This paper aims to propose an employee idea journey that addresses the theoretical conceptual challenge between creative behaviour and innovative behaviour. An integrative literature review approach was adopted by examining past literature related to creative and innovative behaviour which revealed that the employee idea journey begins with idea exploration and idea generation to mark creative behaviour efforts. The process proceeds to idea championing and idea implementation to mark innovative behaviour efforts. The proposed idea journey model captures these components which enable leaders to correctly demarcate creative behaviours and innovative behaviours through a step-by-step approach. Future studies should observe more on the separation between creative and innovative behaviour concept and illustrate how the two are related and are impacted by leadership, individual and organisational factors.

Purpose: The aim of this explanatory study was to critically understand how ethical leadership impacts employee creative behaviour as well as the creative behaviour dimensions, in a South African transport and logistics State Owned Enterprise.   Theoretical framework: Leaders set the tone which has a major effect on the organizational climate and the organizational approach and the moral facet of leadership is significant because of the leader’s impact on employees and organizational conduct. Thus, this study is underpinned by the style of leadership which is ethical, since the autocratic style is often seen as lacking ethical conduct.   Method: The quantitative method was chosen since a deductive approach was needed to interpret the data. The target population comprised middle and executive managers representing the leaders and low-level managers representing followers and referred to as the employees. Although a sample of 348 employees (followers) was generated using the Raosoft (2004) sample size calculator. The data from 160 respondents comprising managers and employees was collected using predeveloped questionnaires. and analysed through structural equation modelling and multiple regression techniques conducted with the Smart PLS statistical software. The reliability of the research instrument was measured using Cronbach tests, and composite reliability.  Validity was also confirmed using lower-order and higher-order construct validity tests.   Results and conclusion: It was confirmed that ethical leadership has a significant positive influence on employee creative behaviour, as well as with each of the creative behaviour dimensions namely: idea exploration, idea generation, and idea championing.   Originality/value: The influence of ethical leadership on employee creative behaviour in South African SOEs is also not fully understood and large private corporates and government entities have been rocked by corporate governance scandals, resulting in the call for ethical leadership to save companies from collapse and astounding costs from a financial, social and human perspective. No research was conducted on the topic in South African state-owned enterprises and thus the new knowledge generated would contribute to improving leadership and making the enterprises more innovative and thus improve performance.

The study is aimed at investigating the curvilinear relationship between ethical leadership and employee creative and innovative behaviour in a South African State Owned Enterprise. The central argument of this paper is that ethical leadership can influence employee creative and innovative behaviour in the workplace. One hypothesis was posited and to empirically test the hypothesis, a sample data set of 160 was used. The data from 160 respondents comprising managers and employees was collected using predeveloped questionnaires and analysed through structural equation modelling and multiple regression techniques conducted with the Smart-PLS statistical software. The hypothesis was found to be significant and supported. Drawing from the study findings, managerial implications are discussed, and limitations and future research directions are suggested. Overall, this study provides tentative empirical support that employee creative and innovative behaviour can be influenced by ethical leadership in South Africa: a context that is often less researched.