Employee mindfulness and creativity: when emotions and national culture matter

Mindfulness has recently attracted more attention from service scholars due to its positive effect on various job outcomes. Yet, the linkage between mindfulness and service employees’ creativity is still not well understood. This study aims to bridge this gap by examining how emotions might influence the mindfulness and creativity relationship from different cultural perspectives. Frontline service employees from three countries, the Philippines, Turkey, and the United States, were sampled to form a cross-border dataset. PLS multigroup results show that creativity positively influences service recovery performance and error reporting across the three nations. Furthermore, the mindfulness-creativity link is mediated by gratitude as a positive emotion in the United States, but by envy as a negative emotion in the Philippines and Turkey. This suggests that the link between mindfulness and creativity may be culturally contextual. These results might provide insights for mindfulness practices within the service work environment.