Conscientiousness and creativity of accounting employees: The role of intrinsic motivation

Creativity is one of the key activities aimed at enhancing the competitive advantage of organizations. Therefore, the topic of how to foster creativity has recently become of interest to many researchers. Accountants often possess unique characteristics related to motivation and creativity. Thus, the objective of this study is to examine the relationship between conscientiousness, intrinsic motivation, and creativity of accounting employees. Data were collected through a survey questionnaire administered to a sample of 283 accountants of private organizations in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The SPSS and AMOS 20 software were used to analyze the data and test the hypotheses through structural equation modeling. The results show that conscientiousness positively influences intrinsic motivation (standardized β = 0.387), and intrinsic motivation positively influences creativity (standardized β = 0.474). Additionally, although conscientiousness does not directly affect creativity, it indirectly influences it through the mediating role of intrinsic motivation (standardized β = 0.183). In other words, intrinsic motivation fully mediates the relationship between conscientiousness and individual creativity. A highly conscientious individual, although not directly enhancing creativity, can still foster personal creativity if he/she possesses high intrinsic motivation. This result offers significant contributions both theoretically and practically.