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Idiosyncratic deals (i-deals) have become an increasingly popular human resource management practice to attract, retain, and motivate employees. This is particularly true for those employees whose jobs require some level of creativity, as these types of jobs are often the ones that allow for or benefit most from these customized work arrangements. Using social cognitive theory that focuses on the development of self-efficacy as a conduit between environmental cues and behavioral outcomes, we explored the relationships between two predominant types of ideals-developmental i-deals and flexibility i-deals-and employee creativity through the mediating effect of creative self-efficacy (CSE). Results based on a study of 177 full-time employees from three organizations supported our hypotheses for developmental i-deals and employee creativity, with CSE fully mediating this relationship. We also discovered a curvilinear relationship between flexibility i-deals and creativity in additional post hoc analyses. There are three main contributions of our work. First, using social cognitive theory, we explored an internal motivational mechanism (i.e., CSE) of these customized employment arrangements, adding to the more traditional use of social exchange theory in the extant literature. Second, we found that the two different types of i-deals have differential effects on employees' creativity through the mediation mechanism of CSE. These results shed light on how the motivational properties of i-deals differentially affect employee creativity and suggest that there may be alternative intervening mechanisms for flexibility i-deals. Third, this study contributes to both the creativity and human resource management literatures by examining a new type of work condition, ideals, that could enable employees' creativity.

There is great interest in coupling the capabilities of electronics with the molecular-recognition properties of biology to generate hand-held devices that can diagnose diseases at the point-of-care, analyze environmental samples in the field, and assess food safety from the farm to the table. A key challenge is the integration of the labile biological recognition elements (e.g., proteins) at specific device addresses. Here, we report a simple, safe, and generic approach for assembling proteins in response to electrodeimposed electrical signals. This approach relies on the aminopolysaccharide chitosan that can be electrodeposited in response to cathodic signals and then electrochemically activated by anodic signals. The electodeposited and electroactivated chitosan films react with proteins to assemble them with spatial-selectivity and quantitative-control. The evidence presented indicates that the assembled proteins retain their native structure and biological functions. This method for on-demand biofunctionalization of individual electrode addresses should offer a generic approach to assemble proteins for multiplexed analysis.There has been considerable effort to discover mechanisms in which electrode-imposed electrical signals can promote the spatially-selective assembly of proteins at specific addresses. [1,2]