In this chapter, it provides the introduction including the background of the study, an overview of Ministry of Education in Thailand, statement of the problems, purposes of the study, questions of the study, significance of the study, delimitations, and definition of key terms which adopted in this research.
Background of the Study
Nowadays, the business model and the way that people do their occupation are different from the past because the devices are rapidly changed in terms of technological advances; the requirement of innovation and creativity within the organization have become more radical.
Therefore, a great deal of organizations require to concern about high performance of employees in terms of creativity and innovation that will make themselves predominant from their competitors and increase competitive advantage in the market share (Duan, Liu, & Che, 2018; Madjar, Oldham,
& Pratt, 2002; Shalley & Gilson, 2004; Zhou & Shalley, 2003). In addition, many researchers (Pan, Sun, & Chow, 2012; Shalley, 1991; Zhou, 2003) suggested that Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) plays as a critical role in employee’s creativity in the workplace because it can maintain and encourage organizational achievement, also competitive advantage. According to LMX theory, the organizational environment foundation relates to a social-exchange between leaders and subordinates. Also, the role of leadership within the company plays as a key factor which embedded within the social-exchange that stimulates and emerges employee’s creativity (Pan et al., 2012; Tierney & Farmer, 2011). Moreover, some researches recently claimed that leaders can establish subordinates’ creativity through a perception of the motivation empowerment and understanding them naturally (Duan et al., 2018).
In 2004, Janssen and Van Yperen reported that a lower quality of LMX may affect the level of employees’ ability in terms of innovation, job performance and job satisfaction; the employees are seemingly inhibited by the lower quality exchanges with their leaders because they lack a resources for establishing creativity which may illustrate the reason why the level of quality of LMX relationship may influence employee’s creativity and satisfaction in the organization.
However, some study (Pan et al., 2012) found that the feelings of obligation and motivation empowerment mediates positively on the relationships between LMX and employee’s creativity.
Likewise, the degree of the structure within the organization may encourage or inhibit employee’s
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creativity. Furthermore, Malingumu, Stouten, Euwema, and Babyegeya (2016) studied how quality of team-member exchange (TMC) was developed by servant leaders to impact Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) and employee’s creativity; their result suggested that servant leadership plays as an important roles which enhance positively relationship between leaders and subordinates, also between co-workers and co-workers, and these kinds of relationship are positively related to OCB and creativity within the workplace.
The development of the LMX model, motivation theory, and social exchange framework have been investigated which degree of LMX exert influences employee’s outcome and innovation through a motivational model and social exchange theory. And many studies (Conger & Kanungo, 1988; Pan et al., 2012; Thomas & Velthouse, 1990) suggested that employee’s creativity will become more increasingly when the employees’ experience of autonomy, competence, and relatedness are responded. Meanwhile, the social exchange theory indicates that if leaders treat subordinate impartially; they tend to be more creatively and positively in their occupation. Also, they more likely to have high-quality relationships with their leaders (Liden & Graen, 1980; Loi, Mao, & Ngo, 2009; Pan et al., 2012). Nevertheless, there are a few studies (Duan et al., 2018;
Herrmann & Felfe, 2013; Jensen & Bro, 2018; Pan et al., 2012; Rahbi, Khalid, & Khan, 2017) have investigated the intrinsic motivation as a mediator between LMX and creativity. Moreover, many studies (George & Zhou, 2007; Kark, Van Dijk, & Vashdi, 2018; Unsworth, Wall, & Carter, 2005) already examined in service organizations which creativity is less important. Additionally, those studies suggested that the future research should investigate the innovative organizations or other organizations which creativity plays as a main feature of the work context because it will conduct accurately in terms of sampling more than the previous researches and also the differences of an organization working system may affect employee’s creativity differently. For instance, educational organizations are concerned that creativity is more important than service organizations because they are a basic institution of training and developing, also providing knowledge, skill, and evolution to people. Particularly, the creative skill is highly required in the educational organization (Ghorbani & Ahmadi, 2011). Therefore, in this research, the intrinsic motivation as a mediator between LMX and employee’s creativity is conducted in the center educational technology in Thailand which creativity is a major concern.
In addition, employee’s creativity is obviously necessary for a company, especially for innovative companies. In this century, the turbulent environment is increased by technological
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changed, demanding customers and unpredictable economy with high competition which stimulates many companies to determine the way that promotes creativity within their organization.
Several studies (Amabile & Khaire, 2008; Eyal & Kark, 2004; Kark et al., 2018; Mainemelis, Kark,
& Epitropaki, 2015; Mumford et al., 2012) suggested that employee’s creativity can encourage the effectiveness and competitiveness of an organization, but leadership supposed to be the key factor to establish employee’s creativity, since they are responsible for providing the work context that relates to the interactions between leaders and subordinates. Therefore, this issue is seemingly important to determine which level of LMX relationship may actually support or inhibit employee’s creativity within the organization, especially in the educational organization area. In this study, the additional mediating role of the intrinsic motivation model examines the impact on the relationship between LMX and employee’s creativity as it represented the importance of psychological mechanisms for guideline leaders how to promote their subordinate’s creativity appropriately in the educational organization area which creativity plays as a core concept.
An Overview of Ministry of Education in Thailand
According to “Education for All 2015 National Review Report: Thailand”, it is provided by Thailand Misintry of Education and Thailand National Commission for UNESCO (2014). It mentioned many organizations undertaken by the Ministry of Education in Thailand (MOE) including the office of the non-formal and informal education, the office of the basic education commission, the office of the vocational education commission, the office of higher education, science, research and innovation, science center for education, and the center educational technology (CET).In this study, CET organization is chose as a case study of the research because it is well known as an educational organization for people who seek to learn and develop their knowledge. It has been founded in 1994 by MOE. CET organization aims to provide tutorials in several subjects through public television channels and the internet educational materials are approached and dispensed via electronic media. These materials are provided not only general people (students and elderly) but also disabled people. Moreover, the objects of CET organization commit to developing and improving the quality of distance education system for lifelong learning.
In addition, CET organization concerned creativity as a core concept and vision of the organization.
Therefore, CET organization is suitable and reasonable to be the case study of this research since this research focused on the relationship between LMX and employee creativity. Other
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organizations which undertaken by MOE are not mentioned in this study because those organizations focused on leading through strategic funding, autonomy with accountability, modern management agencies, and flow and collaborative networks of the education field which creativity is not the main point in those organizations.
Apart from the MOE structure, CET organization structure (Center for educational technology, 2018) can divided into eight sectors: the division of directing, the educational television department, the educational radio department, the educational production department, the division of maintenance and technicians, the division of engineering and developing learning innovation, the division of digital education for learners with disabilities, and human resources department. Totally, according to the divisions in this organization, it is obviously showing that the most abilities that they concerned as core concept is the creativity because most of the tasks required the creativity, original ideas, innovation, and development. Thus, the reason why the researcher chose CET organization as a case study because they concerned creativity as the strength to operate in their organization.
Statement of the Problems
Since many organizations required creativity and innovation for operation. Some researchers (Ghorbani & Ahmadi, 2011) noted that employee’s creativity emerges from facilities, reward system, organizational structure, motivation and relationship with their managers. In addition, leaders have been found that they play as the main factor to foster and encourage employee’s creativity. However, leaders who refuse a relationship with their subordinates or become unethical; it tends to inhibit employee’s creativity in the organizational environment. Thus, in order to encourage the high-quality relationship between leaders and subordinates which leading to creativity, it necessary to investigate and develop the variables including LMX and motivation empowerment within the organizations (Duan et al., 2018; Enderle, Almond, & Argandoña, 1990).
There are a few studies (Agarwal, Datta, Blake-Beard, & Bhargava, 2012; Duan et al., 2018;
Ghorbani & Ahmadi, 2011; Herrmann & Felfe, 2013; Jaskyte & Kisieliene, 2006; Pan et al., 2012;
Rahbi et al., 2017) investigated the relationship between LMX and employee’s creativity through intrinsic motivation in the organization. What’s more, There are very few researchers examined the educational organization area about the relationship between LMX and creativity through intrinsic motivation (Ghorbani & Ahmadi, 2011). To better understand how those leaders develop
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their employee’s creativity through intrinsic motivation; research is required to discover this critical issue in different cultures and also different characteristics of organizational field (Jaskyte
& Kisieliene, 2006). In order to fill these issues, this study proposed to explore the relationship between LMX and employee creativity and examine the mediator role of intrinsic motivation at CET organization, Thailand.
Purposes of the Study
According to the background of the study and statement of the problem that were discussed above; these sections focus on the problem leading to the present study, but it is the purpose statement which contributes the direction for the research. This research may provide the insight knowledge about the LMX and creativity based on intrinsic motivation framework.
The purpose of this study aims to investigate the relationship between leader-member exchange (LMX) and employee’s creativity toward intrinsic motivation in CET organization, Thailand due to the consideration of personal interested, and to better understands the core concept of social relationships within CET organization, Thailand.
Questions of the Study
According to the purposes of the present study that tends to explore the Ministry of Education in Thailand, these questions are initiated from this study as following:
1. Does the quality relationship between leaders and employees increase employee’s creativity?
2. Does the quality relationship between leaders and employees enhance employee’s intrinsic motivation?
3. Does the employee’s intrinsic motivation increase employee’s creativity?
4. Does the employee’s intrinsic motivation predict a relationship between LMX and employee’s creativity?
Significance of the Study
The significance of the present research is to explore which degree of relationship between leaders and subordinates exerts influence over employee’s creativity, especially in the educational organization where creativity has been concerned as a core concept of work-context. As noted
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earlier, the major concern of the organization in this century is all about innovation and creativity because the fastest growing economies and technologies in the business area are required high competitiveness, particularly, employee’s creativity. So, they want to become more creative, not only in a new product line but also in human capital (Gupta & Chadha, 2017). Therefore, the present study investigates which attributes associated are stimulating employee’s creative in the organization.
In general, this study illustrates a stable level of LMX quality that impacts employee’s creativity through intrinsic motivation, also emphasizing a point of view in educational organization area which few studies have been finished. Moreover, the present study can assist HR practitioners, managers, and organizations improve their employee’s creativity in the educational organization, especially the LMX-creativity within the educational organization has been criticized for insufficient survey, then this study can address and give the direction to the current research gap existing on how to incentive high-quality relationship between leaders and subordinates to increase employee’s creativity which achieves organizational success.
In addition, the present study is significant to scholars who are interested in human development field because it provides a different structure model and variables that exert influence over employee’s creativity in terms of working context in CET organization, Thailand.
Delimitations
The delimitation of this research only focused on educational organizations undertaken by MOE in Thailand. Also, all leaders and employees in the organization are Thailand's nationality with a full-time job or part-time job and after three month's tenure are taken in an account, but this study focused only on CET organization as a case study. According to the sampling procedure in this study, it may decrease the generalizability of the result. So, this study is not be generalizable to all areas of leaders and employees in other organizations. However, this research focuses on LMX, intrinsic motivation, and employee’s creativity, other significant variables which may impact employee’s creativity do not mention in the research.
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Definition of Key Terms Leader-Member Exchange (LMX)
Leader-member exchange (LMX) in this study defines as interdependent dyadic relationships between employees and their leaders in complex organizations (Graen & Scandura, 1987), also those relationships are built from the different quality level of exchange patterns (Gerstner & Day, 1997). In addition, LMX is the quality of relationship between leaders and subordinates which measured by subordinates. It uses continuous rating scale of LMX 7-item for rating the quality of LMX from 1 (left) to 5 (right).
Intrinsic Motivation
Intrinsic motivation in this study refers to people’s reasons and interest to enjoy an activity itself with positive attitudes, also when people obtain the task which collaborated with their favorable motivator, other factors seem to be less influential (Gagné & Deci, 2005; Jacobsen, Hvitved, & Andersen, 2014). Additionally, intrinsic motivation is the levels of interest and satisfaction in an employees’ everyday work, it is measured by subordinates. Rating of intrinsic motivation from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree).
Employee Creativity
Employee’s creativity in this study refers to the idea of products, developments, proposals, practices, and procedures by an employee which are considered to be initiative and modern, also proper and effectively useful (Gupta & Chadha, 2017; Tierney, Farmer, & Graen, 1999; Wang, Tsai, & Tsai, 2014). Additionally, employee creativity is the number of creativity behaviors that those subordinates perform on their task in an organization. Including three-item scales of employee creativity in workplace are rated by managers from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).
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