Elsevier

The Leadership Quarterly

Volume 28, Issue 6, December 2017, Pages 798-811
The Leadership Quarterly

Working with creative leaders: Exploring the relationship between supervisors' and subordinates' creativity

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2017.03.002Get rights and content

Abstract

We propose that supervisors' own level of creativity is a core component of effective leadership that can be associated with subordinates' self-concept and creativity. Specifically, drawing on the identity theory framework, and role identity theory in particular, we argue that subordinates' creative role identity is an important underlying mechanism in the relationship between supervisors' level of creativity and their subordinates' creativity. Using a sample of 443 employees working with 44 supervisors in an IT firm, we hypothesized and found support for a moderated mediation model. There was a positive indirect relationship between supervisors' creativity and their subordinates' creativity via the subordinates' creative role identity, and this indirect relationship was stronger when employees perceived higher levels of organizational support for creativity.

Section snippets

Theory development

Supervisors can have a noteworthy effect on employees' creativity (Byrne et al., 2009, Shalley and Gilson, 2004). Leading employees to perform more creatively is argued to be different from traditional leadership approaches, because creativity requires a unique set of conditions, such as having high autonomy and a greater degree of tolerance for failure in the organization (Vessey, Barrett, Mumford, Johnson, & Litwiller, 2014). Past research has suggested that one way leaders may affect

Methods

Our data was collected from an information technology (IT) firm in China. The primary occupations were program engineers, IT product developers and testers, and business professionals (e.g., marketing specialists and administrative staff). In this organization, top management is proud of the innovative culture they have built, and all employees are encouraged to be creative. The survey was conducted during the organization's annual employee survey period. The HR department assigned a one-hour

Results

The descriptive statistics and correlations can be seen in Table 1. As shown, supervisor creativity was positively related to subordinate creative role identity and subordinate creativity (r = 0.14, p < 0.05, r = 0.11, p < 0.01, respectively), providing initial support for the model.

Since our study variables were measured with self-report questions at the same time, we tested for potential common method variance effects using the CFA marker technique (Podsakoff et al., 2012, Williams et al., 2010). We

Discussion

The majority of U.S. Nobel laureates who conducted prize-winning research had earlier worked under or been mentored by other Nobel laureates (Becker, 2013). This study is among the first to investigate whether a similar relationship occurs in organizations by highlighting the potential connection between supervisors' own level of creativity and their subordinates' creativity. Given their power and status in an organization, creative supervisors can impact their subordinates ability to be

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