Demographic and Personality Factors: Effects on Employee Creativity in the Service Industry

Research indicates that employee creativity is of utmost importance for competitiveness of organisations in today’s business environment especially the service organisations. While studies have correlated demographic and personality factors in facilitating employee creativity, results remain inconclusive. Therefore, this study investigated the demographic and personality factors predicting employee creativity in the service industry in Nigeria. The study employed ex-post facto design and adopted hierarchical multiple regression analyses to test four hypotheses. Data were collected from 200 (118 males and 82 females) randomly selected employees of 17 service business organisations in Lagos and Ibadan. Employees completed questionnaires consisting of the standardised scales of employee creativity, personality and demographic factors in the study. Cronbach alpha of the scales ranged from 0.86 to 0.92. Results showed that demographic factors (AR2=.05, p<.001) and personality factors (AR2=.29, .p<.001) significantly predicted employee creativity with personality factors (d=.45, p<.001) predicting employee creativity better than the demographic factors (d=.10, p<.001). Separately, sex (d =.14, p<.001), role breadth self-efficacy (d=.20, p<.001) and competitive disposition (d=.20, p<.001) predicted creativity better than other demographic and personality factors. Demographic and Personality factors interacted significantly to enhance creativity (AR2=.32, p<.001). Specifically, education best interacted with role breadth self-efficacy to enhance creativity (AR2=.02, p<.001). It was concluded that demographic and personality factors are important in facilitating employee creativity. 1t was recommended that service organisations in Nigeria can facilitate employee creativity by recruiting employees with the requisite demographic and personality characteristics.