Creative nonetheless: performance avoiders maintain creative performance through bootlegging under team culture tightness

Research suggests that the performance-avoid goal orientation trait inhibits radical creativity by prompting individuals to avoid rejection in social situations. We extend this conclusion by investigating bootlegging as a means of developing creative output, especially under tight team cultures. Drawing on trait activation theory, we propose that under tight team cultures, employees high in performance-avoid goal orientation uphold their creative output by engaging in informally innovative efforts away from the scrutinizing eyes of others and outside visibility of formally authorized programs. This behavior is known as bootlegging. Hypotheses surrounding this phenomenon were supported in a scenario experiment involving 279 employees and in a multi-wave, multi-source field survey involving 318 employees across 63 work teams. Our findings challenge the prevailing assumption that performance-avoid goal orientation is necessarily detrimental to creativity, increase the understanding of a bootlegging pathway toward radical creativity for these employees, and emphasize the importance of team culture tightness.