Motivated or Demotivated to Be Creative: The Role of Self‐Regulatory Focus in Transformational and Transactional Leadership Processes

Abstract

Numerous studies have recognised the importance of transformational leadership style for encouraging employees’ creativity. Self‐regulation studies have highlighted the influence of a promotion focus on employees’ creative behaviours. Yet both leadership and self‐regulation theories have paid less attention to the role transactional leadership style and situational prevention regulatory focus may play in affecting employees’ creativity. In this article we present a theoretical model which examines transformational and transactional leadership styles and both promotion and prevention situational self‐regulatory focus (SRF). The model suggests that while transformational leadership promotes creativity, at least partially by enhancing follower's situational promotion SRF, transactional leadership style (transactional active) is aligned with followers’ prevention situational SRF, which is associated with leaders’ hindering of followers’ creativity. Findings from two studies, an experimental study (N = 189) and a field study (N = 343 employees and 75 managers), support this model, showing that the relationship between different types of leadership and creativity are more complex than previously regarded. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Leadership Styles for Employee Empowerment: Malaysian Retail Industry

“…Thus, Hypothesis 1 is successfully supported according to the Rule of Thumb. This result is backed by the research carried out by Spreitzer, G. M. (1995); Petter et al, (2002); Kohli & Sharma (2017); Islam et al, (2018); and Kark et al, (2018) where they found that if employees are given certain responsibilities and the ability to work with managers or leaders, they feel empowered. On the other hand, this finding is also supported by, and is consistent with, the results from the research works of Yang & Ok Choi (2009);Daft (2014); Choi et al, (2016);and Boamah et al, (2018) where they also found the transformational leadership style very effective for employee empowerment.…”

“…In addition, the transactional leadership style in previous studies has been found to enhance job satisfaction compared with transformational leadership (Epitropaki & Martin, 2005;LePine, Zhang, Crawford, & Rich, 2015;Boamah, Laschinger, Wong, & Clarke, 2018). Transformational leaders help individuals adopt the organisational change in a competitive and challenging situation (Bommer, Rubin, & Baldwin, 2004;Vasilagos et al, 2017;Kark, et al, 2018). Hence, both transactional and transformational leadership styles have an impact on the employees and organisations, but in different ways.…”

“…Previous studies have established that the transformational leadership style has been effective for the employee performance, engagement, and retention within the companies, while the transactional leadership style has the negative influence on the employee and organizational long-term performance. The transformational leadership style has a positive impact on employee creativity, motivation, self-efficacy, and organisational performance (Gong, Huang, & Farh, 2009;Bronkhorst et al, 2015;Newland, Newton, Podlog, Legg, & Tanner, 2015;Bronkhorst, Steijn, & Vermeeren, 2015;Vasilagos, Polychroniou, & Maroudas, 2017;Kark, Van Dijk, & Vashdi, 2018).…”

Different Shades—Different Effects? Consequences of Different Types of Destructive Leadership

“…Since previous research suggests that it may be easier to discourage desired follower behaviors, such as creativity, than to encourage them (e.g., Kark et al, 2018), understanding how the destructive leadership dynamics unfold seems crucial for organizations. With this study, we contribute to the advancement of destructive leadership theory and methodology by providing empirical evidence that followers indeed have different reactions to different destructive leadership behaviors and that these reactions are able to provide unique information in terms of predicting followers' emotions and turnover intentions.…”

Is transformational leadership always good for employee task performance? Examining curvilinear and moderated relationships

“…Transformational leadership has been one of the most important researched topics of the past few decades since Burns (1978) introduced its concept (Ng 2017). Transformational leadership draws the attention of scholars because of its difference with traditional leadership styles such as directive or transactional leadership (Judge and Piccolo 2004;Kark et al 2018). Transformational leaders can become role models who are admired, respected and trusted, disburse attention to followers' self-development process, encourage innovation by questioning, refraining, and solving old problems through new methods, and inspire to transcend their personal interests for organizational interests (Avolio and Bass 2002;Bass 1990).…”