Science Research Management ›› 2020, Vol. 41 ›› Issue (10): 72-80.

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A research on the impact of transformational leadership on employee creativity from the failure perspective

 Lu Yanqiu, Pang Lijun, Wang Xiangyang   

  1.  Management School, Jilin University, Changchun 130022, Jilin, China
  • Received:2017-10-23 Revised:2018-06-30 Online:2020-10-20 Published:2020-10-19
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Abstract:

Employees consist of the basic component unit of the enterprise,whose creativity is the power source of the enterprise′s continuous innovation. And teams have been widely adopted by enterprises as an effective way to give full play to employee creativity. The risk of innovation makes the tempering of employee creativity in the team often coexist with failure. As an effective way of leadership,transformational leadership influences the formation mechanism of employee creativity through group factors,which has become the focus of the theoretical realm. Social information processing theory believes that the behavioral clues of important others in the environment will firstly affect the formation of shared norms,ideas and values of group members,and then individual attitudes and behaviors will be affected as well. Transformational leaders in the team always have a strong personality charm,whose words and deeds often offer important external clues for team members to form shared perceptions,in other words,shared belief about failure. And such kind of belief could guide the team members confront failures from positively view,then learn from the failures,thus to enhance creativity.
On the basis of failure perspective,social information processing theory is applied to explore the cross-level influence of transformational leadership on the employee creativity,as well as the mediating effect of shared belief about failure and the moderating effect of employee′s sense of belonging.Data of 302 leader-employee groups in 60 teams have been obtained to make analysis and the results show that (1) There is a significant positive cross-level influence of transformational leadership on the employee creativity,also the same on shared belief about failure;(2) Shared belief about failure has a cross-level mediating effect on the relations of transformational leadership and the employee creativity;and (3) Employee′s sense of belonging has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between shared belief about failure and employee creativity.
With incorporating transformational leadership, shared beliefs about failure, and employee creativity into one analysis framework, this paper establishes connections among leadership theory, failure learning theory as well as creativity theory, expanding the existing research on the influence mechanism and multi-contextualization of transformational leadership on employee creativity, deepening the insight into the boundary conditions of transformational leadership′s influence on employee creativity in the meanwhile. The practical implications of this paper are as follows: firstly, enterprises should focus on cultivating team leaders with a spirit of change,and improve managers′ business capabilities,vision building capabilities,as well as innovation awareness by means of comprehensive and systematic training. In addition,particular attention should be paid to whether the candidate has the above-mentioned abilities and characteristics in the leadership selection process. Secondly,in the process of enhancing the creativity of employees,leaders should pay enough attention to the shared belief about failure by instilling "positive energy" such as exploitation and innovation,being fearless when encountering with difficulty,etc. into the team,establishing a correct concept of failure to improve employee creativity through continuous learning. Thirdly, leaders should always pay attention to employees′ understanding and participation in team activities,and enhance employees′ sense of belonging by creating a "team-like home" atmosphere as well as constructing mechanisms of team interaction and mutual respect,thus to enhance employee creativity.

 

Key words: transformational leadership;shared beliefs about failure;employee&prime, s sense of belonging;employee creativity;failure context

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