AN EXAMINATION OF LEADERSHIP AND EMPLOYEE CREATIVITY: THE RELEVANCE OF TRAITS AND RELATIONSHIPS

TLDR

Creativity is increasingly important to managers, yet the dynamics between personal and contextual factors driving creative performance remain poorly understood, especially since prior studies have examined leadership and employee traits in isolation. The study aims to identify how leadership influences employee creativity. The authors tested a multidomain interactionist model linking employee traits, leader traits, and LMX using data from 191 R&D employees at a large chemical firm. Results show that employee intrinsic motivation, cognitive style, LMX, and their interactions with leader intrinsic motivation and LMX predict creative performance, as assessed by supervisor ratings, invention disclosures, and research reports.

Abstract

Creativity is becoming a topic of ever‐increasing interest to organizational managers. Thus, there is a need for a greater understanding of the dynamics between the personal and contextual factors responsible for creative performance in work settings. In particular, there is a need to identify the role of leadership for creativity. Until now, creativity studies have examined leadership and employee characteristics from a single‐domain perspective. Data from 191 R&D employees of a large chemical company were used to test a multidomain, interactionist creativity model of employee characteristics, leader characteristics, and Leader‐Member Exchange (LMX). Results suggest that employee intrinsic motivation and cognitive style, LMX, the interactions between employee intrinsic motivation and leader intrinsic motivation, and between LMX and employee cognitive style relate to employee creative performance as measured by supervisor ratings, invention disclosure forms, or research reports. Implications for practicing managers and research on leadership and creativity are discussed.