Creative climate research shows that an employee's perception of their work environment impacts their creative performance. However, variable-centered approaches (e.g., moderated regression) are often unable to study all climate factors interacting simultaneously, with researchers only able to focus on a few factors at a time. Further, longitudinal climate research shows these perceptions fluctuate over time. To overcome some limitations of variable-centered approaches, we use a person-centered approach with a longitudinal focus to (a) identify distinct daily workplace experience profiles, (b) explore the stability of people's workplace experiences over time, and (c) investigate whether daily workplace experiences relate to creativity. We used an archival dataset of 11,245 daily surveys from 221 people asking about their work environment to identify five daily workplace experience profiles. We find people have varying experiences over the course of a project, but that these experiences also appear to be stable within a one-week period. Finally, we also found that these experiences influence creative self-perceptions and creative performance behaviors. As such, this study helps integrate various creativity and organizational theories to develop a rich and more holistic understanding of how daily work environment perceptions impact creative work.