Intrinsic motivation and creative behavior: Moderating role of active efforts

According to the social-psychological research on creativity, intrinsic motivation for work is one of the significant factors associated with workers´ creative behavior [2]. In addition to be highly motivated to work, having opportunities for active efforts, including self-learning, might have significant impact on creative job performance. Thus, we expect that employees with strong intrinsic motivation for work and opportunities for active efforts are likely to behave creatively at work. Using data from male Research and Development engineers in a Japanese automotive manufacturing group, this study investigates the moderating role of active efforts in the relationship between engineers´ intrinsic motivation and creative behavior. We found that intrinsic motivation for work was positively associated with engineers´ creative behavior. Furthermore, as we expected, the positive effect of intrinsic motivation on creative behavior becomes stronger when engineers have increased opportunities active efforts.