Performance in the Workplace: a Critical Evaluation of Cognitive Enhancement

The popular debates about the future organization of work through artificial intelligence technologies focus on the replacement of human beings by novel technologies. In this essay, we oppose this statement by closely following what has been developed as AI technologies and analyzing how they work, specifically focusing on research that may impact work organizations. We develop this argument by showing that the recent research and developments in AI technologies focus on developing accurate and precise performance models, which in turn shapes organizational patterns of work. We propose that the increased interest in the relationship between human cognition and performance will shortly bring human cognition to the focus on AI systems in workplaces. More specifically, we claim that the cognitive load measurement will shape human performance in manufacturing systems shortly.

focusing on the research on and the use of AI technologies in workplaces.
The focus of the present study is the performance in the modern workplace, where a major goal is to increase productivity by putting pressure on the workers' capabilities. We use the term "performance" within the context of performance enhancement as the enabler and promoter of a faster, more efficient, and more productive accomplishment of tasks [1][2][3]. In that sense, we focus on the employee and the pressure on their performance rather than the environmental characteristics and the technologies used in the workplace, whether a factory or a home office for remote working.

Human Cognition and Performance in Workplaces
The arguments-focusing on AI technologies replacing human beings-are not able to elaborate on the overall shifts in social relations and organizations of work; instead, they solely consider the application of technology in the given organization of the work and impacts of this application on human beings (such as increasing the unemployment). Nevertheless, more emphasis is required on the radical transformation of human, work, and technology categories. We propose that the increased interest in the relationship between human cognition and performance, within the context of manufacturing, indispensably brings human cognition to the focus on AI systems in workplaces. More specifically, we claim that the cognitive load measurement will shape human performance in manufacturing systems shortly. For example, employers will start offering work contracts specifying working hours based on the employees' measured cognitive workload rather than following social practices that employ standard working hours. Hence, we should ponder a total reorganization of work, alongside social relations in a broader sense. Those changes in the workplace cannot be reduced to the invention of new technologies, but they have to be located in a more extensive process of social transformation.
To contribute to the broader discussion within the limits of this short essay, we point at two common misleading readings about the developments in AI technologies: first, we argue that the current technologies and research on AI do not follow the idea of AI as a substitute for human beings. Instead, they focus on developing accurate and precise models to predict the patterns of behavior, which in turn gain the capacity to shape those patterns. Second, focusing on the relationship between cognition and manufacturing within the context of AI research, we argue that AI technologies cannot be considered in opposition to the category of the human; instead, we point at the regime of the production of bodies in the workplaces that establish a new universalization of the category of the human that is no longer defined through its qualitative difference from technology (or nature), but through a quantitative measure of performance that could operate as the medium of reorganization of social differences (replacing or reshaping social categories such as age, race, gender). We claim that the operation of AI technologies in the workplace-as the new medium of control and reproduction of labor-forces us to rethink the organization of capitalist social relations by keeping the widely used concepts of human, work, and technology as wide-open questions.

AI Systems as Enhancers of Mind
A widespread debate around AI technologies has concentrated on the idea of whether these technologies would or could replace human beings or not. The essence of the idea is to reconsider the technology as a thing that could present human capabilities, thereby using it as a substitute for human beings. This argument instead reflects the earlier attempts to develop mechanisms that imitate human beings. A historical detour reveals that AI technologies do not address this substitution. 1 Nevertheless, most advances in 1 The origins of the mechanism idea can be traced back at least to the Middle Ages. For example, in the Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices, Ismail al-Jazari (1136-1236) proposed autonomous system concepts, such as a drink-serving waitress, designed to imitate the behavior of a human waitress. The behavioral imitations of natural cognitive systems (i.e., humans or animals) included a wide variety of application domains and various types of mechanisms aimed at being autonomous agents. Some well-known examples include Giovanni de Fontana's (ca. 1395-ca. 1455) warfare machines, Leonardo da Vinci's (1452-1519) mechanical dove, Wolfgang von Kempelen's (1734-1804) chess player (viz. The Turk, 1769), Jacques de Vaucanson's (1709-1782) automata (viz. The Flute Player, The Tambourine Player and Digesting Duck, 1787), among many others, see Rosheim [4] and Koetsier [5] for extensive reviews of the history of robots and programmable machines. These historical examples show how the mechanism concept was developed through a tendency 1 3 Vol.: (0123456789) today's AI may be conceived as originated from Alan Turing's (1912Turing's ( -1954 mind as a machine idea in the 1930s. Turing's conceptualization differs from the previous conceptualizations of mechanisms, which were behavioral imitations of humans by machines. The idea of the mind as a machine was developed after the invention of calculating machines. Numerous mechanical calculators were designed and developed since the seventeenth century, including the ones by Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716), Charles Babbage (1791-1871), and Ada Lovelace (1815-1852) [5]. Despite their remarkable success as automata, their development did not lead to immediate strong claims about a relationship between the mind and the machine, leaving aside speculations about the machines' potential as intelligent devices. Alan Turing explicitly proposed automata as a framework for the mind [6,7]. In the first half of the twentieth century, researchers attempted to apply computational frameworks to study the human mind, such as using logical calculus to study biological neurons [8].
The advances in the computation theory [9] and their implementations on computing machinery led to the emergence of artificial intelligence in the 1950s. Early AI programs addressed logical reasoning, such as the logic theorist [10], the geometry engine [11], and the checkers' player [12]. Following the development of knowledge-based systems in the 1970s, AI became popular in industry in the 1980s. The AI era was quite different from the previous attempts to devise imitating machines. The "AI as human substitute" idea did not last long within the mind-as-a-machine concept. Most AI researchers did not aim to design artificial agents that could think like humans (viz. strong AI). Therefore, the replacement of the human mind by artificial minds turned into a weak claim rather than an ultimate goal of AI. Instead, AI systems evolved as enhancers to the human mind, as in the case of machines collaborating with humans for improved task performance (human-machine teaming) and machines integrated with the human brain [13]. 2 The idea of enhancing the human mind through AI has been an outcome of the mind's conception as a machine. The presence of systematic patterns in human cognitive abilities, such as categorical similarities among individuals, has attracted attention in AI research, possibly more than differences between individuals, due to the compatibility of the former with the positivist conceptualization of the construction of scientific knowledge. In particular, the concept of computational cognitive modeling has been an appropriate venue for exploiting human cognitive abilities in a systematic manner [14]. The term "artificial" was introduced in connection with mind and intelligence in the 1950s, due to the belief that the human mind exhibits systematic patterns that computational models could reveal. Human cognitive modeling has been a popular domain of research due to its promise as applied research. In the 1980s, initial human cognition models were proposed as a methodological framework for designing human-computer interaction interfaces [15]. Despite a set of significant differences in underlying mechanisms, such as neural network models, symbolic models, and probabilistic models of cognition [16][17][18], they shared the same goal: investigating the human mind as a machine.

AI Systems as the Model of Performance in Workplaces
For the past two decades, the three-pillar debate about the imitation at a behavioral level, the design of AI agents as rational agents (e.g., the logic theorist [10]), and the design of the mind as a machine has been resolved in favor of AI systems that can model and predict human behavior. Machine technologies [25] have replaced the classical, rule-based AI algorithms by significantly improving the predictive accuracy in numerous domains, such as object recognition, without addressing the inner mechanisms of perception and cognition yet preserving behavioral-level accuracy. AI systems have been frequently criticized for being black box systems; they cannot respond to how they learn from data [26]. Nevertheless, in those systems, the accuracy and precision of the predictions (i.e., the models' behavioral output) have been the key indicators of evaluating an AI system's success rather than assessing how it makes a prediction. More specifically, when applied to daily settings, today's AI systems act as recommenders that enhance information presentation to human users as a function of their history of actions.
Widely known examples for this operation include digital music and video streaming services, online video sharing, and social media platforms. In those services, a list of the content, such as a history of music clips, provides the data to the AI system (specifically, machine learning models), which in turn gains the capability of making efficient predictions about a user's taste of music represented by a user profile. The goal is usually to convince the user to subscribe to the service for a smooth user experience. That is an instance of exploiting metadata for personalization that employs tracking users' activity on the Internet. Therefore, the spread of the actualization of today's AI technologies builds on learning from the data provided by humans and thereby producing models that can make precise predictions on the patterns of behavioral forms (e.g., in this case, music tastes). The AI system aims at profiling the users through establishing machine-learning models: first, the user does not know the content beforehand to gain access. The patterns of preference become precise by accumulating the data not only from the individual user but also through the overall processing of collected data, such as web browser cookies and social media relations-which is beyond the direct access of any given individual. Second, the model gains the capacity of shaping the patterns of preference, even by producing novel ones. This example shows the tendency of developing models of patterns with the collection of and access to big data and shaping the patterns of behavior through AI models. 3 We observe a similar tendency in the manufacturing context to establish precise and accurate models to increase performance. This tendency is evident in the increasing research published in academic journals. In manufacturing research, the human performer has been frequently investigated in terms of its relation to various aspects of cognition, including the cognitive aspects of the integration between humans and machines [27], the influence of the working conditions, and more generally, the influence of the manufacturing environment on the perception of the quality of working life [28][29][30][31]; job stress, work-related stress and mental health [31][32][33]; burnout and physical health [34,35] and its physical, psychological, and occupational consequences [36]; and mental fatigue [37]. For the past decade, there has been intense interest in the relationship between performance and cognition in the workplace, under various names, such as mental workload [38,39], cognitive load [40], and cognitive load assessment [41,42], cyber-physicalhuman collaborative cognition for human-automation interaction [43] and human-centered connected factories [44], in addition to the common, contextual terms, such as human factors [45] and human systems design [46]. 4 3 A relevant debate has been the privacy concerns about the exploitation of metadata for personalization. Internet users have been subject to various tracking methods, which include but are not limited to the use of cookies in browsers, mobile electronic system integration, such as tracking by the integration of face recognition tools into city surveillance cameras, and personalization through the integration of social media and mobile messaging services. Those tracking services had a significant impact on society, such as influencing user percep- 4 The increase in research focusing on cognitive performance is also observed in a Web of Science database query with relevant terms in the article publication titles. We used the following query to retrieve articles in the Web of Science Core Collection. The query searched articles with the terms "cognitive," "mental," or "workload" together with the terms "manufacturing" or "workplace" in their title: TI = ((cognitive OR mental OR workload) AND (manufacturing OR workplace)). We found that the total number of publications almost dou- tion on social media through profile-specific political propaganda. More recently, the potential integration of such tracking data with human physiological data, such as gaze and brain activity, created an urgent need for responsible brain-system integration [13].

Frontiers of AI Technologies in Workplaces
In addition to this growing literature in manufacturing, a closer look at the recent efforts to integrate AI technologies into daily settings reveals how technological developments on multiple fronts would influence work organizations shortly. In the past decade, neuroimaging technologies have led to affordable brain monitoring technologies for estimating cognitive load and attention levels for the first time in history [47]. For the past three decades, neuroimaging technologies have employed electroencephalography (EEG) for detecting electrical activity in the brain using a set of electrodes attached to the scalp, magnetoencephalography (MEG) for recording magnetic fields produced by electrical currents in the brain, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and positron emission tomography (PET) for detecting changes associated with blood flow. Functional nearinfrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) has been developed as a noninvasive and relatively affordable optical neuroimaging technique measuring changes in hemoglobin concentration in the blood that flows through the brain. More specifically, optical imaging techniques have been already integrated into wearable devices, such as smartwatches, for detecting the changes in hemoglobin concentration in the blood, providing data about heartbeat rate and oxygen concentration. In addition, AI models have been developed to predict cognitive states, such as drowsiness and fatigue, by analyzing the data collected from the human body.
Those developments have also allowed decoding the brain activity into meaningful commands for machine interaction outside the laboratory environments, which led to brain computer interaction (BCI) technologies. BCI was developed initially for patients suffering from severe motor impairments [48,49]. BCI has recently expanded to domains close to the manufacturing context, such as human-robot interaction [50]. The know-how has accumulated to implement neuroimaging technologies within classrooms and develop high bandwidth brain-machine interfaces to connect humans and computers by integrating affordable neuroimaging devices, such as fNIRS [51]. The ultimate goal is to integrate the human and the systems within the context of human-machine teaming research. In a BCI context, this integration aims at providing better interfaces that facilitate daily life interactions with computers. In an educational context, this setting aims at improving learning and teaching. In manufacturing, the recent developments may close the traditionally articulated gap between manufacturing robots that do not interact with humans (e.g., robot arms) and service robots that serve humans, particularly following the introduction of BCI-driven robots in workplaces.
Another area where AI technologies have been integrated into daily life settings is brain nerve stimulation. In a similar way to the development of brain computer interfaces, brain stimulation was developed for the treatment of diseases, such as Parkinson's disease [52] and epilepsy [53], as well as depression [54]. The technology has been known as deep brain stimulation, a surgical treatment that stimulates the brain with electrical impulses. More recently, brain stimulation has been employed for domains outside the context of disease treatment through affordable technologies that have been developed recently. For instance, transcranial direct current stimulation (TDCS) is an application of weak electrical current to nerves. Similarly, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is the induction of magnetic fields for stimulation. Recent studies show that brain stimulation in adults enhances language learning by improving speech category learning [55]. Similarly, various brain stimulation techniques have been shown to impact different types of decision-making, including risky decision-making processes [56]. These studies reveal the potential of brain stimulation enhancement as a novel cognitive enhancement, besides the traditional cognitive enhancement methods, such as pharmacological cognitive enhancement (PCE) [57]. AI technologies will be an embedded feature of BCI and stimulation technologies, given that AI has already been integrated into daily life settings on many fronts.
In summary, recent developments in AI technologies and their integration with BCI and brain stimulation technologies indicate the need to assess their potential use in various application domains. The need for scrutinizing the ethical implications of BCI-driven robots [57], brain computer interfaces in general, and brain stimulation [58] has already been recognized in the research community [13,50,59]. Nevertheless, discussing their impact on manufacturing life needs to ask novel questions that have not been debated before. What if an employee accepts a work contract that identifies working hours depending on the measured cognitive workload? What if the employee decides to use brain stimulation enhancement to improve performance despite the uncertainties in brain stimulation effects in long-term use?

Conclusions
These questions address the relationship between an employer and an employee within the context of manufacturing life rather than being a debate about the capacity of the machine itself as a thing. Such questions make us think about the reorganization of work not through working hours but the performance models. For that reason, we have to develop a critical evaluation of the use of such technologies in workplaces. Pustovrh et al. [1] pointed out a similar relation between cognitive load and performance in the workplace. A direct implication of assessing cognitive load for performance measurement in the workplace is pharmacological cognitive enhancement (PCE) by individuals. Their argument reflects the other side of the same coin when observed in light of the developments in the field of AI technologies. The performance models developed through AI technologies do not simply reflect the current averages of the working capacity of the workers. They can optimize the capacity by producing specific models that would be imposed on the workers. Consequently, as PCE will be a necessity for individual workers, one can see the inevitability of the widespread diffusion of brain stimulation enhancers. However, this inevitability cannot be reduced to the qualities of AI technology without a critical analysis of the sociohistorical formation of the manufacturing life established upon performance today.
Those questions above do not necessarily lead us to concerns about whether AI technologies will replace human beings or not. However, they lead to some further open questions. The enhancement of performance through AI technologies makes us reconsider the category of the human itself. We are familiar with the modern construction of the category of the human in opposition to nature or technology. Nevertheless, with AI technologies, we can no longer draw clear lines between technology and the human. More importantly, we have to reconsider the formation of a new category of the human that could be universally imposed through the contemporary capitalist social relations based on performance. The examples above reveal the need for a broader, critical point of view to evaluate the relationship between AI and performance in the workplace. The widespread diffusion of performance enhancement mechanisms, may it be pharmacological cognitive enhancement or transcranial magnetic stimulation of the brain, seems inevitable shortly, not only in the workplace but also in schools and other daily settings, given that "performance" is being used as a key template to produce, measure, and evaluate social differences.
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Sustainability of rural agribusiness through e-commerce information systems

Summary. Agribusiness is one of the strategies to improve food security, however, part of its activities need to be enhanced through different strategies, including the implementation of ecommerce information systems that can help chains promote their sustainability. The objective of the research was to characterize and develop an e-commerce strategy in rural agribusiness composed of rural associations from the province of Andahuaylas, Peru. The study is qualitative descriptive through the historical-logical, interview, theoretical triangulation and modeling were used, with a sample of four associations producing milk, Andean grains, guinea pig breeding and organic vegetables from the rural sector of the study area. It was possible to characterize the activities, finding an inefficient integration of information systems in commercial management. As a strategy, e-commerce was implemented through digital marketing techniques to attract new commercial allies and potential consumers according to their situation of each productive activity that constitutes rural agribusiness. The application of e-commerce contributes to increasing the efficiency of the associations that make up rural agribusiness.

Introduction
Agribusiness is an activity where the economy, business and agriculture come together (1). The great importance of agribusiness covers the chains of production, harvesting, marketing and end customers. Being one of the activities with significant contributions at the level of the development of the gross domestic product (GDP) of a country (2). E-commerce is a business strategy that facilitates the sale of products in different sectors (3). In 2015, 14% of agricultural enterprises carried out electronic business transactions via Internet connection (4). However, in the agro-industrial sector in developing countries, e-commerce is considered an alternative channel (3), since the use of digital technologies is limited at the level of an entire productive chain of the agricultural sector (5). E-commerce has several purposes, which enables the circulation and development of agricultural products. (6) It also offers different strategies and facilities to farmers in their economic movement at the level of production and marketing (7). In 2018, Wix's website records show that 75% of internet customers used e-commerce (8). According to the E-Commerce Wiki site, e-commerce increased in 2015 by 2.92% the gross domestic product. E-commerce allows us to achieve substantial cost savings, in order to increase revenue, provide faster deliveries, reduce costs and improve customer service (9). In the countries of the Asian continent, the use of technological information systems has an impact on customer satisfaction (7). The implementation of e-commerce in agribusiness brings many benefits of interest to the scientific literature (10). However, in Peru its use of electronic commerce is still incipient mainly in different agricultural sectors (11). Agribusiness is based on traditional model businesses primarily on face-toface relationships with customers. Agribusiness has an important contribution to the economic activities of the country, being an economic model that integrates the production and sale of its products at the level of a society to guarantee food security and sustainability. Marketing to the tourism system is one of the destinations with the highest rural agricultural production in Peru. In the research, an e-commerce strategy was implemented in rural producer associations with productive activities in the agricultural sector. The objective of the study was to implement electronic commerce based on a situational diagnosis of the associations, to establish marketing strategies for their products from traditional sales to sales with digital strategies, facilitating the improvement of their sales and improving the quality of service to maintain the sustainability of rural agribusiness.
• The province is located in the zone of high frequency of meteorological events.
• Difficulties with the transport of products: milk, dairy products, guinea pigs, vegetables and Andean grains • Inflexibility of your product prices.
• Development of zero marketing strategies.
• Lack of compliance with Peruvian technical standards, in their finished products, generating the distrust of customers, causing losses of their products.
According to the analysis of the characteristics of the local market of the study area, serious difficulties were found in its production and commercialization of rural agricultural products, being a challenging and competitive business system for private companies with improvements in the quality of their products. At the level of characterization, agricultural activities are formed by associations that are part of the productive chains of the rural sector.
Characteristics of the agricultural market of the case study.
In Peru, agricultural activities have become one of the economic activities that has the highest profitability after the mining sector. In the Apurimac region, agricultural activities make up the production and marketing of primary products with sales at the level of local markets. At the level of the different programs that the Peruvian state has been implementing, to improve the productive activities of the rural sector, there are still deficiencies at the level of the productive chains, especially in the commercialization of the products that require improvements to guarantee the entire productive chain of the rural sector. Part of the problems presented by the agricultural sector is the little or no implementation of digital tools (12). According to the different problems presented by the commercial activity of the products, it is sought: to reduce the dependence on products from abroad, to promote exports of agricultural products from the rural sector, with the purpose of increasing production and marketing through the implementation of digital technologies within electronic commerce. According to the analysis, the study area has the following characteristics:

Methodology
The research is qualitative-descriptive, with a sample of productive activities composed of four rural associations, each association is made up of 100 members producing milk, organic vegetables, Andean grains and guinea pig breeding in the province of Andahuaylas, Peru. The rural businesses were: Asociación Aprolenvisa-San Jerónimo, alegres de centro Humaca Andarapa, granos oro de Humaca and Hotifresh Tapaya. The business activity is to produce and market, fresh milk, dairy products, Andean grains; organic vegetables and guinea pig production at the level of the Apurimac region. It was developed through historical-logical methodology and in-depth interviews, through interviews, observation of participants, theoretical triangulation and modeling. These methods were used to diagnose the state of the situation of the information systems strategies to implement e-commerce.

Area of study
The study was carried out in the province of Andahuaylas, Andean region of deep Peru, with a local altitude of 2935 m.a.s.l.m (13°42 Ś.73°24 Ó), being one of the seven provinces of the department of Apurímac. The districts identified for the study were Andarapa, San Jeronimo, Andahuaylas and Talavera, the rural areas of each intervention area have potential agribusiness activity.

Sociodemographic profile
In Table 1. The demographic characteristics of the associations are displayed. Of which 71.6% are represented by women, however, 28%. 4% by men who are part of the associations producing milk, Andean grains, organic vegetables and guinea pig farming. Likewise, 36.3% were between 31 and 40 years old. 44.1% of the members had more than 7 members in the household, while 42.1% were

Description of productive activities in rural agribusiness
At the level of the four associations of intervention in rural areas, each association develops a common activity from production to marketing. The production of milk and its derivatives is based on the commercialization of fresh milk, elaboration of Andean cheese and fresh yogurt, with a 40.0% internvention of the activity at the level of rural businesses. However, as the second productive activity is the production of guinea pig with 25%, which consists of the breeding and sale for meat. 10% is developed by the production of organic vegetables: Lettuce, Sanahoria, onion, tomato, celery and beterraga. In the end 20% produce Andean grains: quinoa, chia, tarwi and quiwicha, as shown in figure 2.  Figure 2. Percentage of productive activities in associations

Diagnosis of commercial management
Commercial management has an important role in the economy with great importance in the systems of associations (13). The development of commercial management is based on the exchange of the market, in terms of its location, the distribution of goods and services to the customer, which is provided by the company in the face of a change in economic value (14). According to the diagnosis made to the four associations, commercial management consists of the following processes: • Purchasing management (Inputs for dairy production) • Production of milk, Andean grains, organic vegetables and guinea pig.
• Sales Management • Customer Support Sales management is carried out after obtaining agricultural products for marketing. The associations are engaged in the following productive activities: Fresh milk and its dairy products, guinea pig farming, Andean grains and organic vegetables. The production of fresh milk is destined to the commercialization of social programs known as glass of milk in the sectors of Andahuaylas, San Jerónimo and Talavera. In order to know the commercial diagnosis of the associations, an interview was conducted in person.
Through interviews with the associations it was possible to obtain information on the commercial management of their products, the technique was applied to each association through direct observations, with the purpose of knowing about the knowledge and management of digital marketing strategies. According to the result, the associations did not develop digital strategies for the sale of their agricultural products, with insufficient incorporation of digital technologies and the lack of implementation of a business model, which hinder the economic and commercial development of the association and alter the quality of service to customers.  This event is harmful because it affects the supply of the product. The preceding elements indicate the following: • Customer service deficiencies, during the sales of your products • The sales channels used by associations are deficient, causing the customer to dissatisfaction with their products. • Lack of knowledge of sales management strategies • There is no management of digital technologies for the commercialization of its products • The business model practiced by partnerships is traditional, they do not incorporate an advantage of digital strategies. • Absence and lack of knowledge techniques in the field of marketing, with technological means at the level of associations The field diagnosis resulted in the lack of incorporation of strategy management at the marketing level, all the elements at the diagnostic level will allow the plan and execution of the e-commerce implementation.

Proposal of e-commerce development strategies
In companies, e-commerce generates market opportunities with dynamic prices and services (15). It offers different possibilities of having contact with new customers, being effective access to purchases and sales of products and services (16). E-commerce brings many benefits to farmers, facilitating the reduction of exchange costs in the market (17). In addition, they offer new opportunities and market strategies for rural agribusiness with decisions to improve their activities economically. (18). Digital strategies represent new ways of marketing products with a positive impact on the economy, through their digital media seeking to be closer to customers and provide a quality of service, enabling a competitive advantage (19) The slower aspects of digital strategies include: • A timely management in the relationship with customers to increase experiences and increase purchase intentions. • In companies they provide technological solutions as business strategies • It facilitates commercial, corporate exchange and functional improvements at the company level.
E-commerce implementation strategies seek to improve interaction with consumers by being a new business model (19,20). According to Turban, a proposal for an e-commerce model is established through B2B, a business-to-business relationship and the development of social electronic commerce that is developed through social networks that facilitate the marketing of products with shopping facilities. Established models allow the development of commercial marketing strategies to facilitate the purchase and sale of products and improve purchase intention successfully in e-commerce (21,22,23).  Figure 3 represents the foundations and stages of strategies

Information systems implementation strategies
The development of the strategies consists of four important phases that allow the improvement of trade. Each phase is complementary facilitating the development of adoption of a digital strategy. The diagnosis of the study allowed to identify the deficiencies presented by the associations at the level of the production of milk, dairy products, guinea pig and organic vegetables, according to the diagnosis the following strategies were established: Stage I: Diagnosis.
Objective: was to identify the needs of the clients and peculiarities of the producing associations in each activity. At this stage a market study was made in which the associations operate on the properties of the marketed product. This phase helps to uncover the weaknesses of the traditional trading model carried out by the associations. To this end, the following activities were developed: • Examination of the commercial and financial functioning of the association to establish the commercial processes that were key to improving the production of each association that makes up rural agribusiness. • Description of the properties of the product to be marketed, the costs and resources they use to reach the market. A SWOT matrix analysis is necessary at the level of the planning of its activities. • Identification and enumeration of potential customers at the local and national market level.
• Implement quality production to establish costs and customer acceptance.
• Establish different mechanisms for access to products and strengthen the productive chain of associations. • Use of different marketing means for different clients.  Purpose: To develop a strategy and promote computer tools for its creation.
Carrying out this activity requires an in-depth study, with specific customer research, analysis of trends in digital commerce and the permanent integration of information technologies. In this stage, different planning activities were developed through the use of digital tools, which contribute to increase the marketing of the commercial and the perception of new consumers according to the following proposals: • Detect similar businesses and examine the primary resources of your proposals • Obtaining the legal, technological functions and administrative, material and personnel resources to carry out the implementation of digital strategies, allowing associations to create new trade opportunities. With facilities in the use of accessible and simple to use mobile devices.
• An e-commerce website was developed according to the characteristics of the association that enables a correct relationship with consumers and ensures the stability of the business. • An easy, agile and secure marketing was developed through secure payment mechanisms.
• Interaction with social networks to attract new potential customers in the market.
• A digital marketing strategy was implemented with different customer access facilities to ensure the purchases of their products. .

Stage III: Implementation
Objective: To carry out the strategy developed in the associations.
• The strategy was implemented through the resources defined in the planning phase through the use of technologies to optimize their relationship with customers. • A website is opened through Wix according to the productive activities of each association that guarantees the security of the means of payment. • Linking through the use of social networks Facebook, WhatsApp and You Tuve.  This phase allows the continuous monitoring of the execution of trade strategies through customer interaction with producers that enables improvements in the marketing of their products, for this it is necessary: • Conduct continuous evaluations of the strategies implemented that generate improvements and access to new opportunities for the exchange of their products from the associations for customer satisfaction • Examine consumer behavior on the organization's web portal.
• Establish means of communication with ease of access of the administrators of the web portal at the level of the associations and their management board to carry out corrective activities in time.

Conclusions
It was achieved to characterize the associations that form rural agribusiness. When diagnosing, several deficiencies were found in the marketing system in the associations that affect commercial management and especially the productive activities that cause food shortages and negatively influence the consumer. The implementation of electronic commerce was developed to improve the marketing strategies of its products in rural associations. The trading strategies in the partnerships allowed new market opportunities to insert their products to potential customers. The products that are marketed through the associations are milk, dairy products, guinea pig and organic vegetables according to the food needs of the population. Digital strategies were implemented in all four asations; creation of the website, means of payment, means of promotion through the use of social networks facebook, WhatsApp and You Tuve. The study helps to seek improvements in rural businesses for the development of agribusiness in Peru and boost the use of e-commerce in the Peruvian market.


Does authoritarianism necessarily stifle creativity? The role of discipline-focused authoritarian leadership

A burgeoning body of research has shown that authoritarian leadership (AL) embodies the characteristics of “light” and “dark,” meaning that it does not always have a negative impact on employees’ creative activities. However, studies explaining this potential positive effect are insufficient. To extend the AL and creativity literature, we draw on self-determination theory and event system theory, and elicit discipline-focused AL and appointment event criticality to examine whether, when, and how authoritarian leaders affect employee creativity positively. With time-lagged data collected from 435 employees and their direct leaders in China, we found that discipline-focused AL has an indirect positive effect on employee creativity through creative self-efficacy. Additionally, appointment event criticality strengthens the positive relationship between discipline-focused AL and creative self-efficiency, and the indirect impact of discipline-focused AL on employee creativity through creative self-efficiency. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Introduction
Creativity is considered the engine of organizational success (Anderson et al., 2004(Anderson et al., , 2014, and is defined as a useful and innovative idea for a person or group of people to work together (Zhou and George, 2001). Among the many factors that affect employee creativity and innovation, a leader's behavior and style often play a crucial role, especially as the employee's immediate supervisor (Niu et al., 2018;Zhang et al., 2021). Numerous studies have explored the impact of positive leadership on employee creativity (Bai et al., 2016;Guo et al., 2018), such as transformational leadership and humble leadership, Frontiers in Psychology 01 frontiersin.org which have been widely proven to promote creativity (e.g., Shin and Zhou, 2003;Aasland et al., 2010). Despite scholars' devotion and contribution, many studies on these types of leadership and creativity are duplicated and the conclusions are similar (Zhao et al., 2022). Recently, scholars have shifted attention to destructive leadership, among which authoritarian leadership (AL) is the most representative (Wang and Xing, 2019). However, in explaining the impact of AL on employee creativity, we raise two questions that require further explanation. First, the influence of authoritarianism on employee creativity is still controversial (Guo et al., 2018). Specifically, the positive effects of AL on creativity under-explained. Most research views AL as the "dark" side of leadership (Thom, 2006;Aryee et al., 2007). Accordingly, many scholars believe that AL is harmful to subordinates' creativity and have proposed a simple negative linear relationship between the two (e.g., Gu et al., 2018;Guo et al., 2018). However, it seems that AL often plays a positive role in Chinese organizations (Chen and Farh, 2010), which is reflected in the potential positive impact on employee creativity (Zhao et al., 2022). For example, Gu et al. (2020) found a positive effect of AL on employee creativity under the conditions of highbenevolent and high-morality leadership. Zhang et al. (2021) indicated that AL has a positive effect on employee innovation behavior within a certain range in the Chinese organizational culture. Zhao et al. (2022) also proposed a positive influence of AL on employee creativity through a qualitative study. One explanation is that AL, when treated as a dimension of paternalistic leadership, may be considered as an effort to help and guide the staff (Leung et al., 2014). Others argued that such controlling behavior can be considered a stress-induced agent that can trigger a stimulation (Aryee et al., 2007;Gu et al., 2020;Cheng et al., 2021), especially the employees' sense of competence (Zhao et al., , 2022 because individuals tend to overcome stress to satisfy their basic psychology needs (Cranmer et al., 2018).
We argue that AL needs to be viewed dialectically in the process of influencing creativity. It is worth noting that some scholars have identified two dimensions of AL according to the different control focus (e.g., Cheng and Chou, 2005;Chou et al., 2010;Chou and Cheng, 2014), namely disciplinefocused AL and dominance-focused AL, which refer to strict discipline and dominant control, respectively (Cheng and Chou, 2005). Furthermore, these studies confirmed that disciplinefocused AL has a positive effect on employees in terms of task performance and perceived rights (Cheng et al., 2006). Based on the above, we propose that discipline-focused AL may help explain why AL doesn't necessarily stifle employee creativity and may even have a positive effect. This is the first objective of this research.
Second, previous research has taken a primarily static view of the relationship between leadership and employee creativity. They have focused more attention to internal stability characteristics of entities (individuals, teams, and organizations) (Liu and Liu, 2017), but not on the potential impact of changes in dynamic events, whose strength may change over time and be always present (Morgeson et al., 2015). Along this line, authoritarian control does not necessarily occur isolated from workplace events, which complicates the study of AL impact on creativity. Previous studies on creativity believe that employee creativity should be influenced by longterm and stable management, or by a relatively familiar and stable working environment. However, given the dynamic organizational environment today, where frequent workplace events disrupt the routine guiding employees' behaviors , this ideal state of sustained stability and certainty is not permanent. Through a comprehensive review of previous studies considering context, it is obvious that there is a lack of empirical research on discrete events as context. The process of AL affecting employee creativity may vary according to specific, independent, and discrete events.
In our research, we quote the criticality of a new workplace event as our study's boundary condition that is appointment event criticality. Appointment event refers to the experiences by an employee is designated for solving a new problem or undertaking a task as a team member (Zhao et al., 2022), and the criticality of which reflects "the importance, necessity, or priority of these events" (Morgeson et al., 2015;Liu et al., 2018). In the workplace, an employee may be appointed to take on a role at some point by his leader, and the experience may affect how the employee perceives his leaders. However, although most people constantly experience appointment events, this topic has not received enough attention. Therefore, our research aims to enrich the AL study on employee creativity by examining the effect of "appointment event criticality" as a moderator variable. We develop a model according to the self-determination theory (SDT) and the event system theory (EST). Our basic argument is that discipline-forced AL could meet employees' basic needs (i.e., competence and relatedness) and stimulate individual motivation, which positively influences employee creativity by promoting creative self-efficacy. Overall, our research makes three contributions to pertinent literature. First, our study enriches the current AL literature by uncovering a potentially "light" side of AL, which emphasizes different types of controlling behavior that arise from disciplinefocused AL. Second, our study develops an understanding of leaders' control behaviors and employee creativity. We argue that not all control behaviors are harmful to employee creativity. Requiring employees to set higher goals and adhere to organizational norms may be beneficial to employee creativity. Third, our research derives "appointment event criticality" as a situational variable from an integrative theory building perspective (Morgeson et al., 2015). This may enable the development of more fine-grained leadership and creativity theories, enhancing their explanatory power and impact.

Theory and hypothesis development
Discipline-focused authoritarian leadership Authoritarian leadership indicates that the leader emphasizes absolute authority, who tightly controls subordinates and demands their unreserved obedience (Farh and Cheng, 2000). AL originates from the Chinese Confucian culture and Legalist culture and exists widely in the workplace, it was once thought to be the clearest and the most distinct leadership in Chinese enterprises. This leadership style emphasizes the authority of leaders and that employees obey orders unconditionally through strict control (Zheng et al., 2021). Most studies show that these characteristics of AL lead to negative behaviors and emotions of employees, but there is no consensus on the positive impact on employee behaviors and attitudes. The reason for this inconsistency may be that AL has the properties of both "light" and "dark" at the same time regarding job demands such as rigorousness, task monitoring, regulation and structuring, issue rules, control and dominance, and information manipulation. The vagueness of connotation has not been clarified (Farh and Cheng, 2000;Aryee et al., 2007;Farh et al., 2008;Chen and Farh, 2010).
To make the concept of AL clearer, Chou et al. (2010) proposed a two-factor solution, which divides the broad sense of controlling authoritarianism into "juan-chiuan" and "shangyan, " namely, dominance-focused AL and discipline-focused AL (Chou and Cheng, 2014). The former is viewed as the "dark" side, highlighting tight control and social distance in a hierarchy where leaders assert their dominance and authority to meet their own needs. In contrast, the latter is considered the "bright" side, emphasizing disciplines and rules in an organization to achieve personal growth and collective goals that benefit employees and the organization (Cheng and Chou, 2005;Aryee et al., 2007;Chou et al., 2010;Chen, 2011). This study explains the "bright" side of AL and its positive impact on employee creativity, so we focus on the "discipline-focused AL." This leadership style was referred to as the "stress challenge" in later studies (Cheng et al., 2021), representing the leader's behavior that enable employees to overcome difficulties and achieve high standards, even when the odds are against them. The goal of discipline-focused AL is to benefit the collective from the leader's authority and power (Chou and Cheng, 2014).
Consequently, we argue that "discipline-focused AL" brings up a new perspective for understanding the relationship between employee creativity and AL, and a theoretical explanation for previous inconsistent findings when examining the relationship between the two.

Discipline-focused authoritarian leadership and creative self-efficacy
A pioneering study on the creative self-efficacy of employees was conducted by Tierney and Farmer (2002). They first made the concept of creative self-efficacy, which is defined as an individual's evaluation of whether he or she has the ability and confidence to produce creative results when engaged in specific tasks and reflects the individual's self-belief or self-expectation in creative activities. Creative self-efficacy is based on general selfefficacy and the creative theory, but is different from general selfefficacy, which reflects a person's overall belief in cross-domain ability (Zhou et al., 2012). Creative self-efficacy emphasizes an employees' belief in the realization of their creativity, including belief in creative approaches to work and belief in obtaining creative results, not just for the outcome of the action, but for the process of behavior (Zhang and Zhou, 2014). Conceptually, creative self-efficacy reveals two psychological states of employee creative contribution --"I want" and "I can, " which is consistent with the intrinsic motivation and the satisfaction of basic psychological needs defined by the SDT (Deci and Ryan, 2000;Tierney and Farmer, 2002).
The extant literature has suggested that leadership, as a key contextual factor in organizations, is an important factor affecting individual self-evaluation and behavior (Li et al., 2015). In our study, discipline-focused authoritarian leader presents a more active behavioral pattern as contextual stimuli. On the one hand, strict management, high performance expectations, and high standards will stimulate employees' sense of "competence, " inducing a belief that self-worth and self-fulfillment can be achieved through creative work performance. Disciplinefocused authoritarian leaders tend to give their employees more complex and challenging tasks. Previous research shows that the complexity of a job reflects a person's ability, and employees will evaluate their ability accordingly. The more complex or difficult a task an employee performs, the more likely he or she will have a higher assessment of his or her abilities (Gist and Mitchell, 1992). Moreover, in the process, employees can discover nuances and tricks, thus becoming more confident in completing tasks creatively (Karwowski et al., 2018).
On the other hand, discipline-focused AL generally aims to cultivate subordinates, improve their ability, and help them become excellent by guiding them (Wang and Xing, 2019;Cheng et al., 2021). When discipline-focused AL monitors subordinates' work tasks, demands high performance, and maintains organizational norms, subordinates will show higher self-requirements and job engagement, and employees' identification with the leader will be enhanced. In this process, the psychological distance between leaders and employees is "narrowed." Subordinates see their leader as a "strict father." As previous research has shown that attention and trust from organizations can make individuals happier (Joo et al., 2014), employees' work enthusiasm is constantly stimulated due to of attention and trust from the leader. Employees' high-identity recognization will promote a strong positive emotion toward the organization, thus improving intrinsic motivation and stimulating a strong desire to adopt a more flexible cognitive process when solving problems. The satisfied basic psychological needs of "relatedness" will prompt employees to pursue creative contributions. Zhao et al. (2022) demonstrate that "competence" and "relatedness" are keys to understanding how AL influences employee creativity because they can easily trigger employees' corresponding internal perceptions. In our study, we argue that creative self-efficacy is a positive internal perception. According to the SDT, discipline-focused AL satisfies employees' needs for "competence" and "relatedness, " stimulating the intrinsic motivation of employees and making employees feel a strong sense of self-determination, which is helpful to improve their creative self-efficacy. Consequently, employees have enough confidence to deal with challenges at work and have the faith to complete tasks creatively. Therefore, we propose that employees subordinated to discipline-focused AL have a high level of creative self-efficacy. We hypothesize the following: Hypothesis 1: Discipline-focused AL has a positive effect on creative self-efficacy.

The mediating role of creative self-efficacy
According to social cognitive theory, individual cognition, behavior, and context factors affect each other (Bandura, 1989). Creative self-efficacy, an individual cognitive variable, has a profound impact on employee creativity and plays an important mediating role in the process of situational stimulation on behavior (Gong et al., 2009). Previous studies have confirmed that employees' creative self-efficacy is positively related to their leader's support behavior (Mittal and Dhar, 2015). An employee with strong creative self-efficacy is good at actively acquiring new knowledge at work. They are confident in their intelligence and ability to create, dare to try different things at work and have the courage to put forward and express new ideas (Han and Bai, 2020). Moreover, they are more tolerant of failures in attempts (Tierney and Farmer, 2002). The higher the level of creative selfefficacy, the more likely employees to persevere to achieve goals without flinching Newman et al., 2018). The mediating role of creative self-efficacy in employee innovation has been widely recognized (Teng et al., 2020). In contrast, people whose creative self-efficacy is low lack the courage and determination to try new things and the confidence to produce creative results. Therefore, creative self-efficacy has a positive impact on employee creativity. A large number of empirical studies have shown that creativity self-efficacy as an internal drive of employee creativity has a positive impact on it (e.g., Haase et al., 2018;Newman et al., 2018;Bicer et al., 2020).
In our model, we theorize that discipline-focused AL as a contextual stimulus causes a cognitive state of employee manifesting in creative self-efficacy, where the employee's two basic psychological needs for "relatedness" and "competency" are satisfied. Subsequently, creative self-efficacy should motivate employees to produce more creativity. We hypothesize the following: Hypothesis 2: creative self-efficacy mediates the relationship between discipline-focused AL and employee creativity.
Synergistic effect of appointment event criticality and discipline-focused authoritarian leadership Event system theory suggests that it is necessary to understand how event characteristics combine with entities' (e.g., individuals, teams, or organizations) internal features to influence employee perception and behavior (Morgeson et al., 2015;Jiang et al., 2019;Liu et al., 2021). This comprehensive method can further promote the development of organization theory and enhance its explanatory power and influence Liu et al., 2021). Nonetheless, the interactive effects of the features of events and entity have rarely been investigated, even though they can reinforce each other and have a synergistic effect on creativity or innovation . Accordingly, this study is positioned to explore the impact of the synergistic effect of leader behavior and management events on employee creativity. In our research, we try to explain when AL has a further positive effect on employee creativity by revealing the interaction effect of appointment event criticality and discipline-focused AL. Based on event system theory, event criticality is a significant characteristic that reflects "the degree to which an event is important, essential, or a priority" to an entity and typically triggers additional analyses and changes (Morgeson et al., 2015). We focus on "appointment event criticality" in this research. Appointment event refers to the experiences that an employee is designated for solving a new problem or undertaking a task as a team member . In the workplace, each person may be appointed to get something done, such as a position change and starting a short-term project. These events provide contexts for employees and leaders to increase their understanding of each other. In previous qualitative studies, scholars found that discipline-focused AL could better motivate subordinates and reduce the promotion effect on work alienation by appointing . We contend that appointment event criticality may augment the positive relationship between discipline-focus AL and employee creativity for two reasons. First, when employees accept an appointment deemed important for them from their leaders, they are more likely to understand the rigor of the leader because they view the appointment as specialized training rather than control of dominance. Here, they feel expected and trusted by their leaders. For example, if an employee concludes, "My direct leader expects me to complete a certain new task, " a logical attribution for the employee is "I must do well to live up to the leadership." According to SDT, their needs for "competence" and "relatedness" are satisfied, thus they feel a strong sense of self-determination and want to complete the task better, which contributes to the improvement of creative self-efficacy.
Second, employees' perceptions of leadership behaviors are influenced by the events experienced together. The more critical the appointment event is to the individuals, the stronger the individuals' perception of leadership behavior . In this study, criticality reflects the extent to which employees regard appointment events as "priority, essential, important" to them and typically triggers additional analyses and changes (Morgeson et al., 2015;Chen et al., 2021). Individuals with high perceived appointment event criticality are more confident because they think that discipline-focused authoritarian leaders communicate belief of "you can" by setting a high goal and maintaining high standards. As a result, individuals' creative self-efficiency improves. Tierney and Farmer (2011) propose that perceived creativity expectations of direct leaders can promote employees' assessment of the personal resources necessary for their creativity and help employees form their creativity efficacy beliefs. Conversely, individuals with low perceived appointment event criticality are less likely to feel the same conviction from their leader. Appointment event criticality regulates the degree of attention individuals need to pay to their leaders. Event system theory can explain the hypothesized interaction. We hypothesize the following: Hypothesis 3: Appointment event criticality moderates the positive relationship between discipline-focused AL and creative self-efficacy such that the relationship is stronger when appointment event criticality is higher.
Thus far, we have hypothesized that creative self-efficacy mediates the relationship between discipline-focused AL and employee creativity, and that appointment event criticality moderates the relation between discipline-focused AL and creative self-efficacy. Integrating the arguments above, we propose a moderated mediation model. That is, appointment event criticality should strengthen the indirect impact of discipline-focused AL on employee creativity through creative self-efficacy. Taken together, our argument leads to the following hypothesis: Hypothesis 4: Appointment event criticality moderates the indirect effect of discipline-focused AL on employee creativity via creative self-efficacy, such that the indirect effect is stronger (i.e., more positive) when appointment event criticality is higher.
The hypothesized model is shown in Figure 1.

Procedure and samples
To test our hypotheses and avoid common method single source problems (Podsakoff et al., 2003), we carried out a two-wave data collection over 3 weeks, consistent with prior creativity studies (e.g., Huang et al., 2016). Prior studies demonstrated that the effect of antecedent The hypothesized model. Psychology  05 frontiersin.org variables (discipline-focused AL in our study) on employee outcomes (creative self-efficacy and employee creativity in our study) generally occurs after two weeks (cf. Wayne and Ferris, 1990;Chen et al., 2020). Thus, we consider a 3-week interval is appropriate for testing the hypotheses.

Frontiers in
The data were collected from pairs of subordinates and their direct supervisors at seven medium-sized enterprises in Heilongjiang, Wuhan Provinces, and Beijing city, China. All these enterprises have a strong need for creative input from their employees to stay competitive in a rapidly changing market environment. These industries include advertising, media, software, and electronic engineering. First, we informed the general managers of the survey and sought their participation. In return, we would provide each enterprise with a data analysis report. Second, all employees were told that the study was just for the purposes of academics and would have no impact on individual performance. Third, we obtained a list of temporary personnel code numbers prepared by HR and coded each questionnaire accordingly to allow matching. HR then distributed each questionnaire to the corresponding employees without displaying their names. Instead, questionnaires distributed to the direct leaders would show the employee's name. Fourth, participants in the study were given a special envelope with security features to seal the filled questionnaires. Finally, all questionnaires were returned to the research assistants to ensure they would remain anonymous.
In our first wave survey (Time 1), we administered questionnaires to 626 full-time employees to fill out the information on their demographics, discipline-focused AL and appointment event criticality. Three weeks after, the second wave survey (Time 2) began. We invited 529 employees whose questionnaires were usable at Time 1 to report their creative self-efficacy (response rate was 84.50%). Meanwhile, we invited the direct leaders of those 529 employees to rate each subordinate's creativity. After removing 94 pairs due to invalid answers (e.g., all the items were given 1 or 5 points), missing data (e.g., the questionnaire was not fully answered), and failure of the verification test (e.g., "this is a verification item, and please select 2 points"), our final sample consisted of 435 matched pairs (48 leaders and 435 subordinates returned questionnaires, and every leader rated 9.06 subordinates; the valid response rate was 82.23%).
Among 435 subordinates, 36.6% were male and 63.4% were female. Their average age was 29.71 years (SD = 4.76), the average length of working years is 4.32 years (SD = 3.35), and the average tenure within the current organization was 1.18 years (SD = 0.53). In this sample, 3.9% graduated from high school, 31.3% held an associate degree, 59.3% held a bachelor's degree, and the remaining 5.5% held a master's degree or above.

Measures
We used the translation and back translation method (Brislin, 1986). The Chinese version of the measurement was created (Brislin, 1986) based on the original English scale of employee creativity, creative self-efficacy and event criticality to ensure that semantic and concepts are equal. The Chinese version of the discipline-focused AL measures was used. All items are on a 5-point scale, ranging from 1 ("strongly disagree") to 5 ("strongly agree").

Discipline-focused authoritarian leadership
We measured discipline-focused AL using a 10-item scale from Chou and Cheng (2014). This scale was designed in the Chinese culture and used by Cheng et al. (2019Cheng et al. ( , 2021. The scale's Cronbach's alpha was 0.84. All items are listed in Table 1.

Creative self-efficacy
A three-item scale of creative self-efficacy developed by Tierney and Farmer (2002) was used. Sample items include "I am good at finding creative ways to solve problems" and "I have confidence in my ability to solve problems creatively." The Cronbach's alpha for this scale was 0.87.

Employee creativity
Supervisors evaluate the creativity of their direct reports according to the 13-item scale developed by Zhou and George (2001). Sample items include "He/she often has new and innovative ideas" and "He/she comes up with creative solutions to problems." Cronbach's alpha of the scale was 0.97.

Appointment event criticality
According to event system theory and relevant researches, the measurement of appointment event criticality was divided

Items
(1) My supervisor supervises the progress of work and asks me to do my best to achieve it.
(2) My supervisor asks me to strictly abide by the rules of task execution.
(3) My supervisor sticks to his work principles and does not allow me to violate them.
(4) My supervisor requires that my performance is not lower than the pre-set standard.
(5) My supervisor asks me to follow the core norms of the organization.
(6) My supervisor still asks me to improve my performance even when I have already reached my goals.
(7) My supervisor ask me to report to him immediately if there are any changes in my work.
(8) My supervisor fully realizes the details of my work.
(9) My supervisor controls the execution of my work.
(10) My supervisor will guide how I perform my work. Psychology  06 frontiersin.org into a two-step procedure adopted by Morgeson (2005) and Morgeson and DeRue (2006). First, we defined the appointment event on the questionnaire and asked each employee to recall the experiences of being appointed by the direct supervisor and evaluate the experiences as a whole. The on-site research assistants were responsible for answering questions. Second, employees rated appointment event criticality using the threeitem scale derived from Morgeson et al. (2015). Sample items include "These appointments are critical to the long-term success of my personal career" and "These appointments are important events in my work." Cronbach's alpha of the scale was 0.84.

Control variables
In line with prior creativity research, employees' gender, age, education level and organization tenure was taken as control variables (cf., Gong et al., 2009;Gu et al., 2020), as these factors may affect the domain-relevant knowledge or expertise that is significant for creativity (Amabile, 1988;Chen et al., 2020). Another reason to control for demographic variables is that they tend to influence employee perceptions of leader's behavior. In our research, we transformed the data for two control variables (i.e., employees' gender, education level), which were originally categorical variables. Specifically, male = 1, female = 2; high school and below = 1, college = 2, undergraduate = 3, master = 4, doctor = 5.

Preliminary analyses
To provide evidence that our measured constructs were distinguishable, before hypothesis testing, we performed a set of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to assess the discriminant validity of discipline-focused Al, employee creative self-efficacy, employee creativity, and appointment event criticality (cf., Gadeyne et al., 2018;Kim et al., 2021;Lian et al., 2022). The results are shown in Table 2.
Additionally, a Harman one-factor test was also performed in this study. When not rotated, the first common factor accounts for 30.37% of the total loading, which is less than 40%, indicating that there is no common method bias in this study, and subsequent research can be carried out. Table 3 provides the descriptive statistics, reliability and correlation of variables. Then, based on the methods suggested by Podsakoff et al. (2003), we tested the effectiveness of incorporating a potential common method factor into the fourfactor model. The general method factor accounts for only 3.3% of the total deviation of the model interpretation, which is lower than the average variance (Williams et al., 1989), which shows that common method variance was not a pervasive problem.

Hypotheses testing
This study conducted a series of hierarchical regression analyzes using SPSS to check our hypothesis To test the indirect and conditional indirect effects, we used PROCESS (Hayes, 2013) and constructed 95% bias-corrected confidence intervals using 20,000 bootstrap samples. Compared with percentile bootstrap confidence intervals, this method avoids more errors (Preacher and Hayes, 2008).
The results of the hierarchical regression analysis are reported in Table 4. As shown in Model 1a, there is a positive correlation between discipline-focused Al and creative selfefficacy (b = 0.12, p < 0.05), thereby supporting Hypothesis 1. Model 2b shows that there is a positive relationship between creative self-efficacy and employee creativity (b = 0.10, p < 0.05). Moreover, the 95% confidence intervals of the indirect effect of discipline-focused Al on employee creativity via creative self-efficacy excluded zero (estimate = 0.014, 95%CI [0.001, 0.041]). Accordingly, Hypothesis 2 is supported.
Model 1c test Hypothesis 3. The interaction between discipline-focused Al and appointment event criticality was significant (b = 0.15, p < 0.05). The simple slope test shows that when the criticality of appointment events is low (-1 SD), the effect of discipline-focused Al is insignificant (b = -0.05, n.s.), whereas it became significant and positive (b = 0.19, p < 0.01) with higher levels of appointment event criticality (+1 SD). Figure 2 plots the interaction. Hypothesis 3 is empirically supported.

Discussion
Given the fact that leaders sometimes engage in authoritarian behavior with the purpose of individual and organizational improvement (Guo et al., 2018;Zhao et al., 2022), this study investigated the role of discipline-focused AL    in employee creativity and challenged the dominant assumption of AL in two ways. First, the previous literature excessively emphasized the dark side of AL but ignored its bright side (Chou et al., 2010;Chou and Cheng, 2014). As a result, the academic research on AL is one-sided, leading to inconsistent results of AL on employee creativity, which have not been explained clearly. In this study, we turned our focus to the positive aspects and raised the possibility that AL promotes employee creativity. Consistent with our findings, Gu et al. (2020) and Zhang et al. (2021) came to a similar conclusion. Furthermore, we elicited the concept of appointment event criticality and proposed the positive moderating effect of appointment event criticality on the relationship between discipline-focused AL and employee creativity, which offers insights into workplace events and entity (i.e., individual, team, organization) variables. Our findings verified the "integration theory-building approach" in the event system theory (Morgeson et al., 2015). In the event study, we can consider the characteristics of the entity and the events experienced by the entity simultaneously, and study the synergistic effect on the outcome variables. In this respect, our findings are consistent with the conclusions of previous studies (e.g., Chen et al., 2020;Liu et al., 2021;Zhao et al., 2022).
To sum up, our study provides a better understanding of both AL and employee creativity with theoretical and practical significance. Interaction effect of discipline-focused authoritarian leadership and the criticality of appointment event on creative self-efficacy. DAL, discipline-focused authoritarian leadership; AEC, appointment event criticality; CSE, creative self-efficacy.

Theoretical implications
First, our study enriches the current literature on the types of AL by conceptualizing discipline-focused AL. Disciplinefocused AL can be viewed as a "stressful challenge" (Cheng et al., 2021), presenting a more active leadership style that motivates employees to seek higher performance. Some studies indicate that the strict style, high performance expectations, and high standards would stimulate employees' "competence" motivation at work and employees' belief that self-worth and selfrealization could be gained (e.g., . However, few researchers have theoretically developed discipline-focused AL, even though some scholars have argued that it could bring intrinsic motivation for individuals to pursue higher performance (Chou and Cheng, 2014;Cheng et al., 2021). Our study contrasts with the work of Wang et al. (2022), in which AL as a comprehensive construct negatively affects creativity through creative self-efficacy. We view AL as a two-dimensional construct containing positive behaviors and negative behavior (Chou and Cheng, 2014) and examine its impact on employee creativity from its bright side. Our research expands the theory of AL and lays a foundation for future study on its "light side." Second, our study deepens the understanding of the relationships between control behavior of leaders and employee creativity, especially in the context of Chinese culture, although creativity researchers are likely to accept the views that AL negatively correlates with creativity (Zhang et al., 2011). In our research, discipline-focused AL emphasizes the control of standards, not damaging the personal dignity of employees, so this control is more acceptable to employees (Wang and Xing, 2019). The results of our study echo the findings of Zhang et al. (2021), who demonstrated that AL has a positive effect on employee innovation behavior in Chinese culture. Previous empirical studies have shown that employee innovation behavior, creative self-efficacy, and creativity are highly correlated (Tierney and Farmer, 2004). It is easier for people influenced by Chinese culture to understand the control of AL , such as focusing on hierarchical systems and having considerable executive power demands (Wang and Guan, 2018). Our research may provide theoretical researchers with additional perspectives on when and how AL affects employee creativity in the context of Eastern organizational cultures.
Third, our research extends SDT and event system theory (Morgeson et al., 2015) to prove that leader behaviors and event characteristics may interact and have synergetic effects on employees' cognition and behavior. We expand an essential aspect of situational factors, which moderate the relationship between leadership and employee creativity. Although previous studies have broadened our understanding of the boundary conditions under which leadership influences employee creativity, they focus solely on the static features of contexts and individuals, which is not sufficient to explain the antecedents of employee creativity in today's increasingly dynamic workplace (Chen et al., 2020). In this study, we introduce appointment event criticality based on the perspective of appointment, which leaders and employees often experience but tend to overlook. Our results show that discipline-focused AL has an indirect impact on employee creativity through creative self-efficiency, which is stronger when appointment event criticality is higher. Our study shows that research should pay more attention to discrete and acute events, such as appointment events, which may have a significant impact on individuals in the organization.

Practical implications
This study provides a new view of management practice for AL. Different from previous studies, our findings imply that not all AL behavior will damage employee self-worth and creativity. Previous research results indicate that AL can indeed have negative effects on employees (e.g., Chan et al., 2013;Zhang and Xie, 2017). However, when a directive leadership approach is necessary, authoritarian leaders can better play their strengths and avoid their weaknesses. Authoritarian leaders should demonstrate stressful challenging behavior by demanding full effort from subordinates and setting high-level goals for them. These leadership behaviors of AL can motivate subordinates' creative self-efficiency, and increase their creativity. Just as a Chinese proverb says, "capable are pupils trained by strict masters." More importantly, our study shows that appointment event criticality facilitates a positive indirect impact of disciplinefocused AL on employee creativity. In this study, the synergistic of discipline-focused AL and appointment event criticality provides clear guidance to leaders and managers on when, whether, and how to motivate subordinates' creative selfefficiency, which leads to creative work. Consequently, managers can enhance subordinates' positive perception of leaders through important appointment events when conducting management behavior. Event system theory argues that events are part of the context or situation, emphasizing that entities can actively create events and arouse the contextual perception of employees, which in turn change employees' cognitions and behaviors (Liu and Liu, 2017). Accordingly, employees can take the initiative to seek important tasks from managers. Current studies have shown that the appointment event criticality can help leaders establish positive images among employees and enhance employees' positive perceptions of leaders . Therefore, organizations should not only focus on the stable features of individuals and organizations, such as leadership style, organizational identity, and organizational support, but also focus on the appointment events that can significantly affect employees. Managers may establish an appointment mechanism that allows each employee to undertake major tasks, and let the positive effects of appointment events empower employees. These appointment events can stimulate positive cognition to the leader, and are conducive to employees due to acquiring a wider range of skills, which is advantageous in future promotions.

Limitations and future directions
Despite the theoretical and practical contributions, our research has limitations in the following aspects. First, employee creativity was evaluated by supervisors. Whether an employee is creative or not does not depend entirely on the evaluation of the leader. Although measuring employee creativity from the perspective of leaders has been adopted by many studies to address common method bias and social desirability, we remain concerned that the evaluation of employee creativity was not objective enough. Therefore, future research seeks to rate employ creativity in multiple ways.
Second, our study explains the relationship between discipline-focused AL and employee creativity from the perspective of motivation and basic psychological needs. There is a chance that a similar motive or cognitive variable exists in the relationship between discipline-focused AL and employee creativity, which could be elicited in future studies.
Third, we focused on appointment events, the collection of micro events elicited by leaders, and investigated its criticality's synergistic effect with discipline-focused AL. As Morgeson et al. (2015) and Chen et al. (2021) suggested, endogenous events (i.e., events created by oneself) and macro events also require attention. We believe that many types of events play a regulating role in the leadership effect on employee creativity, and scholars can conduct further research in this regard.

Data availability statement
The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

Author contributions
HZ and QS contributed to conception and design of the study. ML performed the statistical analysis. HZ wrote the first draft of the manuscript. CH edited and polished the second draft. LZ was responsible for the entire data acquisition process. All authors contributed to manuscript revision, read, and approved the submitted version.