Proactive but not always creative: A moderated mediation model of creative identity and psychological safety

Grounded in Role Identity Theory, this study investigates how proactive personality enhances employee creativity by identifying creative role identity as a key mediating mechanism and examining the moderating role of psychological safety. Using multi-source survey data from 172 employee-supervisor dyads in South Korea, hierarchical linear modeling was employed to address the nested structure of the data. Results indicate that proactive personality is positively related to employee creativity, and bootstrapping analyses show that 90.6 % of the total effect is transmitted via the indirect path, supporting the conclusion that this effect is fully mediated by creative role identity. Contrary to expectations, psychological safety did not strengthen this indirect effect. Instead, it dampened the influence of creative role identity on creativity, suggesting a neutralizing rather than amplifying role. These findings offer theoretical insights into the identity-based mechanisms driving creativity and highlight psychological safety as a context-dependent boundary condition. Practical implications are discussed with regard to leadership practices, human resource management systems, and organizational culture.