The Effects of Social Relationships and the Justice Environment on Creative Idea Endorsement

In this paper, we addressed peers’ perceived creative idea generation and supervisors’ endorsement of these creative ideas in the software industry. Using three sources of data collection techniques for 317 subordinates, subordinate-colleague dyads, and 50 supervisors, we collected data from software engineers, software developers, and software quality specialists working in different hierarchical levels of a software firm and analyzed our hypothesized model with Mplus using random coefficient modeling. We found that the creative idea generation of subordinates is positively related to supervisors’ endorsement of creative ideas. Justice in organizations and relationships with a supervisor both independently strengthened the relationship between creative idea generation as well as creative idea endorsement. We found that supervisors are likely to endorse the ideas of their subordinates when there is an overall application of justice in the organization and when they have a good, trustworthy relationship with their subordinates. Research implications, limitations, and future research directions are also discussed.