The relationships between material rewards and motivating employee's creative ideas

Material award is a commonly used approach of creativity management in companies.This study analyses the impact of material award on employees' creative idea generation,and its related influence mechanics.Prior studies point out that intrinsic motivation is an important impact factor to creativity,meanwhile external cash award might decrease intrinsic motivation.Thus,material award might be detrimental to employee creativity.This study points out that the relationship between material award and employee creativity depends on employee's perception towards material award.There are two kinds of perception:the perception of informational function of material award and the perception of control function of material award.The first one would increase employees' intrinsic motivation,and the other one would increase employees' extrinsic motivation but no matter with their creativity.The empirical study based on 326employees' questionnaire of a famous restaurant turns out that employees' perception of informational function of material award increases their creativity through intrinsic motivation.Finally,suggestions for employee creativity award management are proposed.