Research On The Influence Of Leader Empathy On Employees’ Creative Work Involvement In The Context Of Digital Transformation

The creative work involvement of employees is one of the core elements for companies to survive and thrive in the digital transformation.Digital transformation is a constantly changing and iterative process and companies need to continuously improve in order to maintain a competitive advantage.The creative work involvement of employees is an important way for companies to acquire new ideas and solutions,and it provides a constant impetus for innovation to drive the digital transformation process.It is therefore a central theme of this study to investigate the drivers and mechanisms of employee creative work involvement in the context of digital transformation.Through reviewing relevant literature,this study found that there is a close relationship between leader empathy and employees’ creative work involvement.Especially in the context of digital transformation,the replacement of digital technology,the change of work process and the overload of role obligations will potentially hinder employees from engaging in creative work.At this point,as a key link to resolve emotional conflicts,eliminate cognitive gaps and promote mutual coordination,leadership empathy is particularly important.Therefore,leader empathy is included in the model to explore the influence of leader empathy on employees’ creative work involvement in the context of digital transformation.Based on the mechanism of leader empathy,this paper integrated the cognitive-affective dual pathway of situational factors affecting behavior choice,and investigated the possible mediating effects of psychological availability and family-like employee-organization relationship on leader empathy and creative work involvement.In addition,considering that cultural values will affect the leadership process,power distance is introduced into the model to investigate its moderating effect on the relationship between leader empathy,employees’ psychological availability and family-like employee-organization relationship.In this study,on-the-job employees in digital transformation enterprises were selected as the research objects.Questionnaires were collected at two time points,and a total of 443 valid matching questionnaires were obtained.The data were processed using SPSS and AMOS software,and correlation and regression analyses were used to test the theoretical hypothesis that leader empathy affects employees’ creative work involvement.The results showed that:(1)leader empathy positively predicted employees’ creative work involvement;(2)psychological availability and family-like employee-organization relationship partially mediated the relationship between leader empathy and employees’ creative work involvement;(3)power distance positively moderated the positive relationship between leader empathy and employees’ psychological availability and family-like employee-organization relationship.Moreover,power distance positively moderates the mediating effect of psychological availability and family-like employee-organization relationship in the involvement of leader empathy with employees’ creative work.Finally,countermeasures to enhance employees’ creative work involvement are proposed from three aspects: attaching importance to the cultivation of leadership empathy,stimulating employees’ cognitive and emotional motivation,and adopting differentiated management,which have certain practical reference value.This study explores the impact of leader empathy on employees’ creative work engagement in the context of digital transformation,which helps to enrich and deepen the research related to leader empathy and expand the research on the antecedent variables of creative work involvement.In addition,this study will focus on the internal operating models of digitally transformed enterprises,which can provide informative suggestions and recommendations for the digital transformation of enterprises.