Too much or too little? Unpacking the curvilinear relationship between telework extent and creativity

As telework has become increasingly prevalent, understanding its implications for employees has received growing scholarly attention. In particular, how telework affects employee creativity is an important question, given the central role of creativity in organizational innovation and competitiveness. Grounded in the conservation of resources theory, we developed and tested a model examining a potential curvilinear relationship between telework extent and creativity. We further examined the mediating role of workplace anxiety (employees’ feelings of nervousness, uneasiness, and tension regarding work) and the moderating role of temporal leadership (leaders’ behaviors that help subordinates improve their time management and coordination). Our analyses revealed a U-shaped relationship between telework extent and workplace anxiety, and this relationship became nonsignificant under low temporal leadership. Moreover, workplace anxiety mediated the inverted U-shaped relationship between telework extent and creativity. Overall, our findings provide important theoretical and practical implications for understanding the relationship between telework and creativity and underscore the important role of workplace anxiety.