How does the degree of change and complexity lead to environmental uncertainty?

Organizational creativity is defined as the purposeful creation, application, and implementation of novel ideas within a job role, team, or organization to achieve the best results for that organization (West, 1989). Organizational creativity is widely recognized as a competitive advantage leading to more effective customer problem-solving and higher organizational performance (Byttebie and Vullings, 2015). Empirical creativity research shows an abundance of studies regarding positive predictors of creativity, such as cognitive style (Lomberg et al., 2017), organizational climate and context (Jain and Jain, 2016), and social support and shared vision (Blomberg et al., 2017; Yeh and Huan, 2017). Yeh and Huan (2017) demonstrated that the degrees of freedom, social support, and resources are factors associated with the quantity and quality of creative performance among back-of--house hospitality employees. A meta-analysis by Da Costa et al. (2015) revealed that divergent thinking, as a part of the mechanism that results in individual creativity (Runco, 2001), emotional intelligence, openness to experience, and intrinsic motivation are associated with creativity. Previous research has investigated the positive contextual factors affecting creativity in organizations. However, little has been done to investigate the factors and conditions that may decelerate the process of creativity in an organization. In the hospitality industry, the success rate of creativity is relatively low because of different levels of dynamism, complexity, and knowledge, and the lack of suitable tools for coping with creativity issues, such as uncertainty barriers (Köseoglu et al., 2013; Yeh and Huan, 2017). The hospitality industry is affected by political, environmental, and economic issues that have led to increasing complexity and dynamism. Knowing the sources of these uncertainties is crucial because of how they impact product and service quality, cost production, decision-making, and risks within an organization (Okumus et al., 2010; Parnell, 2013). To address this gap in the literature, this study investigates the effect of three significant types of environmental uncertainty—technology, market, and competitive–on organizational creativity (Köseoglu et al., 2013). This study utilizes confusion theory to offer new insights into the correlation between environmental uncertainty and organizational creativity. According to confusion theory (Watson and French, 1966), confusion is created by uncertainty, which makes it for a difficult learning and predicting process. While it has been shown that uncertainty is correlated with creativity, and the potential for failure, research on service and hospitality creativity to acquire information and understand the different sources of uncertainty remains rare (Yan and Yan, 2017).

Identifying effective strategies to help decision-makers deal with environmental uncertainty to maintain their consistently high performance and enhance their competitive position is vital (Long et al., 2014). Although several studies have tested the role of environmental uncertainty moderators (Köseoglu et al., 2013; Parnell et al., 2012), to the best of the authors’ knowledge, organizational agility has not been examined as a potential moderator of environmental uncertainty. Organizational agility is an organization’s capacity for changing or adapting in response to environmental changes (Dove, 1999). Organizational agility also involves controlling and responding to the nonstop and rapid changes in complex environments (Darvishmotevali and Tajeddini, 2019). According to the contingency theory (Fiedler, 1964), organizations will be more successful and effective if their structure is adaptive to environmental changes. The authors of the present study postulate that agility is a key driver for organizations in promoting innovation and coping with complexity in uncertain environments. Thus, this study’s second aim is testing the role of organizational agility as an organizational tool that lessens the negative effect of environmental uncertainty on organizational creativity.

The results of this study contribute to the literature in two ways. First, our findings assess how different key sources of environmental uncertainty impact organizational creativity. Second, the results enrich the organizational creativity literature through the moderating role of organizational agility to dampen the effect of environmental uncertainty on organizational creativity. Practically, the findings of the present study offer several useful managerial implications for hospitality managers related to recognizing different sources of environmental uncertainty and organizational agility may support organizational creativity in the uncertain environment of the hospitality industry.

Theoretical review

Strategic management researchers consider environmental uncertainty as one of the main factors in strategy formulation and implementation process that may shape organizational creativity and organizational agility (Bourgeois III, 1980; Dess, and Origer, 1987; Elbanna and Fadol, 2016; Ireland et al., 1987). Hence, two main theories –confusion theory and contingency theory- in the business and management field may help researchers explain the link between environmental uncertainty, organizational

Environmental uncertainty and organizational creativity

Okumus et al. (2010) define environmental uncertainty as “the degree of uncertainty and changes in the task and general environments” (p.178). Based on the confusion theory, individuals cannot distinguish between the pieces of information presented in an uncertain environment. Consequently, confusion manifests as delayed decision-making, dissatisfaction, and reduced commitment to the source of the confusion (Mitchell et al., 2005). Employees who experience confusion in uncertain environments

Data collection and sample characteristics

The complex and dynamic nature of North Cyprus’ geopolitical situation offers a rich context for examining the role of environmental uncertainty environmental uncertainty (Sandybayev, 2014; Sülün and Tziarras, 2017). Purposive sampling was used to identify five-star hotels, which, due to their appropriate characteristics, are well aligned with the aims of the study. This category of hotels might be exposed to increased environmental uncertainty, emphasize strategic management and creativity in

Reliability and validity analysis

The measurement items were factor analyzed using AMOS 26.0 to test the factorial validity. The results indicate that all items loaded heavily on underlying variables and confirm that the proposed five-variables model according to the adjunct fit indices has a reasonable fit to the data: X2/df = 1.521, confirmatory factor index = 0.944, incremental fit index = 0.942, Tucker-Lewis coefficient = 0.939, relative fit indices = 0.840, and root mean squared error approximation = 0.055(Hair et al., 2010

Discussion

The main objectives of this study were two-fold: First, testing the impact of different types of environmental uncertainty (technological, market, and competitive) on organizational creativity in the hospitality industry, and second, extending the moderating model of organizational agility in an uncertain environment.

Environmental uncertainty is the inability to predict external changes. When the complexity and dynamism of an environment are high, the environment is highly uncertain, and the

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