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

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJLM-11-2016-0255
• Pages: 387-408
• Date: 12 February 2018
• Published date: 12 February 2018
• Author: Shih Ping Jeng
• Subject Matter: Management science & operations,Logistics

Enhancing the creativity of

frontline employees

The effects of job complexity and customer

orientation

Shih Ping Jeng

National Taiwan Ocean University, Keelung, Taiwan

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.

Keywords Employee creativity, Customer orientation, Job complexity, Job resource

Paper type Research paper

Introduction

In today’s dynamic and competitive business environment, creativity is important for

organizations’success. Creative employees develop novel and potentially useful ideas about

services and procedures, which ensure that organizations remain flexible and can manage

their changing competition, markets, and technological requirements (Gilson et al., 2005).

Thus, employee creativity is recognized as key for generating competitive advantage (e.g.

Shalley and Gilson, 2004), and this is increasingly true for logistics for at least two reasons.

First, employee creativity is important in enhancing supply chain resiliency

(Pettit et al., 2013). Global supply chains are growing in both length and complexity,

and the disruptions that they experience are increasing. Although logistics companies

may have mitigation tactics to address disruptions, the mitigation strategies are

ultimately selected and executed by their employees (Ambulkar et al., 2016).

As disruptions are usually unpredictable and variable, existing scripts are often

inadequate. Therefore, employees’creative problem solving is especially important in this

context (Pettit et al., 2010). For instance, when a disruption occurs, frontline employees

need to communicate with their customers or the firms in other areas of the supply chain.

Creative employees can more quickly and effectively decide whom to contact and how to

communicate. Creative ideas may also need be generated to address customers’specific

concerns or to prevent costly delays. Creative employees can thus help moderate the

impact of a disruption and are key for the effective management of supply chain

disruptions (Blackhurst et al., 2011). The International Journal of

Logistics Management

Vol. 29 No. 1, 2018

pp. 387-408

© Emerald PublishingLimited

0957-4093

DOI 10.1108/IJLM-11-2016-0255

Received 4 November 2016

Revised 3 June 2017

23 September 2017

Accepted 23 September 2017

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

www.emeraldinsight.com/0957-4093.htm

This research was supported by the National Science Council, Taiwan, Project No. NSC 102-2410-H-

019-022-MY2 to Shih-Ping Jeng.

387

Enhancing the

creativity of

frontline

employees

Second, employee creativity results in logisticsservice differentiation (Ralston et al., 2013).

Recent research (e.g. Lindstadet al., 2016; Maloni, Gligor an dLag oudis, 2016) has noted that to

establish a competitive advantage, logistics companies (e.g. marine container) should provide

differentiated services (e.g. vessels operating at various speeds or free days of storage

extension) instead of one standardized service. Logistics service differentiation requires

employees to seekand implement new ideas and processes (Ralston et al., 2013). For example,

salespeople need to offer new ideas to innovate services or creative selling techniques to

identify a customer’s real needs. Operators need to come up with new ideas or convert

creativity into the development of new routes in order to provide tailored solutions to customer

problems. Because logisticsfrontline employeesplay a boundary role and occupya privileged

position from which to collect first-hand knowledge of the customer and market information,

they have important creative potential that could be incentivized (Grawe et al., 2015) and

should be an inherent requirement of logistics service differentiation.

Despite theimportance of creative behavioramong logistics frontlineemployees, employee

creativity has received little attention in logistics research, indicating a research gap.

Past research on creativity (e.g. Oldham and Cummings, 1996; Shalley and Gilson, 2004)

has demonstratedthe critical influences of the work environment and personal characteristics

on creativity. However, the investigation of the relationship among job characteristics,

personal characteristics, and employee creativity in the logistics industry is still lacking, thus

suggesting a second research gap.

This issue is unique to the logistics industry. The depth, breadth, and importance of

logistics services are increasing as modern supply chains require logistics operations to

assume greater responsibility for providing services that ensure customer satisfaction

(Slone et al., 2007). The fracturing of supply chains, which increasingly feature a mix of

offshore, nearshore, and onshore locations, along with the expanding number of nodes in

shipper distribution networks makes logistics jobs (especially ocean shipping) more

complex (Tippinget al., 2016). Moreover, logisticsemployees confront unanticipated problems

and changing priorities, which require significanthuman interactions between customers and

suppliers to accomplish a single day’s operational goals (Keller and Ozment, 2009). For that

reason, logistics jobs are significantly different than other customer-facing jobs. Given the

distinctive nature of logistics services (high complexity, high task variability, high task

uncertainty of business-to-business services) (Busse, 2010) and the fact that service

differentiation (service complexity) could offer competitive advantage in a commoditized

logistics industry (e.g. marine container) (Maloni, Gligor and Lagoudis, 2016), it is important

for logistics companies to understandthe influences of job complexity (the extent to which a

job is multifaceted) and customer orientation (employee belief in the importance of customer

satisfaction) on employee creativity. Research filling this gap can provide information for

logistics companies in terms of job design.

This study aims to investigate the antecedents of logistics employee creativity and how

the impact of these antecedents may differ between different types of logistics companies.

Based on the job-demands-resources theory ( JD-R theory) (Demerouti et al., 2001), this study

demonstrates that job complexity influences customer orientation, which then influences

employee creativity. The JD-R theory refers to the motivational and wellness-promoting

potential of job-related resources. It suggests that employee behaviors can be determined by

job resources (i.e. job complexity) and personal resources (i.e. customer orientation). Shalley

and Gilson (2004) suggested that creativity requires materials to recombine and develop,

and more resources should be directed at fostering creativity. If managers are aware of the

importance of resources in job situations, they should be better able to positively affect

the occurrence of creativity.

This study makes several contributions to the logistics literature. First, it is the first to

investigate logistics employee creativity and its antecedents. Logistics employees’creative

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