Focusing on China’s steel industry, the effect of green transformational leadership on employee green creativity, its underlying mechanisms, and the conditions that govern the situation are examined. The sample analysis of 298 employees working with 46 supervisors from 23 companies indicates that green transformational leadership positively affects employee green creativity, and creative process engagement plays a mediating role in the relationship of green transformational leadership to employee green creativity. Moreover, the mediated role is moderated by green innovation strategy, which is used as a boundary spanner to affect the whole path linked by creative process engagement, so that this effect is strengthened when the level of green innovation strategy is high, rather than low. The results verify the hierarchical linear hypothesized model, which is helpful to sketch a more complete view of the relationship between green transformational leadership, creative process engagement, green innovation strategy, and green creativity, and to provide beneficial insights for innovative practice and the green management of steel enterprises.
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to research the effect of leader creativity expectations on follower radical creativity. Highlighting the implications of leader creativity expectations, the authors examined employee creative process engagement as a mediator and follower perceived procedural justice as a moderator in the relationship between leader creativity expectations and employee radical creativity.
Design/methodology/approach
A sample of 256 dyads comprising full-time employees and their immediate supervisors were collected from the innovation teams of industry-university alliances through questionnaire in China, the authors hypothesized and found support for a moderated mediation model.
Findings
The findings show that leader creativity expectations are significantly and positively related to employee radical creativity; creative process engagement plays a fully mediating role between leader creativity expectations and employee radical creativity; procedural justice moderates the positive relationship between leader creativity expectations and creative process engagement and enhances the positive indirect effect of leader creativity expectations on follower radical creativity.
Practical implications
The creativity expectations of leaders are prerequisite for leadership to drive followers to be creative, which can pose great effect on extra-role behavior of followers such as radical creativity. Leaders can deliberately set role expectations for subordinates to achieve creative goals. Compared with the traditional management practices emphasizing planning, leaders encourage trial practice, provide enough time to ensure employees fully identify problems and provide resources to facilitate information search and coding, may achieve better results. Organizations should also place greater emphasis on the procedural justice, thereby enhancing the positive impact of other factors on employee radical creativity.
Originality/value
This study examined the relationship between leader creativity expectations and follower radical creativity based on the perspective of creative process engagement. The conclusion expanded the evidence of the impact of leader expectations besides this study strongly demonstrate that procedural justice will affect employees creative process engagement which enriches the literature on radical creativity strategic leadership and work engagement.
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