Chen Pengyu, Kee Daisy Mui Hung, Tao Xiangnan, Xiao Yingdan
School of Management, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, 11800, Malaysia.
School of Business, Macau University of Science and Technology, Macau, China.
BMC Psychol. 2025 Jul 9;13(1):757. doi: 10.1186/s40359-025-03110-3.
In today’s uncertain organizational environment, employee creativity has become the key driver of enterprise sustainability. Although previous studies have found the influence of responsible leadership on employee creativity, there remains a lack of study on how responsible leadership promotes employee creativity via intrinsic motivation mechanisms and what situational factors may moderate this process. This paper aims to construct a moderate-mediation model to examine the impact of responsible leadership and employee creativity through social cognitive theory and situational strength theory.
DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: The authors conducted a multi-source, time-lagged data collection between June and July 2023. At Time 1, subordinates assessed responsible leadership and psychological empowerment. At Time 2, conducted 4 weeks later, the same subordinates evaluated the leader’s encouragement of creativity and their employee creativity. In total, 1,126 participants completed both waves of data collection.
The results suggest that responsible leadership has a positive effect on both psychological empowerment and employee creativity. Moreover, psychological empowerment partially mediates the relationship between responsible leadership and employee creativity. The extent to which a leader promotes creativity can influence how responsible leadership and psychological empowerment contribute to employee creativity.
This study reveals the internal psychological mechanisms and situational boundaries through which responsible leadership influences employee creativity, thereby enriching the theoretical foundation of leadership and creativity research. The findings indicate that organizations should prioritize the development of responsible leadership, strengthening psychological empowerment mechanisms, and promoting a supportive, creative environment. This includes encouraging creativity, promoting fault-tolerant experimentation, and implementing recognition systems to fully unlock employees’ creative potential.
在当今充满不确定性的组织环境中，员工创造力已成为企业可持续发展的关键驱动力。尽管先前的研究已经发现了负责任领导对员工创造力的影响，但对于负责任领导如何通过内在动机机制促进员工创造力以及哪些情境因素可能调节这一过程，仍缺乏相关研究。本文旨在构建一个有调节的中介模型，通过社会认知理论和情境强度理论来检验负责任领导与员工创造力之间的影响关系。
设计/方法/途径：作者于2023年6月至7月进行了多源、时间滞后的数据收集。在时间1，下属对负责任领导和心理授权进行评估。在4周后的时间2，同样的下属对领导者对创造力的鼓励以及他们自身的员工创造力进行评价。共有1126名参与者完成了这两波数据收集。
结果表明，负责任领导对心理授权和员工创造力均有积极影响。此外，心理授权在负责任领导与员工创造力之间起部分中介作用。领导者促进创造力的程度会影响负责任领导和心理授权对员工创造力的贡献方式。
本研究揭示了负责任领导影响员工创造力的内部心理机制和情境边界，从而丰富了领导力与创造力研究的理论基础。研究结果表明，组织应优先发展负责任领导，强化心理授权机制，并营造一个支持性的、富有创造力的环境。这包括鼓励创造力、促进容错性实验以及实施认可系统，以充分释放员工的创造潜力。
