| This investigation explored the role of creativity, broadly conceptualized as a confluence of personal characteristics (Sternberg & Lubart, 1995), in leading organizational change. Implementing change has become a vital requirement in modern organizations; however, change efforts frequently fail (Burke, 2002). Little is known about the characteristics associated with effective change leadership (Bass, Avolio & Atwater, 1996). Existing theoretical and empirical studies suggest the link between creativity and leadership merits further investigation (Bass, 1990; Zaccaro, Kemp, & Bader, 2004). Because leadership is by nature a social phenomenon and organizational change occurs primarily through the social system in support of the technical system, the role of social - emotional competency as it relates to creativity was also examined.; This investigation drew from the theoretical distinction advanced in the leadership literature between the function of leading change and managing complexity, and the implication that different traits may be associated with success in leading change compared with success in managing people (Bennis & Nanus, 1985; Katz & Kahn, 1978; Kotter, 1990; Zaleznik, 1977). It was proposed that effective change leaders are, fundamentally, creative interveners in the domain of organizational behavior that can be distinguished from managers in this capacity. Two correlational studies were conducted in samples of early and mid-career officers in the U.S. Army utilizing multi-rater leadership performance and other survey measures. These studies demonstrated that creativity is an important predictor of leading change. In the first study creativity measures (ability, personality, and performance) taken together explained 42% of the variance in a leading change performance measure, above and beyond cognitive ability. In the second study 71% of the variance in leading change performance ratings was explained by creativity ratings in multi-rater performance data. In both studies creativity explained 4--7% more variance in leading change than in managing. Findings also showed that social - emotional competency was a significant predictor of leading change but to a lesser extent than creativity. Results were mixed in tests that explored social - emotional competency as a moderator of creativity in predicting leading change, suggesting that an interaction effect may depend on factors associated with level of leadership. |
