Participative leadership and employee creativity: a sequential mediation model of psychological safety and creative process engagement
Leadership & Organization Development Journal
ISSN: 0143-7739
Article publication date: 6 July 2020
Issue publication date: 18 July 2020
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to draw upon social information processing theory to examine the sequential mediating roles of psychological safety and creative process engagement between participative leadership on creativity.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a time-lagged sample of 526 supervisor–subordinate dyads from R&D teams of five enterprises located in the southwest part of China, we tested the theoretical model using structural equation modelling (SEM) as well as with the MPLUS 7.0 software.
Findings
Results indicated that participative leadership is positively related to creative process engagement; psychological safety significantly mediates the relationship between participative leadership and creative process engagement; creative process engagement significantly mediates the relationship between psychological safety and employee creativity; psychological safety and creative process engagement sequentially mediates the relationship between participative leadership and creativity.
Practical implications
The study findings imply that the participative leadership behaviors of managers or supervisor's nurtures employees psychological safety to take risk and promotes employee engagement in creativity relevant ventures leading to creativity.
Originality/value
The findings contribute new knowledge on the relationship between participative leadership and creativity by uncovering the causal chain of a cognitive mechanism (psychological safety) with a behavioral mechanism (creative process engagement).
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 71472024, No. 72072019, No. 71533002 & No. 71372160), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China (No. ZYGX2020FRJH012). We thank Li Huang for assistance in data collection, analyzes and theory development for earlier version of this manuscript. Correspondence regarding this article should be addressed to Lu Chen (chenlu@uestc.edu.cn).
Citation
Chen, L., Wadei, K.A., Bai, S. and Liu, J. (2020), "Participative leadership and employee creativity: a sequential mediation model of psychological safety and creative process engagement", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 41 No. 6, pp. 741-759. https://doi.org/10.1108/LODJ-07-2019-0319
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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