Supervisory psychological support and graduate student creativity: a serial mediation model

Extant research has examined the link between supervisory support and graduate student creativity (PGC), yet the underlying psychological and social mechanisms remain underexplored. This cross-sectional study, grounded in self-determination theory (SDT), examined a serial mediation model in which supervisory psychological support is positively associated with PGC through a sequential two-stage statistical pathway: first via its association with the quality of leader-member exchange (LMX), and subsequently via a positive team innovation climate (TIC). We surveyed 363 full-time graduate students from mainland Chinese universities and examined the hypothesized model using bootstrap resampling with 10,000 iterations. LMX and TIC jointly accounted for the majority of the association between supervisory psychological support (SPS) and PGC, with LMX also serving as a significant mediator in the relationship between SPS and TIC. Our findings suggest that in the high-power-distance, collectivist Chinese academic context, the association between supervisory support and creativity is predominantly accounted for by relational quality: LMX appears to serve as a critical relational mechanism between psychological need satisfaction and creative output. These findings extend the application of SDT to hierarchical academic mentoring contexts and highlight the culturally contingent nature of SDT's predictions. The results also provide evidence-based guidance for optimizing supervisory training and team innovation management in collectivist higher education settings. Because this study was cross-sectional, the proposed pathways should be interpreted as theory-guided statistical associations rather than evidence of causal effects or temporal ordering.