The Creativity-Performance Relationship: How Rewarding Creativity Moderates the Expression of Creativity

Researchers have argued that creativity is intrinsically motivated, and that rewarding creativity can stifle creativity. Using a sample of 310 employees reporting to 50 different supervisors, we instead show that rewarding creativity influences the relationship between creativity and performance by changing the nature of expressed creativity. We do this by examining novelty and usefulness as separate dimensions. High perceived reward enhances the relationship between novelty and performance while diminishing the relationship between usefulness and performance. The moderating effect of reward for creativity on the relationship between creativity and performance was not observed when we operationalized creativity as an integrated, unidimensional construct. (c) 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.