The relationship between empowering leadership and radical creativity

Area of Science:

• Organizational Psychology
• Innovation Management
• Leadership Studies

Background:

• Employee creativity, particularly radical creativity, is crucial for organizational innovation.
• Understanding the leadership mechanisms that drive creativity is essential for competitive advantage.
• The conservation of resources theory provides a framework for understanding how employees acquire and maintain resources like job control.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the serial mediation effect of job control and willingness to take risks in linking empowering leadership to employee radical creativity.
• To examine the moderating role of an error management climate on the relationship between empowering leadership and employee radical creativity.
• To test a theoretical model grounded in the conservation of resources theory.

Main Methods:

• A time-lagged, multisource survey was conducted with 385 employees from 84 R&D teams across 20 companies.
• Structural equation modeling was used to test the proposed serial mediation and moderation hypotheses.
• Data collection ensured the separation of predictor, mediator, and outcome variables to minimize common method bias.

Main Results:

• Empowering leadership positively and indirectly influenced employee radical creativity through job control and willingness to take risks.
• Job control and willingness to take risks sequentially mediated the relationship between empowering leadership and radical creativity.
• An error management climate significantly strengthened the indirect effect of empowering leadership on radical creativity.

Conclusions:

• Empowering leadership is a key driver of radical creativity, operating through enhanced job control and a greater willingness to take risks.
• Fostering an error management climate can amplify the positive impact of empowering leadership on employee innovation.
• The findings offer practical insights for leaders aiming to cultivate a more creative and innovative workforce.