Abstract:

Idiosyncratic deals (simplified as “i-deals”) refer to personalized employment arrangements in order to meet both employees and their employers’ benefits. Drawing on self-determination theory (SDT), the current study investigated the relationship between i-deals and the two important employee work outcomes (i.e., proactive career behavior and creativity) by focusing on the mediating role of psychological needs satisfaction (i.e., competence need satisfaction, autonomy need satisfaction and relatedness need satisfaction) and the moderating role of workload.
Three time points of data were collected from 230 supervisor-subordinate dyads in 40 work teams within Guangzhou and Shenzhen. At Time 1, subordinates reported i-deals and provided demographic information. At Time 2, subordinates responded to measures of workload, competence need satisfaction, autonomy need satisfaction, and relatedness need satisfaction. At Time 3, supervisors rated their subordinates’ creativity, and employees self-reported their own proactive career behavior.
Results showed that: (1) i-deals was positively related to all three forms of employees’ psychological needs satisfaction (competence need satisfaction, autonomy need satisfaction, and relatedness need satisfaction); (2) i-deals was positively associated with both employee proactive career behavior and creativity; (3) competence need satisfaction mediated the relationship between i-deals and the two employee work outcomes (i.e., proactive career behavior and creativity), whereas the mediating effect of autonomy and relatedness need satisfaction was not significant; (4) workload strengthened the positive relationship between i-deals and employee competence / autonomy need satisfaction, as well as the indirect effect of i-deals on proactive career behavior and creativity via competence need satisfaction.
The current study contributes to the literature in two aspects. First, drawing on SDT, we identified the mediating mechanism of psychological need satisfaction (competence need satisfaction in specific) in understanding the influence of i-deals on employee’s proactive career behavior and creativity. Second, in testing the moderating role of workload on the effects of i-deals and its outcomes, we clarified the boundary condition of the positive effects of i-deals. The theoretical contributions and practical implications of the results were discussed.

Key words: idiosyncratic deals, needs satisfaction, proactive career behavior, creativity, workload