Social or Task-Related Motives? Increasing Employees´ Knowledge Sharing and Creativity

I examined whether and how motivational orientations in the social domain (conceptualized as status striving and communion striving) and in the task domain (conceptualized as achievement striving) predict two types of discretionary behaviors: knowledge sharing and creativity. Data collected from full-time employees confirmed the positive relationship between achievement striving (but not the other motives) and employees´ creativity. As predicted, social motivations displayed an interactive effect: employees with high levels of communion striving had a greater propensity to share their knowledge when they were also high in status striving.