Shaping Organizational Creativity: The Interplay of CEO Creativity, Interactive Controls, and Family Firm Status

Organizations strive to enhance organizational creativity (OC). Understanding the conditions under which CEO creativity is associated with OC is important for designing effective control systems. We theorize that the interactive use of management control systems (MCS) may moderate the association between CEO creativity and OC. We further propose that family firm status may strengthen this moderating effect. Drawing on survey data from 112 Danish small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), we show that CEO creativity is positively associated with OC and that this association is stronger when the interactive use of MCS is high. In addition, the complementarity between CEO creativity and the interactive use of MCS is more pronounced in family firms than in non-family firms. These findings suggest that organizations can leverage the interactive use of MCS to strengthen the association between CEO creativity and OC, with particular benefits in family firm contexts.