Organizations are perceived to varying degrees to be self-determining entities that cannot be reduced to their individual members; in other words, organizations are perceived to differ in actorhood. The literature has long theorized that organizational actorhood is essential for understanding perceptions such as legitimacy and trust in inter-organizational interactions. However, there is a significant gap in understanding the consequences of organizational actorhood for the actions of individual employees. Primarily building on entitativity theory and the neurocognitive framework of attention and creativity, we theorize that organizational actorhood can influence organizational members’ creative behaviors. We argue that this influence is contingent upon individual actorhood, which we operationalize as learning goal orientation. Specifically, while we expect that organizational actorhood curtails creative performance among employees high in learning goal orientation, it should facilitate creative performance for those who are low in learning goal orientation. We identify cognitive flexibility as a mediator in this process. We find support for our hypotheses in one field survey and two experiments. This research develops our understanding of how organizational actorhood influences important employee outcomes such as their creative performance. It also provides a novel perspective on the relationship between organizational and individual actorhood. Finally, this research provides theoretical implications for the creativity literature.
