Being resilient to maintain interpersonal stability: resource caravan toward employee creativity

This study introduces resilience as a personal resource that promotes employee creativity in the face of various obstacles and challenges. Drawing on the notion of resource caravan from conservation of resources (COR) theory, we propose that resilience initiates the resource caravan process wherein employees use and translate personal resources into social resources by maintaining stable interpersonal interactions in their work. Over time, stable interpersonal functions lead to the conservation of internal resources and further generate social resources, which then contribute to employee creativity. The indirect effect of resilience on employee creativity through interpersonal stability is expected to be accentuated by high situational intrinsic motivation, which channels the resource investment to passionate engagements to improve the task and related procedures. Our empirical analysis of field data collected from 144 employees and their supervisors using multiwave and multisource design confirmed our theoretical propositions. The current analysis highlights the significance of resilience that leads to stable interpersonal interactions in predicting creative performance of employees. This study also expands the application of COR theory by illustrating how individual resources help generate a resource caravan to promote employee creativity.