Purpose This paper aims to investigate relationship conflicts and creative idea endorsement to develop the understanding of managerial reactions towards ideas of those who develop relationship conflicts with managers/supervisors at work. Taking a contingency perspective, the authors also investigated role subordinates’ political skills and implementation instrumentality play in determining supervisors’ endorsement of subordinates’ creative ideas. Design/methodology/approach The authors used two sources of data collected from 243 subordinates and their respective 41 supervisors of a multinational software company operating in an emerging economy (Pakistan) and analyzed the hypothesized model with Mplus using random coefficient modeling. Findings With this research, the authors contributed to management literature by investigating how the effects of relationship conflicts on creative idea endorsement depend on subordinates’ political skills and implementation instrumentality. They postulate a negative relationship between relationship conflict and creative ideas endorsement and predict that this negative relationship is augmented by subordinates’ implementation instrumentality but attenuated by subordinates’ political skills. They also give directions to decision makers in organizations that they must inform the managers/supervisors about negative effects of their relationship conflict with their subordinates and train supervisors and subordinates about reducing their relationship conflicts with each other for mutual benefits. Originality/value Organizations should take a relationship perspective when creating an environment for creativity: an environment based on mutual trust and respect so that exchange relationships can foster. With this research, the authors extended the list of potential detriment associated with relationship conflicts, that is the endorsement of creative ideas by supervisors. The authors also extended creativity literature by investigating social relationships for selection-focused creativity (idea endorsement) instead of variance-focused creativity (idea generation).

This study investigated the relationship between empowering leadership and team creativity by integrating the theory of group behavior with componential theory of creativity. For this study, data was collected from two sources (343 Subordinates, 67 Supervisors) by temporally dividing data collection process into two points in time for independent, dependent, and mediating variables from employees of a bank operating in Pakistan. Random coefficient analysis technique was used with Mplus 7.0 to analyze nested data for preliminary analysis and analysis of mediation and indirect effects. Mediation was analyzed using the indirect effect of random models and further confirmed the confidence using bootstrapping procedure. Through this study, the researchers tried to explore the inconsistent relationship between empowering leadership behavior and team creativity. It was found that empowering leadership behavior affects the team level creativity of employees directly and indirectly through the mediation of team learning behavior and team psychological empowerment as team process and team emergent states respectively. The results indicated that empowering leadership enhances the learning potential of teams and team empowerment perception which in turn enhances team level creativity. Further research findings, implications, and future research directions also discussed in this research.

Creativity is a psychological phenomenon mainly affected by the motivation of employees. Nonetheless conflicting results can befound in the literature for the link between intrinsic motivationcreativity relationship. The purpose of this research is to reinvestigatethis inconsistent relationship. We took a technological perspective to determine whether technology had an answer to this question. We conducted a laboratory experiment with 119 newly hired bankers of the same batch in four different training sessions to generatecreative ideas to solve business problems. Here, intrinsic motivation and digital-technology-use were both manipulated, independently. For field study, data was collected from 467 employees and their respective 41 supervisors working at a software house in Pakistan. Using lab and field data in two studies, we analysed data with Mplus for random coefficient models. We also performed a satorra-bentlerdifference test, using the log-likelihood method with scaling correction factor. Drawing on the motivation-opportunity-ability framework for intrinsic motivation-creativity relationship, we found that knowledge integration ability enhances the potential of employees to generate creative ideas. Based on a lab experiment and a field study, we found that creativity is contingent upon the technological opportunity provided to employees directly and indirectly by affecting their ability to integrate knowledge. Our research suggests that providing employees with relevant technological tools and ensuring utilisation of these technologies will fuel higher levels of employee creativity. Technological initiatives will help struggling economies to boost their creative potential. This research has made a significant contribution by bringing together creativity and digital technology literature.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of leader-member exchange (LMX) for selection-focused creativity. Thus, we seek to understand when subordinates develop high- quality relationships with their supervisors, do they also get their creative ideas validated by co-workers or not? The proposed model was tested using data obtained at two points in time from three data sources (co-workers, subordinates, and supervisors) working at a software solution provider operating in Pakistan. The obtained data were then analysed for random coefficient models with Mplus. It was found that having only quality LMX will not guarantee the validation of co-workers’ ideas. The focal employee needs to signal to others that they also care about their co-workers and have quality LMX. Subordinates who maintain quality relationships with their supervisors also need to consider what they signal to their co-workers by their behaviours and actions at work. Co-workers are more likely to provide support for creativity to those who are more supportive at work. We extend novel benefits associated with high-quality LMX, that is, the validation of co-workers’ ideas. Additionally, by focusing on social relationships for selection-focused creativity, we also extended creativity literature.

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