Employee creativity formation: The roles of knowledge seeking, knowledge contributing and flow experience in Web 2.0 virtual communities

•Building on self-perception theory, we develop a research model.•Data collected from 232 users of Web 2.0 applications were used to test the model.•Both knowledge seeking and knowledge contributing can lead to creativity at work.•Flow plays a lubricating role in the formation of employee creativity.•Our causal direction analysis supports the research model we developed in this study.

Knowledge seeking and knowledge contributing are two distinct types of behaviors, both of which must occur for the presumed benefits of knowledge sharing to be realized. Self-perception theory posits that individuals come to ‘know’ their own internal beliefs by inferring them partially from observations of their own overt behavior. Building on self-perception theory and adhering to the principle that knowledge sharing facilitates knowledge creation, we develop a research model to explore the consequences of both knowledge seeking and knowledge contributing behavior given the consideration that flow plays a lubricating role in the formation of creativity. Data collected from 232 users of Web 2.0 virtual communities were used to test the model. We found that both knowledge seeking and knowledge contributing can lead to a state of flow and can further result in creativity at work. These findings and their implications for theory and practice are discussed.