Positive Group Affective Tone and Team Creative Performance and Change‐Oriented Organizational Citizenship Behavior: A Moderated Mediation Model

Despite the vast amount of research on creativity and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), little knowledge has been accumulated with respect to underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions affecting team creative performance and change OCB. To fill this research gap, this study aims at proposing and testing a moderated mediation model that delineates the relationships among positive group affective tone (PGAT), team reflexivity, team leader transformational leadership, team creative performance, and team change OCB. As hypothesized, PGAT was positively associated with team reflexivity, which in turn significantly predicted team creative performance and change OCB. In addition, the relationship between PGAT and team reflexivity and the indirect effects of PGAT on team creative performance and change OCB through team reflexivity were more pronounced when team leader transformational leadership was high than when it was low. These findings were validated in a post hoc analysis that compared the proposed moderated mediation model with alternative models.     

Cross-National Explorations of the Impact of Affect at Work Using the State-Trait Emotion Measure: A Coordinated Series of Studies in the United States,China, and Romania

Drawing on the social information process perspective, we hypothesized that transformational leadership fosters psychological safety climate leading to enhanced individual-level creative process engagement. Furthermore, psychological safety climate was hypothesized to strengthen the relationship between creative process engagement and employee creativity. The hypothesized model was tested with data obtained from a sample of 358 employees and their supervisors from two organizations in the People’s Republic of China. Results of hierarchical linear modeling analysis revealed that transformational leadership influenced creative process engagement via psychological safety climate. Furthermore, psychological safety climate moderated the creative process engagement–creativity relationship such that the relationship was stronger in groups with high rather than low psychological safety climate.     

Transformational leadership and customer service: A moderated mediation model of negative affectivity and emotion regulation

Integrating theories from leadership, emotion management, affectivity, and customer service, this study examines how transformational leadership leads to favourable customer intentions via the mediation of service employees' emotion regulation, job satisfaction, and their service performance and via the moderation of employee negative affectivity. Results obtained from data of 204 matched sets of managers, service employees, and customers show that the effect of transformational leadership on amplification of pleasant emotions was conditioned on service employees' negative affectivity. Employee service performance partially mediated the effect of job satisfaction on customer outcomes. Finally, overall results reveal that transformational leadership and amplification of pleasant emotions were more strongly related to the customer outcomes, as mediated through the intervening variables in the model, when negative affectivity was high than when negative affectivity was low. Results have implications for how service workers with negative affectivity can manage their emotions to achieve effective service outcomes through interactions with a leader, how the effect of transformational leadership can be bounded, and how transformational leadership and emotion regulation are relevant to customer service.     

Ambidextrous Leadership and Employees' Self‐Reported Innovative Performance: The Role of Exploration and Exploitation Behaviors

The ambidexterity theory of leadership for innovation proposes that leaders' opening and closing behaviors positively predict employees' exploration and exploitation behaviors, respectively. The interaction of exploration and exploitation behaviors, in turn, is assumed to influence employee innovative performance, such that innovative performance is highest when both exploration and exploitation behaviors are high. The goal of this study was to provide the first empirical test of these hypotheses at the individual employee level. Results based on self‐report data provided by 388 employees were consistent with ambidexterity theory, even after controlling for employee reports of their leaders' transformational and transactional leadership behaviors as well as employees' openness to experience, conscientiousness, and positive affect. The findings extend previous research on ambidexterity at the team and organizational levels and suggest a possible way for leaders to enhance employee self‐reported innovative performance.     

Moderators of the Relationship Between Leadership Style and Employee Creativity: The Role of Task Novelty and Personal Initiative

Transformational leadership is supposed to enhance employees' creativity. However, results of meta-analytic research on the relationships between transformational leadership and creativity fell short of expectations. In addition, the coefficients showed a huge variability. In this study, it was argued that relevant task and employee characteristics have been neglected in previous research. The benefit of transformational leadership may be limited in a context with routine tasks. Therefore, the moderating effects of task novelty and personal initiative on the relationship between transformational and transactional leadership and creativity were examined. In an experimental setting, 241 undergraduate students were instructed to act like a trainee of a management consulting company and to generate ideas. The results largely supported the hypotheses. Transformational leadership led to higher creativity than transactional leadership, and high task novelty produced higher creativity than low task novelty. As predicted, the effect of transformational leadership on creativity was stronger when task novelty was high than when task novelty was low. Moreover, the effect of transformational leadership was higher when persons were high in personal initiative than when they were low in personal initiative, indicating that the influence of transformational leadership depends on task and follower characteristics. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.     

Follower moral reasoning influences perceptions of transformational leadership behavior

Transformational leadership reflects charismatic, but ethical, influence on followers. However, leadership ultimately occurs through the perceptual and attribution processes within followers. Accordingly, the perception and evaluation of transformational leadership is likely to be influenced by followers' moral reasoning, which is the ability that allows individuals to identify and interpret ethically‐salient issues in social environments. As predicted by social‐cognitive principles of self‐schemas, observers' moral reasoning positively related to the perception and positive evaluation of transformational leadership behavior, but not to positive affective reactions towards that behavior. These same relationships did not occur for the perception and evaluation of transactional leadership behavior. Implications for whistle‐blowing behavior, organizational ethics, and the measurement of transformational leadership are discussed.     

Trust in Supervisors and Trust in Customers: Their Independent,Relative, and Joint Effects on Employee Performance and Creativity

We examined the relations for hairstylists between trust and routine and creative performance and the extent to which these service employees trust their supervisors and customers. We also investigated whether psychological safety mediated these trust–performance relations. Results suggested that trust in supervisors and trust in customers made significant, independent, and joint contributions to employees' creative performance; however, only trust in supervisors was related to routine performance. Moreover, psychological safety mediated the trust in supervisor–performance links, but did not mediate the trust in customer influence.     

The Mediation Effect of Ethical Leadership and Creative Performance: A Social Information Processing Perspective

Drawing upon social information processing theory, the study examined how ethical leadership shapes creative performance. Specifically, we tested a theoretical model integrating the sequential roles of psychological safety and creative self‐efficacy. A two‐waved sample of 512 supervisor‐subordinate dyads from frontline employees of three service industries located in Ghana was administered. The results of the hierarchical linear modeling analysis revealed that there is a positive relationship between ethical leadership and creative performance and that psychological safety positively and significantly mediates the relationship between ethical leadership and creative performance. Similarly, creative self‐efficacy significantly and positively mediates the relationship between ethical leadership and creative performance. Moreover, both psychological safety and creative self‐efficacy sequentially mediate the relationship between ethical leadership and creative performance. We discuss the implications of these results for research and practice.     

Understanding transformational leadership–employee performance links: The role of relational identification and self‐efficacy

We examined how employee perceptions of relational identification with the supervisor and self‐efficacy mediate the relationship between transformational leadership and supervisor‐rated performance. Performance is used here to refer to the individual's ability to be creative, innovative, inspiring, and take on challenging tasks to achieve organizational goals for the greater good. Using a sample of 426 employees and their 75 immediate supervisors from a large automobile dealership, hierarchical linear modelling results revealed that relational identification with the supervisor mediated the relationship between transformational leadership and self‐efficacy, which was then positively related to employee performance. Implications for future research, theory, and practice are discussed.     

Innovation in top management teams: Minority dissent,transformational leadership,and radical innovations

Research among lower level teams suggests that minority dissent stimulates team innovation. We consider the role of CEO transformational leadership in the dissent–innovation relation and study this in Top Management Teams (TMTs). We propose that transformational leaders create a psychologically safe team climate, in which dissenting opinions are used effectively to create radical innovations. Members of 36 TMTs (N = 196) completed a questionnaire to assess minority dissent, transformational leadership, and participative safety. CEOs provided data about the innovations implemented by the team. Results showed that minority dissent was positively related to the number of innovations implemented by TMTs. However, only under high levels of transformational leadership were these innovations radical. It was further found that transformational leadership had this effect because it was positively associated with participative safety. These results indicate that minorities stimulate innovativeness and that through transformational leadership CEOs can create a climate in which minority input is transformed into radical innovations. Implications for TMT performance and team innovation are discussed.     

Creative Self‐Efficacy and Innovative Behavior in a Service Setting: Optimism as a Moderator

Creativity research on the personality approach has focused on the relationship between individual attributes and innovative behavior. However, few studies have empirically examined the effects of positive psychological traits on innovative behavior in an organizational setting. This study examines the relationships among creative self‐efficacy, optimism, and innovative behavior as well as the moderating effect of optimism. Longitudinal data across two periods were collected from 120 spa employees of a diet and beauty salon company in Taiwan. After controlling for the effects of job tenure and the Big Five personality traits, this study found that employees with a high level of creative self‐efficacy demonstrate a high level of innovative behavior at work, and optimism does not have a direct effect on employees' innovative behavior, but it does play a moderating role. When employees' creative self‐efficacy is high, those with greater optimism exhibit greater innovative behavior at work. Toward the end, this paper offers suggestions for future research and discusses the practical implications of this study.     

Motivated or Demotivated to Be Creative: The Role of Self‐Regulatory Focus in Transformational and Transactional Leadership Processes

Numerous studies have recognised the importance of transformational leadership style for encouraging employees’ creativity. Self‐regulation studies have highlighted the influence of a promotion focus on employees’ creative behaviours. Yet both leadership and self‐regulation theories have paid less attention to the role transactional leadership style and situational prevention regulatory focus may play in affecting employees’ creativity. In this article we present a theoretical model which examines transformational and transactional leadership styles and both promotion and prevention situational self‐regulatory focus (SRF). The model suggests that while transformational leadership promotes creativity, at least partially by enhancing follower's situational promotion SRF, transactional leadership style (transactional active) is aligned with followers’ prevention situational SRF, which is associated with leaders’ hindering of followers’ creativity. Findings from two studies, an experimental study (N = 189) and a field study (N = 343 employees and 75 managers), support this model, showing that the relationship between different types of leadership and creativity are more complex than previously regarded. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Leadership predictors of innovation and task performance: Subordinates' self‐esteem and self‐presentation as moderators

This study examined self‐related subordinate variables as moderators of relationships between supervisors' leadership behaviours (transformational as well as active‐corrective transactional leadership) and subordinates' innovative behaviour and task performance. Based on behavioural plasticity and self‐monitoring theory, we hypothesized that these associations would be moderated by subordinates' organization‐based self‐esteem and by their propensity to modify self‐presentation, a major facet of the self‐monitoring construct. Field survey data (N=161) collected in research and development, marketing and human resources departments of several German companies revealed that transformational leadership positively predicted both criteria, whereas active‐corrective transactional leadership negatively predicted innovation. As hypothesized, transformational leadership related more strongly and positively to innovation for subordinates low in organization‐based self‐esteem. When subordinates were low in self‐presentation propensity, active‐corrective transactional leadership was negatively, and transformational leadership was positively associated with task performance.     

Transformational and transactional leaderships,empowerment climate,and innovation performance: A multilevel analysis in the Chinese context

Innovation through creativity is an important factor in the success and competitive advantage of organizations. Theory and research suggest that both leadership and organizational climate have important consequences for individual creativity. However, researchers have rarely considered the interactive effects of leadership and organizational climate. This study taking a “Substitute for Leadership” perspective, develops and tests the idea that empowerment climate affect the relationship between leadership and followers' creative performance. Data were collected from 93 teams, including 465 team members and 93 team supervisors, in a large multinational company based in China. Hierarchical linear modelling was used to examine the hypothesized cross-level model. As expected, transformational leadership and team empowerment climate were positively related to subordinates' creative performance and transactional leadership was negatively related to subordinates' creative performance. In addition, the relationship between leadership and subordinates' creative performance was moderated by team empowerment climate. The study resulted in the implication of several major variables for explaining individual creativity in the Chinese context.     

Promoting Creativity at Work: The Role of Problem‐Solving Demand

We propose that problem‐solving demand (PSD) is an important job attribute for employees' creative performance. Applying job design theory, we examined the relationship between PSD and employee creativity. The theorised model was tested with data obtained from a sample of 270 employees and their supervisors from three Chinese organisations. Regression results revealed that PSD was positively related to creativity, and this relationship was mediated by creative self‐efficacy. Additionally, intrinsic motivation moderated the relationship between PSD and creative self‐efficacy such that the relationship was stronger for individuals with high rather than low intrinsic motivation. We discuss our findings, implications for practice, and future research.     

Positive Psychological States and Employee Creativity: The role of Ethical Leadership

This study explores a new theoretical model of employee creativity by investigating the impact of ethical leadership on creativity mediated by creative self-efficacy and psychological safety. Data collected from 200 supervisor–subordinate dyads in Pakistan reveal that ethical leadership is positively related to creativity. Further, psychological safety partially mediates the relationship between ethical leadership and creativity. However, creative self-efficacy is found insignificant in the relationship between ethical leadership and creativity. The study discusses research and practical implications of the proposed new theoretical framework with regard to employee creativity.     

Team Proactivity as a Linking Mechanism between Team Creative Efficacy,Transformational Leadership,and Risk‐Taking Norms and Team Creative Performance

Despite the growing body of research on creativity in team contexts, very few attempts have been made to explore the team‐level antecedents and the mediating processes of team creative performance on the basis of a theoretical framework. To address this gap, drawing on Paulus and Dzindolet's (2008) group creativity model, this study proposed team creative efficacy, transformational leadership, and risk‐taking norms as antecedents of team creative performance and team proactivity as an intervening mechanism between these relationships. The results of team‐level regression analyses conducted on the leaders and members of 103 Korean work teams showed that team creative efficacy and risk‐taking norms were positively associated with team creative performance. Furthermore, the relationships between team creative efficacy and team creative performance and between risk‐taking norms and team creative performance were mediated by team proactivity. These findings offer new insights regarding the antecedents and the mediator of creative performance in team contexts and important implications for theory and practice.     

Personality and the Perception of Transformational Leadership: The Impact of Extraversion,Neuroticism, Personal Need for Structure,and Occupational Self‐Efficacy1

This experimental study examined the influence of followers' personal characteristics on their perception of leadership. Participants were 175 students who self‐rated several personality scales (extraversion, neuroticism, personal need for structure, and occupational self‐efficacy) at Time 1. Two weeks later, participants were divided into two groups and were presented a vignette about a transformational or a nontransformational leader. Subsequently, respondents were asked to rate the described leader's behavior on the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire. Results revealed that followers high in extraversion tended to perceive more transformational leadership, and showed a more positive evaluation of transformational leadership than did followers with low extraversion. Moreover, perceived transformational leadership predicted the acceptance of a leader, but followers' personality traits did not moderate the relationship between perceived transformational leadership and acceptance.     

Every light has its shadow: a longitudinal study of transformational leadership and leaders’ emotional exhaustion

This study investigated the effects of transformational and laissez‐faire leadership on leaders’ own emotional exhaustion over time. Participants were 2,324 subordinates and 76 supervisors of a services company in Germany. Regression analysis revealed direct longitudinal health‐hampering effects of transformational and laissez‐faire leadership on leaders’ emotional exhaustion. Building on Hobfoll's Conservation of Resources theory (1989), our results showed that the longitudinal health‐hampering effects of transformational leadership would be particularly pronounced for leaders with high levels of organization‐based self‐esteem. Our findings extend the research on potential dark sides of transformational and laissez‐faire leadership as well as organization‐based self‐esteem by focusing on leader‐centered outcomes.     

Bullying in work groups: The impact of leadership

The aim of this study is to examine whether and how laissez‐faire, transformational, and authentic leadership styles are related to the occurrence of bullying in work groups. It is hypothesized that the investigated leadership styles have direct associations, as well as indirect associations through group cohesion and safety perceptions, with indicators of bullying among subordinates. Using a cross‐sectional survey design, the variables were assessed in a randomly selected sample comprising 594 seafarers from two Norwegian shipping companies. Laissez‐faire leadership was associated with an increased risk of exposure to bullying behavior, self‐labeled victimization from bullying, and perpetrated bullying. Transformational leadership and authentic leadership were related to decreased risk of exposure to bullying behavior. Authentic leadership contributed to the variance in bullying beyond laissez‐faire and transformational leadership. Analyses of indirect effects showed that the association between transformational leadership and bullying was fully mediated through safety perceptions, whereas a partial indirect association through safety perceptions was found for authentic leadership. This study makes a significant contribution to the literature by providing evidence for how leadership styles predict workplace bullying. The findings highlight the importance of recruiting, developing, and training leaders who promote both positive psychological capacities and positive perceptions among their subordinates.