Hence, this study seeks to identify the
supervisor’s role as the boundary condition under which work
stress may actually lead to creativity. Identifying such a contextual
factor is important for two reasons. Firstly, stress is very common
in the hospitality industry, so employees who experience it may
provide a powerful impetus for change in organizations by coming
up with creative ideas for improvement. However, this is likely to
occur only in certain situations; for example, where the employee
decides not to leave his or her job in response to stress. Secondly,
in the competitive modern business world, a degree of stress at
work is inevitable, so managers should not view it as necessarily
detrimental but instead as an opportunity to improve their human
resource management (HRM) practices and training and development
approaches. More specifically, this study examines the role
of both positive and negative task feedback from a supervisor as
a crucial condition for the relationship between work stress and
employee creativity in the hospitality industry.