The purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding of how entrepreneurial leadership relates to workplace creativity in organizations from the compatibility perspective. Drawing on social cognitive theory, we propose that individual creative selfefficacy and team creative efficacy beliefs mediate the relationships between entrepreneurial leadership and individual and team creativity. This study examines the relationship between entrepreneurial leadership and creativity through creative efficacy. Survey data were collected from multiple sources, including 43 leaders and 237 employees in eight Chinese companies. Cross-level relationships are tested by means of a hierarchical linear modeling analysis (HLM). The results reveal that entrepreneurial leadership is positively related to employee and team creativity, and these relationships are found to be mediated by both employee creative self-efficacy and team creative efficacy. Furthermore, team creative efficacy is found to exert a cross-level mediating influence on the entrepreneurial leadership-employee creativity relationship. This study suggests that employees and teams led by entrepreneurial leaders are likely to produce creative outcomes. The findings further confirm the important role of creative efficacy beliefs in explaining how entrepreneurial leadership relates to employee and team creativity, as such beliefs serve as a within-level and cross-level mediating mechanism in these relationships. Our study is among the first to empirically investigate the concept of entrepreneurial leadership in a broader organizational context. We examine how entrepreneurial leadership contributes to workplace creativity. Our study shows that creative efficacy beliefs exert both within-level and crosslevel mediating influences in the entrepreneurial leadership-creativity relation.
Scholars acknowledge the critical role of employee innovative work behavior (IWB) in facilitating organizational innovation in high-tech industries. However, the current knowledge is far from complete to paint a clear picture of how to evoke employee IWB in the Chinese high-tech industry. Many Chinese high-tech firms face a challenge moving from hierarchy-based leadership toward more employee-centered leadership styles, as the styles have different effects on employees’ IWB. This perspective may complement and sharpen the incomplete picture. Drawing on a dynamic componential model of creativity and innovation, this study proposes and tests a moderated mediation model that examines the hypothesized positive influence of servant leadership on employee IWB via meaningful work as well as the moderating role of job autonomy in this process. We collected data (N = 288) from three Chinese high-tech firms and found that employees’ perceptions of meaningful work mediate the relationship between servant leaders and IWB. We also found that this mediating relationship is conditional on the moderating role of job autonomy in the path from servant leadership to meaningful work. The results further show that the indirect effect of servant leadership on employee IWB via meaningful work exists only when job autonomy is high.
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