How do leadership styles influence the creativity of employees?

Abstract

The objective of organizational creativity is to identify those factors that could affect creativity. One of the most influential factors is the leadership style. Following the review of literatures, we investigated this phenomenon in the Hungarian labor market. We analyzed the answers of more than 600 Hungarian employees. We asked them to categorize their leader on the basis of which classic Lewin leadership style is most characteristic of him or her. After this, they needed to judge how the perceived leadership style would affect the two phases of their workplace creativity. Similarly to international results, democratic leadership style proved to be stimulating, while the authoritarian leadership style was inhibitory. It has also been proved that not only leadership style influences creativity, as the model of successful creative organization cannot be described with the behavior of the leader(s) only.

Leadership styles and organisational innovation in Vietnam: does employee creativity matter?

“…Therefore, Makri and Scandura (2010) argued that processes that play the role of mediator should be investigated in order to identify the direct and indirect effect of leadership styles on organisational innovation. Specifically, empirical relationships existed between leadership styles and organisational innovation (İşcan et al , 2014; Ebrahimi et al , 2016), leadership styles and employee creativity (Herrmann and Felfe, 2013; Derecskei, 2016), employee creativity and organisational innovation (Chen et al , 2010; Anderson et al , 2014). Thus, leadership styles are supposed to have conducive effects on employee creativity that subsequently influences organisational innovation.…”

The dark side of leadership: A systematic review of creativity and innovation

“…In contrast to the frequent negative effects of some active forms of 'dark leadership', passive leader behaviours (i.e., laissez-faire leadership and passive management by exception) do not appear to have significant effects on creativity or innovation (Derecskei, 2016 The column 'Average' indicates the magnitude of the average correlation based on Cohen's (1992) rule of thumb; ∼ corresponds to an average correlation ≤0.10; + (small) average r is between 0.10 and 0.30; ++ (medium) average r is between 0.30 and 0.50. For the studies used to calculate the range and average effect sizes, please check the online Supporting information, Appendix S1.…”

“…In contrast to the frequent negative effects of some active forms of ‘dark leadership’, passive leader behaviours (i.e., laissez‐faire leadership and passive management by exception) do not appear to have significant effects on creativity or innovation (Derecskei, 2016; Elenkov & Manev, 2005; Moss & Ritossa, 2007; Sethibe & Steyn, 2017; Zacher & Johnson, 2015). This could be due to low leader–member interaction and interdependence, or the fact that passive leadership behaviours are an attempt to promote employee empowerment (Wong & Giessner, 2018).…”

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“…Idea generation involves systematically searching for new approaches to solving problems and bringing into existence something new that might consist of a process, product, technology or service. That is why "in today's innovation-driven economy, understanding how to generate great ideas is one of the most important managerial priorities" [3]. A critical examination of ideas is, therefore, central to effective innovation [4].…”