Proactive Personality and Creativity: Autonomy and Information Processing as Substitutes in Trait Activation

Individual creativity is crucial for organizations, driving research into its determinants. Although studies have explored how individual traits and situational factors interact to influence creativity, our understanding of how situational variables themselves interact in moderating trait–creativity relationships is incomplete. Complementing research showing that situational variables can have mutually enhancing effects in moderating trait–creativity relationships, we argue that situational variables can also substitute for each other’s influence when they are functionally equivalent, such that the influence of the one on the trait–creativity relationship is weaker at higher levels of the other—a phenomenon we call situation substitution. Based on person-in-situation theory and the notion of functional equivalence, we examine how job autonomy and job information–processing requirements interact to moderate the proactive personality–creativity relationship. Results from a sample of 299 subordinate-supervisor dyads show that autonomy and information processing have similar trait-activating effects in the proactive personality–creativity relationships, such that they substitute for each other’s influence (i.e., the moderating effect of the one is weaker at higher levels of the other). Our study underscores the inter-connection of situational interactions and highlights the importance of understanding these dynamics for fostering creativity in organizations.