When anything less than perfect isn’t good enough: How parental and supervisor perfectionistic expectations determine fear of failure and employee creativity

Shen-Yang Lin, Giles Hirst, Chia-Huei Wu, Cynthia Lee, Wen Wu and Chia-Chi Chang

Journal of Business Research, 2023, vol. 154, issue C

Abstract: In the quest to get the best from those for whom they are responsible, some parents and managers seek or demand perfection. But do such expectations benefit the targets, in terms of their capacity for creativity? The present research examines how perfectionistic parental and supervisor expectations influence employees’ fear of failure and creativity; in particular, the authors propose that perfectionistic parental expectations promote a fear of failure, which undermines employee creativity later in life. In line with social cognitive theory, when perfectionistic supervisor expectations repeat and reinforce these early life experiences, the negative mechanism may be strengthened. Tests of the hypotheses rely on two time-lagged field studies in different cultures (214 U.S. employees, 276 supervisor–employee–parent triads from a Chinese organization) and show that the indirect effect of parents’ perfectionistic expectations on creativity, through fear of failure, is stronger when perfectionistic supervisor expectations are high. This study thus offers unique insights into how familial and work experiences can jointly affect a person’s fear of failure and further creativity at work.

Keywords: Creativity; Fear of failure; Perfectionistic expectations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296322008062
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:154:y:2023:i:c:s0148296322008062

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2022.113341

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Research is currently edited by A. G. Woodside

More articles in Journal of Business Research from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().