Employees’ Creative Behavior: The Role of Organizational Climate in Malaysian SMEs

The main purpose of this study is to determine the influence of organizational climate on employee’s creativity and innovation which is a competitive advantage for success and survival of organizations nowadays. More specifically the study looked at the different dimensions that constitute organizational climate and examined the relationship between them and employees’ creative behavior. This study also determined which among the dimensions of organizational climate could be the best predictor of employees’ creative behavior. The research design was a quantitativeapproach, and a survey method was used to collect data. The structured questionnaire as a research instrument was distributed among Malaysian SMEs, performing in different economic sectors. A total of 100 employees constituted the sample; we collected 61 completed usable questionnaires. The data were analyzed with statistical package for social science (SPSS). The results of this study illustrate that organizational climate has significant influence onemployees’creative behavior. According to the results, among the different dimensions of organizational climate, providing resources were the best predictors of employee’s creative behavior whichfollowed by mission clarity and leaders’ support.


Introduction
In response to today's globalized knowledge economy organizations need to grapple with a number of technological and demographical forces to survive and be successful in this challenging and dynamic working environment, so they need to introduce more innovations in their business practices, products, and services than before. But not all of them could actually conduct this process successfully. In accord to Ahmad (1998, pp.30), "Virtually all companies talk about innovation and the importance of "doing" innovation, many actually try to "do it", and only a few actually succeed in doing it", because being innovative in the current competitive economy is not easy, and the question is "how organizations can enhance innovativenessin their corporations?" Employees' creativity is one of the most important management principles which has attracted the attention of researchers in the area of business management as one of critical contributors of organizational success (George & Zhou, 2001;Tierney, Farmer, & Graen 1999;McLaughlin & Harris, 1997;Jong & Hartog, 2007;Hellman & Thiele, 2009;Tushman & Orielly, 1997;Martins & Terblunche, 2003). According to the scholars like Hellman and Thiele (2009), and Telsuk, Farr, & Klein (1997) Not only employees can generate new ideas, they can also find solutions for current problems and fulfill the gaps, so they are likely to lead developments in organizational level.
Using the organizational climate to provide suitable environment for creativity and innovation in order to empower organization is an idea that has been studied by several scholars since the middle of 1980's (Ismail, 2005). Tushman and O'reilly (1997) support the argument and mention that the ability of organizations to provide a bonding between creativity and innovation with their climate and management process is the key to their success.
Many organizations have taken certain steps to enhance innovation and creativity by paying attention to employees' opinions and involving them in decision making process or recruiting and staffing personnel with creative characteristics. But a lot more effort is needed to achieve organizational creativity and innovation. The aim of this study is to investigate the influence of organizational climatedimensionson employees' creative behavior to help organizations find out how they can facilitate creativity and innovation practices in their corporations. The findings of this paper will contribute to the literature on organizational climate and individuals' creative behavior in general while identifying the specific components of organizational climate that play a significant role in creativity and innovation of SMEs in Malaysia.
Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) has an important role in economic growth in Malaysia. Based on SMEs annual report, SMEs represented the majority of business in Malaysia, 99.2 % of all establishments in Malaysia. SMEs share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Malaysia was 32% in 2007 and then it got affected by global financial crisis.SMEs recovered again by the end of 2009 with a recorded of 31.2% share of Malaysian GDP (SME annual report, 2010). But, compared to that of 57% in the Germany, 60% in the China, and 55% in Japan, Malaysian SMEs still have the room to grow its share of GDP (SME performance report, 2006). It is believed that innovation practices and the organization capacity to be creative and innovative are among the most critical factors that boost the organizations' performance and competitive advantage. Therefore, this study is emphasizing on individuals' creativity and innovation predictors in Malaysian SMEs.

Employees' Creative Behavior
The nature of work has been changed significantly during past decadesdue to fast pace of technology, nowadays knowledge is considered as building blocks of work, and job responsibilities are less defined, so employees cannot continue to focus on their narrow job descriptions, they need to go beyond that by endeavoring to be creative and innovative during their daily routines.
Employees' creativity and innovation is the engine of change which provides the opportunity for organizations to create the future (Ahmad, 1998;Martins & Terblanche, 2003;Pitta, 2009;Gumusluoglu & Ilsev, 2006). Tierney (1999) defined creativity as the unique and useful solutions of employees in response to work-related problems based on organizations' goals and visions. In accord to George and Zhou (2001, pp. 513) "Creative behavior is the production of novel and useful ideas by employees which can be the starting points of innovation." Innovation theorists explain the innovation process as a two stage process, at the first stage idea is generated (initiation), and the second stage is when the implementation of the idea is occurred (application) (Martins & Terblunche, 2003;Axtell, Holman, Unsworth, Wall, Waterson & Harrington, 2000;Kings & Anderson 2000;Scott & Bruce, 1994;Janssen, 2000). Similarly, the study of Slatten, Svenssenand Svaeri (2011) based on interactional approaches, with George & Zhou (2001) toward understanding creativity, theorized that frontline employees in service industries who are not enough creative in their interactions with customers produce ideas and solutions that are more ordinary and routine, but creative frontline employees will deliver more novel ideas.Also they suggested that creativity provides the opportunity for frontline service employees to be more innovative in their behaviour and interactions with customers, and the results of this research showed positive relationship between employees' creativity and innovative behaviour.
The distinction between creativity and innovation is blurred; many studies concentrate more on the creativity or idea generation stage of innovation (Oldham & Cummings, 1996;McAdam & McClelland, 2002), but innovation also contains the implementation phase. Mumford, 2003 suggests that future research should explore the "late cycle" or implementation of creative ideas as well. The current study like studies of (Amabile, Conti, Coon, Lazenby & Herron 1996;Basadur, 1997;Jong & Hartog, 2007) would focus on both idea generation (creativity) and implementation (innovation).

Organizational Climate
One of the most famous definitions of organizational climate is " a set of measurable properties of the work environment, perceived directly or indirectly by the people who live and work in this environment and assumed to influence their motivation and behavior" by Litwin and Stringer (1968, p. 1).
The scholarly articles revealed two perspectives regarding organizational climate. A group of theorists like Glick (1988) and James (1982) describe organizational climate as the individuals' property which refers to the perception of individuals about organizational norms and characteristics, in the other word the organizational climate is based on the interactions of its members. Another group (Schneider & Reichner, 1983;Schneider, 1985;Friedlander & Margulies, 1969) is of the opinion that organizational climate is an objective property of the organization which stands as policies and practices of organization; actually it's an organizational attribute rather than individual, and it is regardless of perceptions of members about the organization. In the framework of this article climate is regarded as individual perceptions of work environment. So from these sources employees can understand better the priorities accorded to certain goals and the organizational environment. They can define basis of organizational climate which can define the values, beliefs that are not visible but exist within the employee's behavior and action.
According to Ekvall (1996) organizational climate mediate the processes and operations of organization (e.g. creating, motivation, co-ordination, controlling, communication, decision making, and problem solving) between organizations' resources like human resources or financial resources and the organizational outcomes.
According to Pitta (2009) who worked on a culture of innovation at Portugal Telecom, individual creativity helps organizations to be effective, The companies which cannot bring neither creativity nor innovation in their daily tasks found that their failure is because of their weakness in establishing an appropriate culture and climate that values new ideas, this failure of overlooking the importance of culture decreased the profits of organization, and wasted procedures. "Successful organizations have the ability to provide a bonding between creativity and innovation with their climate and management processes" (Ismail, 2005;Tushman & Oreilly, 2003).
The role of employees in creativity and innovation of organization cannot be denied. Innovative people are those who are able to identify opportunities for new processes, procedures, services and products, they can find new uses for existing methods or materials and even equipment. Not only they can generate new ideas, they can also find solutions for current problems and fulfill the gaps, so they are likely to lead developments in organizational level.
A variety of research (Andrew, 1996;O'Reilly, 1989) arrives at some set of critical norms involved in promoting and implementing innovation and creativity: challenge and belief in action, freedom and risk taking, dynamism and future orientation, external orientation, trust and openness, cross functional interaction, freedom, leadership commitment and involvement, awards and rewards, training, unity in organization, and organizational structure.
The aim of this study is to investigate how organizational climate can encourage employees' creative behavior. This topic has attracted the attention of many scholars during past years, and they found different organizational climate dimensions positively related to employees' creative behavior. Martins and Terblanche (2003) found leaders' support, open communication, and providing facilities encourage employees to come up with new ideas.
Enson,Pirrie, and Band, (2006) conducted a research based on KEYS instrument by Amabileet al. (1996) in order to identify the influence of organizational creative climate in advertising industry, and the results demonstrated that work group supports, organizational encouragement, and lack of organizational impediments, freedom, and sufficient resources are positively correlated with creativity among organizational members. In addition the study of Jackson and Hinchliffe (1999) emphasizes on the importance of top management behaviors. Furthermore Yukl (2002) found that a leadership style which has some principles like consulting and shared decision making provide the opportunity for employees to participate and share their ideas.

Research Questions Development 2.3.1 The Influence of Organizational Climate on Employees' Creative Behavior
To be successful in enhancing creativity and innovation, the importance of working environment which should be supportive for creativity and innovation has been emphasized (Ekwall, Arvonen & Waldenstrom-Lindblad, 1983;Ekvall & Tangeberg-Anderson, 1986;Zain & Rickards, 1996;Amabile & Conti, 1999). Organizational creative climate is considered as a significant contributor of working environment which enhances creativity and innovation (Hunter, Bedell & Mumford, 2007). The result of studies like Oldham and cummings (1996) indicated that creative people are reactive to climate variables, and based on Basadur (1997), Schneider, Gunnarson and Niles-Jolly (1994) organizational climate is useful basis in motivating creativity and innovation.
According to previous scholarly literatures there is an agreement among them that organizational climate is an important predictor of employees' creativity and innovation (Oldham, 2003;Telsuk, et al.1997;Amabile et al.1996;Ekvall, 1996), what definitely needs more investigation and research is the exact dimensions of organizational climate.

Research Questions 
To what extent does organizational climate influenceemployees' creative behavior in SMEs Malaysia?  Which of the dimensions of organizational climate are the best predictors of employees' creative behavior in SMEs Malaysia?

Research Design
This study is combination of quantitative analysis and literature research to investigate the effect of organizational climate dimensionson employees' creative behavior. The use of literature is important in developing the research theoretical framework, in this way we use the literature related to organizational climate and employees' idea generation and application. This is a correlation study and uses the survey method to collect data. "Survey is the most widely used social science data-gathering technique" (Newman, 2011, pp.308). The structured questionnaire as a research instrument distributed among SMEs Malaysia from different industrial sectors. We collected data from two sources: employees and the supervisors.The questionnaire contains of a cover letter that briefly explains the purpose of this study, and there are two main parts, part A and B. Part A includes general information about the economic sector the SME is operating in, age of respondents, gender of respondents, how long the organization has been in operation, and so on. Part B measures the components of organizational climate and employee's creative behavior.

Population and Sampling
Probability sampling (simple random) used to have a representative sample (Neuman, 2011). We gather the list of SMEs manufacturing and services organizations, from different subsectors and the contacts information from www.smecorp.gov.my Employees from these organizations were the unit of analysis.
According to Departments of Statistics, the Census of establishments and enterprises in Malaysia in 2005 was as follows: Restaurants.
The questionnaire distribution took place by in person contact, Participation was voluntary and confidential in all cases and Respondents were allowed to complete the questionnaire during normal work hours. A total of 100 questionnaires were distributed to the SMEs. The questionnaire included a cover letter that explained the purpose of the study and assurance of confidentiality of the information obtained. 61 completed usable questionnaires were collected representing a response rate of 61%.

Organizational Climate
The items borrowed from the model of Hunter, Bedel andMumford (2005, 2007) General taxonomy. We measured each dimension by a single item on a five-point scale ranging from 1 "strongly disagree" to 5, "strongly agree", employees indicated how well each statement fitted their organization climate. (Appendix 1)

Employees' Creative Behavior
We assessed employees' creative behavior with borrowing and modifying items from 13 items scale of George and Zhou (2001). The measurement instrument employed by this study is a subjective procedure, supervisors ratings used to measure employees' creativity along with studies such as, Oldham andCummings (1996), andScot andBruce (1994). It should be noted that some studies used objective measures in addition to subjective measures in order to check convergence across two types of measures. For example, studies of Tierney et al (1999), andScot andBruce (1994) found that the results across both measures were significantly correlated; hence, they looked at supervisors rating to test the research hypotheses. We measured items on a five-point scale ranging from 1 "strongly disagree" to 5 "strongly agree". (Appendix2)

Pilot Study to Test the Validity and Reliability of Questionnaire
The main objective of conducting a pilot survey is to ensure the consistency and accuracy of each item in a questionnaire (Oppenheim, 1988). Trough pilot study, the appropriateness of the instrument such as the use of correct word and sentence can be determined. Data were collected randomly from 15 employees working in different organizations from the list of SMEs, who did not participate in the research study. In view of the fact that the Cronbach alpha coefficients in this study were within the acceptable range (0.7 and more), the constructs are therefore deemed to have adequate reliability and ready for actual survey.
www.ccsenet.org/ijbm International Journal of Business and Management Vol. 8, No. 5; 3.5 Data Analysis Data analysis was performed using the statistical packages of the social science (SPSS). Descriptive statistics and frequency analysis were used to describe the profile of respondents, the economic sector, number of employees in organization, how many years the organization has been established, the department that the respondents is working for, and how many years the respondents have been working for the organization.
At the next step correlation analysis were used to determine the relationship between the independent variables, determinants of organizational climate and employee's creative behavior.
Finally, linear regression and stepwise multiple regression analysis was used to investigate which among the independent variables (determinants of organizational climate) significantly correlated with dependent variable (creative behavior) in order to find out the most important predictors of organizational climate components. The level of significance was set at P= 0. 05.

General Information of Respondents
This section represents the general information of respondent which obtained at the section A of the questionnaire. The average age of employees was 35 years. The respondents were 25 females (40.9%), and 36 Men (59.1%). Table 3 represents number of years the SME has been in operation, and how long the employee was working for the SME.

Data Analysis
The result of Pearson product moment correlation shows that there exists a significant positive relationship between OC (organizational climate), and CB (Creative Behavior) [r= 0.614, p <0.05]. Therefore the answer to the question "Is there relationship between organizational climate and creative behavior?" is "Yes". In this step linear regression analyses enter method was used to determine which components of organizational climate are the best predictors of employees' creativebehavior. According to the results, 61% of variations in employees' creative behavior are explained by organizational climate. So the components of organizational climate can be applied to explaincreativebehavior. (CB) (F (7, 53) = 11.84, p < 0.05).

Discussion and Conclusion
Innovation only occurs successfully where there is strong culture or climate supporting followers' creativity and innovation (west & Sacramento, 2012). This study aimed to contribute to the literature on individual innovation by providing the inventory of organizational climate determinants that may influence employees'creative and innovative efforts.
Generally, this study makes a contribution to the call for more research related to the topic of relationship between organizational contextual factors and employees' creativity and innovation.
This study has focused on: 1) Organizational climate (organizational-level construct) 2) Employees' creative behavior (Individual-level) 3) The relationship between organizational climate dimensions and employees' creative behavior The results of the study indicate that there is positive relationship between organizational climate and employees'creative behavior [r= 0.614, p <0.05]. It seems that employees' creative behavior related closely to organizational climate, which is in line with previous studies on the organizational climate and creativity and www.ccsenet.org/ijbm International Journal of Business and Management Vol. 8, No. 5; innovation (exp. Amabile (1983); Woodman, Sawyer & Griffin (1993);Ekvall, 1996;Ekvall & Ryhammer, 1999;Ekvall, et al. 2001;Acikgoz & Gunsel, 2011). According to the Amabile componential model (1983) and Woodman, Sawyer & Griffin (1993) interactionist model, organizational climate as an organizational contextual factor is a significant predictor of organizational members creativity and innovation.
This study contributes to the empirical confirmation of previously tested theory of the influence of organizational creative climate on individuals' creativity and innovation. According to the data analysis of this study three organizational climate components significantly predict employees' creative behavior; (i) resources whichis the Perception that, organization has and is willing to provide facilities to encourage creativity and innovation in organization explain 45.9% of the employee's creative behavior in Malaysian SMEs (p-vale < 0.05). (ii) Mission clarity which refers to awareness of goals and expectations regarding creative performance, hascontributed another 10.4% to employee's creative behavior (p-value < 0.05). Surprisingly the results ofthis study support studies of (Jong & Hartog, 2007;Carneiro, 2008;Lee, 2007;Basadur, 2004) about the importance of leadership on followers creativity and innovation, (iii) leaders support has contributed another 4.5% (p-value <0.05). Providing resources, mission clarity and leaders' support together explain 60.8% of the employees'creative behavior, compare with 61% by all predictors.
Also the result of this study is consistent with the contextual theory that organizational creative climate provides an adequate working environment in such a way that enhance employees' perception toward being creative and innovative in the organization (Ekvall & Ryhammar, 1999;Oldham & Cummings, 1996).
This study is not without limitation like the other empirical studies. First the results of this study emerge from a specific national context, Malaysia; results may be different for employees working in various cultural, political, economical, and environmental conditions. Secondly we gathered the data from SMEs operating in different industrial sectors; results may be different from one particular sector to another. Third, the sample size was relatively small (n=61), actually around 100 structured questionnaires were distributed, but some of organizations did not participate in the survey because of reasons like time constrain and work load pressure. The study can be strengthened by increasing the sample size as the results and finding may vary substantially when the sample size is increased, so the sample size may limit the generalizability of the results. Next, more factors or variables can also be included in the study as creative behavior can be encouraged by many different aspects of working environment. According to multiple regression analysis, approximately 61 % of individual creativity can be explained by independent variables identified by this study. This indicates that there are other predictor variables of employees'creative behavior in the organization which have not been included in this study. Further studies needed be carried out with a larger sample size, and inclusion of additional work related variables as independent variables.  1744-6570.1999.tb00173.x