Control mechanisms, management orientations, and the creativity of service employees: Symmetric and asymmetric modeling

Customer needs in service settings are idiosyncratic. Responding to these unique requires frontline employees be creative. Little research looks at the drivers of employee creativity. We aim fill that void by assessing two potential key creativity drivers, control mechanisms and management orientations. collected data from their managers used multilevel mediation modeling, configurational modeling analysis necessary conditions. Multilevel revealed influence process social controls on fully mediated self-control, whereas effects cultural partially mediated. The effect orientation is profit Causal models configurations provide a deeper insight sufficient conditions leading Necessary orientations identified.