The role of time pressure on individual employees' creativity remains ambiguous, with prior studies reporting positive, negative, and curvilinear relations. The present research aims to address this issue. Drawing from the attentional focus model, we (a) distinguish the consequences of time pressure for radical versus incremental creativity and (b) introduce external and internal knowledge scanning as distinct mediating mechanisms. Moreover, we cast employees' long-range and short-range planning as moderators of the indirect time pressure–creativity linkages. Time-lagged data from 203 employees and their supervisors revealed that time pressure hampered employees' radical creativity by undermining their external scanning, with long-range planning alleviating this negative indirect relationship. In contrast, we found an indirect, inverted U-shaped linkage between time pressure and incremental creativity through internal scanning. Unexpectedly, this indirect relation was not contingent on employees' short-range planning. These results offer a new theoretical perspective that helps to reconcile previous, seemingly contradictory findings on the relationship between time pressure and creativity. Moreover, our results offer practical implications for modern workplaces that require employees' creative contributions under conditions of time scarcity.

中文翻译：

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关于时间压力和创造力的新视角：区分员工的激进创造力与渐进创造力

时间压力对员工个人创造力的作用仍然不明确，之前的研究报告了正向、负向和曲线关系。目前的研究旨在解决这个问题。根据注意力焦点模型，我们（a）区分激进创造力和渐进创造力的时间压力的后果，以及（b）引入外部和内部知识扫描作为不同的中介机制。此外，我们将员工的长期和短期规划作为间接时间压力与创造力联系的调节因素。来自 203 名员工及其主管的时滞数据显示，时间压力会破坏员工的外部扫描能力，从而阻碍他们的激进创造力，而长期规划则可以缓解这种负面的间接关系。相比之下，我们通过内部扫描发现时间压力和增量创造力之间存在间接的倒U形联系。出乎意料的是，这种间接关系并不取决于员工的短期规划。这些结果提供了一个新的理论视角，有助于协调先前关于时间压力与创造力之间关系的看似矛盾的发现。此外，我们的研究结果为现代工作场所提供了实际意义，因为现代工作场所需要员工在时间稀缺的情况下做出创造性贡献。