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Published in: Journal of Business and Psychology 1/2024

15-12-2022 | Original Paper

Are Multiple-Identity Holders More Creative? The Roles of Ambivalence and Mindfulness

Published in: Journal of Business and Psychology | Issue 1/2024

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Abstract

Individuals in organizations commonly define themselves using multiple salient identities. When individuals adopt multiple identities at work, they have several cognitive and emotional frameworks in which to interpret and respond to a single event, resulting in ambivalent cognitions and emotions towards their work. Drawing on the identity and ambivalence literature, we propose that multiple identities (versus a single identity) would be positively related to individuals’ cognitive and emotional ambivalence. Because ambivalence has the potential to broaden one’s thinking and lead to cognitive flexibility, we further suggest that ambivalence may mediate the relationship between multiple identities and individual creative performance. We also suggest that individuals’ mindfulness may strengthen the relationship between ambivalence and creative performance and therefore strengthen the indirect effect of multiple identities on creative performance via ambivalence. The results from two multi-wave, multi-source survey studies supported many of our hypotheses. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

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Appendix
Available only for authorised users
Footnotes
1
Please see Appendix 2 for more information about the validation of our measures.
 
2
We thank both our anonymous reviewers for providing helpful comments on clarifying our measure.
 
3
For more information about how and why we adapted the items, please see Appendix 1.
 
4
We found there was no significant difference on cognitive/emotional ambivalence or creative performance for employees who claimed multiple work identities and employees who claimed multiple identities with only one being a work identity.
 
5
The results remained generally consistent if the multilevel path modeling excluded control variables.
 
6
The results remained generally consistent if the multilevel path modeling excluded control variables.
 
7
We thanked our second anonymous reviewer to note this point.
 
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Metadata
Title
Are Multiple-Identity Holders More Creative? The Roles of Ambivalence and Mindfulness
Publication date
15-12-2022
Published in
Journal of Business and Psychology / Issue 1/2024
Print ISSN: 0889-3268
Electronic ISSN: 1573-353X
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-022-09868-2

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