In line and out of the box: How ethical leaders help offset the negative effect of morality on creativity

Utilizing role theory, we investigate the potential negative relationship between employees' moral ownership and their creativity, and the mitigating effect of ethical leadership in this relationship. We argue that employees higher on moral ownership are likely to take more moral role responsibility to ensure the ethical nature of their own actions and their environment, inadvertently resulting in them being less able to think outside of the box and to be creative at work. However, we propose that ethical leaders can relieve these employees from such moral agent role, allowing them to be creative while staying moral. We adopt a multimethod approach and test our predictions in 2 field studies (1 dyadic-based from the United States and 1 team-based from China) and 2 experimental studies (1 scenario-based and 1 team-based laboratory study). The results across these studies showed: (a) employee moral ownership is negatively related to employee creativity, and (b) ethical leadership moderates this relationship such that the negative association is mitigated when ethical leadership is high rather than low. Moreover, the team-based laboratory study demonstrated that moral responsibility relief mediated the buffering effect of ethical leadership. We discuss implications for role theory, ethicality, creativity, and leadership at work. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).