Demystifying the Role of Slack Resources and Paradox Mindset for Organizational Creativity in Family and Non-Family Firms
Demystifying the Role of Slack Resources and Paradox Mindset for Organizational Creativity in Family and Non-Family Firms

Summary/Abstract: Purpose: The objective of the article is to explain mutual relationships between paradox mindset, slackresources, and organizational creativity in family and non-family businesses. The paper focuses onidentifying similarities and differences between these two types of organizations. Design/methodology/approach: To investigate the relationships of our paper, we conducted empiricalquantitative research on the sample of 343 Polish family and non-family businesses. The data were gatheredin the fall of 2019. To assess the differences between family and non-family companies, we followedthe recommendations of SEM multigroup analyses; thus, two estimations were made for every model –one where relationships between variables were restricted, and one where variables were unrestricted. Findings: We conclude that slack resources, financial and material, in particular, explain the variability oforganizational creativity (operationalized in two dimensions: as creative novelty and as creative usefulness)to a great extent in both types of organization. At the same time, the paradox mindset leads to increasedcreative novelty in family businesses while it is unimportant in their non-family counterparts. Overall,the differences between the models of determinants of organizational creativity in family and non-familyfirms are not statistically significant in the present study. Research limitations/implications: The research results prove that slack resources are a necessarycondition of organizational creativity in both family and non-family businesses. We believe that futureresearch on the determinants of organizational creativity dimensions in family and non-family firms shouldconsider more determinants, including organizational culture, strategy, mission, resource availability,organizational learning, and change management.Originality/value: The contribution of our study lies in developing the paradox mindset theory by conductingan analysis at the level of the entire organization, which has not attracted the attention of researchersso far. This study also provides arguments for the validity of the conceptualization and measurement ofthe paradox mindset in a one-dimensional approach.

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