Abstract: Based on emergence theory, through a research on the relationship between leader-subordinate creativity assessment matching and organizational routine updating, we construct a bottom-up organizational routine updating theoretical model, focusing on the influence of leader-subordinate employee creativity assessment matching on organization path mechanisms and boundary conditions for routine updating. Employing polynomial regression and response surface analysis, we conduct a multi-source field study with 262 leader-subordinate paired data to test our theoretical model. It is found that employee creativity is a key factor driving organizational routine updating; Meanwhile the results reveal that the lower congruence between employee creativity assessment by employees themselves and that by their leader, the more positive effect on organizational routine updating; In the case of aligned assessment of employee creativity, high assessment by both employees themselves and their leader is better able to promote organizational routine updating than low assessment by both employees themselves and their leader; In the case of non-aligned assessment of employee creativity, low assessment by employees themselves but high assessment by their leader is better able to promote organizational routine updating than high assessment by employees themselves but low assessment by their leader; Furthermore, employees' bootleg innovation acts as an indirect mechanism linking the (in) congruence in leader-subordinate creativity assessment to organizational routine updating. A higher level of entrepreneurial orientation amplifies this indirect effect by strengthening the positive influence of bootleg innovation on organizational routine updating. The research discusses the top-down organizational routine updating mechanism from the perspective of employees, and provides a theoretical explanation for the phenomenon that employee innovation emerges from the bottom up as organizational routines, which provides new ideas for the research on organizational routine updating and broadenes the perspective to the impact mechanism and situation of organizational routine updating.

Key words: employee creativity, bootleg innovation, entrepreneurial orientation, organizational routine updating, response surface analysis