Enhancing the creativity of frontline employees: The effects of job complexity and customer orientation

Abstract

Purpose

Logistics companies need creative employees to enhance supply chain resiliency and differentiate service. The purpose of this paper is to adopt a job-resource perspective to investigate the antecedents of frontline employee creativity in the logistics industry and how the impact of such antecedents may differ between different types of logistics companies.

Design/methodology/approach

This study used a sample of 226 frontline employees of logistics companies. Structural equation modeling was used to test the model.

Findings

The results indicate that job complexity (the extent to which a job is multifaceted) increases customer orientation, customer orientation increases employee creativity, and job complexity increases logistics employee creativity. The mediating effect of customer orientation is stronger for logistics companies that provide a variety of logistics services than for carriers that provide standardized services.

Originality/value

This study is the first to investigate logistics employee creativity and its antecedents. By providing a job-resource perspective, this study provides a novel perspective on why job complexity increases creativity through customer orientation. The findings provide information for logistics companies in terms of job design and resource allocation.

Citation

Jeng, S.P. (2018), "Enhancing the creativity of frontline employees: The effects of job complexity and customer orientation", The International Journal of Logistics Management, Vol. 29 No. 1, pp. 387-408. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJLM-11-2016-0255