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Transformational Leadership and Employee Creativity: The Mediating Role of Promotion Focus and Creative Process Engagement

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Abstract

Purpose

The paper aims at investigating the processes underlying the relationship between transformational leadership and employee creativity. We hypothesized that promotion focus mediates the relationship between transformational leadership and employee creativity and that creative process engagement mediates the relationship between promotion focus and employee creativity.

Design/Methodology/Approach

We conducted a three-wave longitudinal study with 279 employees and used a path-modeling approach to test our hypotheses.

Findings

Our results provide support for a sequential mediation model. Promotion focus mediated the relationship between transformational leadership and employee creativity. Creative process engagement partially mediated the relationship between promotion focus and employee creativity.

Implications

Findings of this study help to understand how transformational leadership fosters creativity by highlighting the role of promotion focus and creative process engagement. Understanding the relationship between transformational leadership and creativity helps supervisors to create a work environment that fosters employee creativity.

Originality/Value

This study contributes to the literature by identifying the mediating mechanism for the relationship between transformational leadership and employee creativity and providing a comprehensive model that illustrates the importance of the different stages within the creative process as antecedents of employee creativity.

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Notes

  1. Confirmatory Factor Analyses conducted without job control demonstrated similar results and found distinct factors for transformational leadership and promotion focus Δχ 2(1; N = 279) = 270.25, p < .001.

  2. In addition, we computed the path model without job control as a control variable. The significance of all reported relationships did not alter whether we included job control or not.

  3. We thank the editor for this insightful idea.

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  1. Work and Organizational Psychology Group, University of Mannheim, Schloss EO236, 68131, Mannheim, Germany

    Nils Henker, Sabine Sonnentag & Dana Unger

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  1. Nils Henker
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  2. Sabine Sonnentag
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Henker, N., Sonnentag, S. & Unger, D. Transformational Leadership and Employee Creativity: The Mediating Role of Promotion Focus and Creative Process Engagement. J Bus Psychol 30, 235–247 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-014-9348-7

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