When and why does transformational leadership influence employee creativity? The roles of personal control and creative personality

• Author: Warren C. K. Chiu,Herman H. M. Tse,March L. To
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.21855
• Published date: 01 January 2018
• Date: 01 January 2018

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

When and why does transformational leadership influence

employee creativity? The roles of personal control

and creative personality

Herman H. M. Tse

1

| March L. To

2

| Warren C. K. Chiu

3

1

Monash Business School, Monash University,

Victoria, Australia

2

Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong

3

School of Professional Education and

Executive Development, The Hong Kong

Polytechnic University, Hong Kong

Correspondence:

Herman H. M Tse, Room 6.31, Level

6, Building N, 900 Dandenong Road, Caulfield

East, Victoria 3145, Australia.

Email: herman.tse@monash.edu

This study develops and tests a model of the underlying mechanisms linking transformational

leadership and employee creativity using a sample of 240 matched middle-level manager and

front-line supervisor dyads from a large foreign joint-venture company in China. We propose

that personal control and employee creative personality serve as a unique psychological mech-

anism and an important boundary condition to simultaneously influence the relationship

between transformational leadership and employee creativity. Results of moderated-mediation

analyses provided support for our conceptual model, showing that transformational leadership

was positively related to personal control, which also had a positive impact on employee crea-

tivity. Furthermore, creative personality was found to moderate the relationship between trans-

formational leadership and personal control, which in turn, mediated the joint effect on

employee creativity. Findings of this study provide insights into the research on leadership

development and work design in HRM, which can inform human resource managers to design

effective strategies and systems that can increase employees' creativity.

KEYWORDS

creative personality, employee creativity, personal control, transformational leadership

1|INTRODUCTION

Employee creativity has been recognized as a critical underpinning

for organizational growth and success (Zhou & Hoever, 2014; Zhou &

Shalley, 2011). Accumulating research evidence has demonstrated

that employee creativity has strong implications for many important

performance outcomes (Anderson, Poto

cnik, & Zhou, 2014; Liu, Jiang,

Shalley, Keem, & Zhou, in press). Research, therefore, has continued

to explore potential factors that can facilitate employee creativity in

the workplace (Anderson et al., 2014; Zhou & Hoever, 2014). In this

respect, HRM plays a vital role in developing human capital for

employee creativity through its major functions of training develop-

ment, work design, and strategic recruitment in organizations

(e.g., Binyamin & Carmeli, 2010; Dul, Ceylan, & Jaspers, 2011). Devel-

oping effective leadership such as transformational leadership has

been regarded as a useful way to motivate employees to generate

novel and useful ideas for services, practices, and procedures

(Henker, Sonnentag, & Unger, 2015; Shalley & Zhou, 2008; C. J.

Wang, Tsai, & Tsai, 2014; G. Wang, Oh, Courtright, & Colbert, 2011;

Zhou & Shalley, 2011). A number of studies have revealed that trans-

formational leadership has a positive impact on creative outcomes

(Gong, Huang, & Farh, 2009; Gumusluoglu & Ilsev, 2009; Henker

et al., 2015; Pieterse, Van Knippenberg, Schippers, & Stam, 2010;

Shih, Chiang, & Chen, 2012; Wang et al., 2014). Given the evidence

for its effectiveness, researchers have begun to investigate different

underlying mechanisms through which transformational leadership

influences employee creativity (e.g., Eisenbeis & Boerner, 2013; Gong

et al., 2009; Gumusluoglu & Ilsev, 2009). In doing so, past research

has focused on a few key mechanisms—intrinsic motivation, creative

process engagement, creative self-efficacy, and prosocial motivation

underpinned by componential theory of creativity, social cognitive

theory, and prosocial motivation theory (cf. Amabile, 1998; Chen,

Li, & Tang, 2009; Gong et al., 2009; Gumusluoglu & Ilsev, 2009; Hen-

ker et al., 2015; Shin & Zhou, 2003). The findings of these studies are

inspiring, but more research attention is needed to explore other job-

focused motivational mechanisms that are relevant to advance our

understanding of the transformational leadership–creativity relation-

ship within an individual's work role from the HRM perspective

DOI: 10.1002/hrm.21855

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