Different Strokes for Different Folks: A Self-Regulation Perspective on Idea Creation

The purpose of the present paper is to contribute to the small but growing literature studying the role of individual-level factors in corporate entrepreneurship. We use a pretest-posttest experimental design with 328 employees to capture dynamic effects between affective states and idea generation. Building on the affective shift model (Bledow, Schmitt, Frese, & Kuehnel, 2011) and self-regulatory theory (Kuhl, 2000), we analyze how employees’ ability to self-regulate their affective states influences their creativity. We further show how the effect of feedback as an organizational tool to increase creativity, differs, depending on the personality of the employees. Our findings provide important new insights for research on the individual level of corporate entrepreneurship, as they allow detailed insights on the idea generation process by including fundamental differences in employee personalities.