| At present,China is in the critical period of enterprise transformation and industrial structure optimization and upgrading.Enterprise innovation ability has replaced efficiency and other factors,and has become an important factor and key for enterprises to survive and develop,maintain and win competitive advantages.With the rapid development of mobile Internet technology,the rapid progress in science and technology and the further acceleration of economic globalization,the internal and external environments of enterprises have undergone drastic changes,and the market environment has shown dynamic,complex and competitive characteristics.Team work mode has been adopted by more and more enterprises because of its advantages of faster response speed,more diverse viewpoints,higher flexibility and so on.In this new era,in order to win competitive advantages in the increasingly fierce market competition,enterprises need to continuously invest resources in technological and management innovation,which cannot be separated from the innovative ideas and creativity of organization members.Creativity,as an important ability to generate novel and useful ideas,is a prelude to innovation and an important source of organizational innovation and competitive advantage.Team creativity is derived from individual creativity and plays a key role in the organization’s response to competition.More and more enterprises rely on the creativity of employees and teams to quickly respond to complex and changing market demands.However,the creative activities of employees and teams are not usually spontaneous.Therefore,how to stimulate the creativity of employees and teams is still an important problem to be solved in the current development process of enterprises.The relationship between leadership style and creativity has always been a hot topic in the field of organizational behavior.In the dynamic,complex and competitive market environment,the traditional pyramid organizational structure has been unable to adapt to the change of the environment,and gradually changed to a flat organizational structure,which will inevitably affect the change of leadership.As the "80","90" and even the "00" generation of employees gradually become the backbone of enterprise innovation,such employees pursue equality,not afraid of authority,low power distance,have more active thinking and strong creativity,so it is difficult for the traditional leadership to effectively restrain and manage them.As a new way of leadership,leadership empowerment has attracted more and more attention from academia and business circles.Although most academic circles and the industry believe that leadership empowerment is an effective measure to enhance creativity,in China’s high-power distance cultural background,Chinese companies generally work with limited authorization,and traditional management methods characterized by command and control are still under the prevailing situation,the influence mechanism of leadership empowerment on creativity needs to be further studied.This thesis takes R&D teams of science and technology enterprises as the research object,centering on the core issue of "multi-level impact mechanism of leader empowerment on creativity",and takes "I-P-O"(Input-Processing-Output)as the analysis paradigm.Based on self-determination theory,motivational information processing theory and goal-oriented theory,a multi-level theoretical framework model is constructed,which is carried out through three independent,interrelated and progressive research contents.The enterprise research is divided into two stages: In the first stage,from October 2019 to January 2020 before the COVID-19 outbreak,the author surveyed 15 technology enterprises in Wuhan,Xiangyang and Suizhou of Hubei Province,and collected valid matching questionnaires of58 R&D teams and 396 employees through thesis questionnaires.In the second stage,after the COVID-19 epidemic eased and the lockdown of Wuhan was lifted,the author investigated 20 technology enterprises in Hubei and Zhejiang provinces from June 2020 to October 2020,and collected valid matching questionnaires of 85 R&D teams and 641 employees on site through thesis questionnaires.The main research contents and conclusions of this thesis are as follows:Firstly,we explore the mediating mechanism and boundary conditions between perceived leadership empowerment and individual creativity at individual level.The results show that:(1)creative process engagement mediates the relationship between perceived leadership empowerment and individual creativity;(2)the creativity-oriented external reward moderates the relationship between creative process engagement and individual creativity.The higher the level of creativity-oriented external reward is,the stronger the relationship between creative process engagement and individual creativity is,and vice versa.(3)the creativity-oriented external reward positively moderated the mediating effect of creative process engagement on the relationship between perceived leadership empowerment and individual creativity,namely,the higher the level of creativity-oriented external reward,the stronger the mediating effect of creative process engagement on the relationship between perceived leadership empowerment and individual creativity,and the weaker the mediating effect of creative process engagement on the relationship between perceived leadership empowerment and individual creativity.Secondly,we explore the cross-level mediating mechanism and boundary conditions between leadership empowering behaviors and individual creativity at team level.The results show that:(1)team interaction process has a cross-level mediating effect between leadership empowering behaviors and individual creativity;(2)team type moderates the relationship between leadership empowering behaviors and team interaction process,that is,compared with project team,when team type is department team,the relationship between leadership empowering behaviors and team interaction process is stronger,otherwise it is weaker;(3)team type moderates the mediating effect of team interaction process on the relationship between leadership empowering behaviors and individual creativity,that is,compared with project team,the mediating effect of team interaction process on the relationship between leadership empowering behaviors and individual creativity is stronger in departmental team,and weaker in vice versa.Thirdly,the mediating mechanism and boundary conditions between leadership empowering behaviors and team creativity at team level are discussed.The results show that:(1)team interaction process mediates the relationship between leadership empowering behavior and team creativity;(2)team type moderates the relationship between leadership empowering behaviors and team interaction process,that is,compared with project team,the relationship between leadership empowering behaviors and team interaction process is stronger when team type is department team,and weaker when team type is vice versa;(3)team type moderates the mediating effect of team interaction process on the relationship between leadership empowering behaviors and team creativity,that is,when team type is departmental team,team interaction process has a stronger mediating effect between leadership empowering behavior and team creativity than when team type is project team;The reverse is even weaker.Through literature review and empirical research,the innovation of this thesis is mainly reflected in:Firstly,the integration " leadership empowering behaviors " at team level and“perceived leadership empowerment” at individual level from a comprehensive perspective,and combined with multi-level creativity theory,and build a multi-level theoretical model of the relationship between leadership empowerment and creativity,which not only to make up for the shortcomings of research from a single level,but also to enrich and deepen the research on the mediating mechanism of leadership empowerment to creativity.Previous studies mostly consider the impact on creativity from the single level of leadership empowering behaviors or employee psychological empowerment,while empowerment is essentially a cross-level isomorphic construct,including " leadership empowering behaviors" at the leader level and " perceived leadership empowerment " at the employee level.Existing studies have found that leadership empowerment positively affects individual creativity by enhancing their perception of autonomy.Conversely,it is also argued that leadership empowerment hinders individual creativity by reducing internal friction,negatively affecting the exchange of new and useful ideas.It is a paradox that leadership empowerment promotes creativity by giving employees autonomy,but impedes the exchange of creative ideas.In the multi-level theoretical model constructed in this thesis,it is found that whether in the transmission path of cross-level " leadership empowering behavior--team interaction process--individual creativity" or in the transmission path of team level " leadership empowering behavior--team interaction process--team creativity",the mediating effect of team interaction process on the relationship between leadership empowering behavior and individual creativity or team creativity was established.The mediating effect of creative process engagement on the relationship between perceived leadership empowerment and individual creativity is also found.To sum up,this thesis enriches the research on the multilevel mediating mechanism of leadership empowerment on creativity in Chinese context.Secondly,team type is used as a moderating variable to expand the research on boundary conditions of the relationship between leadership empowerment and individual creativity and team creativity.Team is the basic component unit commonly adopted by enterprises,among which department team and project team are the most common.Some people think that project team is mainly short-term task type or project-type multi-functional team.Team members come from different departments and professional fields,which can stimulate creativity driven by common goals.There is also a point of view that the team organizational structure with high formalization level can provide necessary support for the implementation of leadership empowerment,so as to promote the innovative behavior of employees.Compared with the project team,the organizational structure of the department team is more formal.Therefore,the two views are at odds.Scholars mostly treat the team type as a control variable.This thesis treats the team type as a moderating variable,whether in the hierarchical conductive pathway of " leadership empowering behavior—team interaction process—individual creativity",or conductive pathway of " leadership empowering behavior—group interaction process—team creativity" of the team level,the conclusions all revealed that the departmental team is more conducive to the leadership empowering t behavior to have a positive effect on creativity.Further,the reason for these two divergent views may be that project team and department team have different applicable scenarios and conditions in influencing the relationship between leadership style and creativity,which explains the reasons for the two divergent views to a certain extent.Thirdly,this thesis takes creativity-oriented extrinsic rewards as a moderating variable,and expands the research of the boundary conditions of the relationship between leadership empowerment and individual creativity.The relationship between extrinsic rewards and individual creativity has always been a hot topic in academic research.The cognitive perspective holds that rewards weaken and destroy individual intrinsic motivation,thus hindering creativity.The behaviorist view holds that rewards can promote internal motivation of employees and thus enhance individual creativity.There are obvious differences in the above viewpoints,and the conclusions of empirical research are also inconsistent.In order to get rid of the stereotype that extrinsic rewards are used as the pre-dependent variable of individual creativity in previous studies,this thesis takes creativity-oriented extrinsic rewards as a moderating variable.In the conductive pathway of " perceived leadership empowerment—creative process engagement—individual creativity" at the individual level,the study revealed that higher creativity-oriented extrinsic rewards were beneficial to the positive impact of leadership empowerment on individual creativity. |
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