The Effects Of Leader Creativity Expectation And Its Social Comparison On Employee Creativity

With the coming of the digital era and the impact of COVID-19,the business environment becomes increasingly complicated,dynamic,unpredictable,and blurry,thus innovation has become the key for organizations to deal with such challenges.As creativity from employees is a vital source for organization innovation,it is essential for leaders to convey their appreciation and expectation for employees’ creative activities.Leader creativity expectation,as a crucial means to influence employees’ creativity,has attracted much attention from scholars.However,the extant empirical literature on leader creativity expectation has four main limits: first,although prior research has suggested that the team leader form differentiated creativity expectation for different team member,the empirical literature has ignored the important team situation of leader creativity expectation.Second,despite creativity can be divided into incremental and radical creativity,researchers have not yet explored the different impacts of leader creativity expectation on different types of creativity simultaneously.Third,most research has examined the positive effect of leader creativity expectation on employee creativity from the perspective of intrapersonal self-concept,research on understanding the effectiveness of leader creativity expectation from the perspective of interpersonal interaction is deficient.Finally,previous studies have not fully explored the boundary conditions about the effectiveness of leader creativity expectation.Scholars have only examined some individual factors and task-related situation factors,but the potential moderating effects of leader-related factors are rarely explored.Based on the above limits,the current research proposes the concept of leader creativity expectation social comparison by applying social comparison theory,and constructs and tests the internal mechanisms and boundary conditions through which leader creativity expectation and its social comparison impact employees’ different types of creativity.This not only makes up for the limits of existing literature on leader creativity expectation,but also provides important practical insights for organizations to effectively utilize leader creativity expectation to drive employee creativity.This study conducted three empirical studies by using the multisource and time-lagged survey method.Study 1 applies social cognitive theory and explores the different effects of leader creativity expectation and its social comparison on employees’ different types creativity through creative self-efficacy.Study 2 utilizes social exchange theory and explores the different effects of leader creativity expectation and its social comparison on employees’ different types creativity through felt obligation to be creative.Study 3combines the above two theories and examines leader-related situation factors that intervene the influence of leader creativity expectation social comparison on employees’ different types of creativity.To be specific,based on the data analyses from 289leader-member paired data,Study 1 found that compared with leader creativity expectation,its social comparison had a stronger impact on employees’ creative self-efficacy,and such creative self-efficacy exerted a greater impact on radical creativity than incremental creativity.Meanwhile,leader creativity expectation and its social comparison had an indirect effect on the two types of creativity through creative self-efficacy.Based on the data analyses from 328 leader-member paired data,Study 2 suggested that leader creativity expectation social comparison rather than leader creativity expectation enhanced employees’ felt obligation to be creative,and further increased their incremental and radical creativity.Meanwhile,the felt obligation to be creative exerted a greater impact on radical creativity than incremental creativity.Based on the data analyses from 82 teams and 422 team members,Study 3 suggested that leader reputation as innovative strengthened the positive effect of leader creativity expectation social comparison on employees’ creative self-efficacy and felt obligation to be creative.Moreover,transformational leadership and employees’ felt obligation to be creative strengthened the positive effect of employees’ creative self-efficacy and their radical creativity.When both transformational leadership and obligation to be creative were high,employees with high creative self-efficacy produced most radical creativity.Through exploring the internal mechanisms and boundary conditions of how leader creativity expectation and its social comparison influence employees’ different types of creativity,this research extends the theoretical concept of leader creativity expectation and its creative outcomes,reveals the mechanism of interpersonal interaction between leader creativity expectation and employee creativity,and enriches the boundary situations of the effectiveness of leader creativity expectation from the leader perspective.Meanwhile,this research also expands the antecedents of different types of creativity and identifies the vital situation where radical creativity is fostered.Furthermore,this study provides valuable practical insights about how to enhance the effectiveness of leader creativity expectation and employees’ radical creativity.Finally,this study summarizes the research shortcomings and provides potential future research.