Impact of Physical and Social Work Environment on Employees’ Creativity (Case study: Khorasan Science and Technology Park)

Background and Purpose: Today, organizations and departments, like living organisms, need to adapt and fight against a challenging work environment. The need to reform bureaucratic processes, maintain competitive advantages, and produce new products and ideas, at both the micro and macro levels, increases attention to the presence of efficient and creative human resources nowadays. Creativity, in the sense of the potential to create new processes and modify existing ones, can be one of the most important employee competencies. On the other hand, employee creativity is influenced by a set of different physical, social, and individual factors. Among these, individual creativity is related to the physical work environment, the artistic and architectural understanding of individuals of space, and the production of ideas. Factors related to the architecture and design of the work environment are of great importance in influencing individual creativity. In this influence, they interact with social and individual factors. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the physical work environment's effect on the individual creativity of employees. Other goals of the research are to examine the mediating role of the social environment and the moderating role of individual factors in the impact of the physical environment on the creativity model.
Methodology: The research approach is quantitative, the research strategy is a cross-sectional survey, and the type of research is applied. Using content analysis of related articles, the research conceptual framework was developed. Quantitative data were gathered using a one-page self-report questionnaire. The initial reliability of the questionnaire was confirmed by Cronbach's alpha coefficient (α = 0.921), and several academic experts approved the questionnaire's face validity. The sample size was determined by the "Daniel Super" method, and the final sample size included 285 respondents who were selected from the employees of knowledge-based companies in the Khorasan Science and Technology Park through convenience sampling. Science and technology parks are a kind of accelerator and expander of the relationship between science, industry, and the environment to pay more attention to creativity. Quantitative data analysis was performed using SPSS 26 software for data screening and preprocessing, exploratory factor analysis and factor extraction, and Amos 24 for confirmatory factor analysis, full structural equation modeling, and hypothesis testing. In exploratory factor analysis, the principal component extraction method and Promax rotation were used. The mediating role of social factors in the effect of physical environment on creativity was tested using the bootstrapping method, and the moderation test of individual factors, including age, work experience, and extraversion, was performed using the multigroup method.
Findings and Discussion: In the principal component analysis, the three components of social environment, individual creativity, and physical environment explained a total of 56.44% of the variance. According to the research findings, the effect of the physical work environment on the social environment was significant (β = 0.672, p-value = 0.001). Although the direct effect of the physical environment on individual creativity was not significant (β = 0.179, p-value = 0.096), its total effect on creativity (β = 0.506, p-value = 0.000) and its indirect effect through the full mediation of the social environment (β = 0.319, p-value = 0.001) were significant. The research model explained 37% of the changes in individual creativity and 45% of the changes in the social environment. Also, experienced employees (β = 0.818) perceived the social atmosphere of the workplace to be more influenced (p-value = 0.035) by the physical characteristics of the company than novice employees (β = 0.478).
Conclusion: Physical factors of the workplace influence individual creativity of employees through the mediation of the social environment and by moderating the work experience. Several strategies have been proposed to increase individual creativity. Social strategies include creating more dynamic environments with a greater sense of freedom, creating opportunities for discussion, and facilitating the necessary communication. Physical strategies include having a workspace with decorative and ornamental sections, a colorful environment depending on the audience and its usage, and employees’ participation in choosing the layout and equipment of the workplace.