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Asian Journal of Technology Innovation Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rajt20
Effects of transformational and transactional leadership on employees' creative behaviour: mediating effects of work motivation and job satisfaction a
Joung-Gun Kim & Su-Yol Lee
b
a
Global Business Coaching Institute, #205 Poranze, Seongnae, Gangdong, Seoul, South Korea b
Chonnam National University, Yongbong 300, Buk, Gwangju, South Korea Available online: 14 Feb 2012
To cite this article: Joung-Gun Kim & Su-Yol Lee (2011): Effects of transformational and transactional leadership on employees' creative behaviour: mediating effects of work motivation and job satisfaction, Asian Journal of Technology Innovation, 19:2, 233-247 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19761597.2011.632590
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Asian Journal of Technology Innovation Vol. 19, No. 2, December 2011, 233 –247
Effects of transformational and transactional leadership on employees’ creative behaviour: mediating effects of work motivation and job satisfaction Joung-Gun Kima and Su-Yol Leeb∗ Downloaded by [University of Western Ontario] at 06:44 14 February 2012
a
Global Business Coaching Institute, #205 Poranze, Seongnae, Gangdong, Seoul, South Korea b Chonnam National University, Yongbong 300, Buk, Gwangju, South Korea Innovation has emerged as an important business issue and facilitating employee creativity is considered a necessity for any organization interested in achieving and maintaining a competitive advantage in a world characterized by rapid technological change. This paper examines the direct and indirect effects of transformational and transactional leadership on employees’ creative behaviour in South Korea by considering work motivation and job satisfaction as two mediating variables. The results of a cross-sectional survey and structural equation modelling indicate that (a) transformational and transactional leadership had no direct effects on employees’ creative behaviour (implying that the relationship between leadership and employee creativity should not be seen as straightforwardly causal); (b) transformational leadership worked through employees’ work motivation to ultimately influence their creative behaviour; and (c) transformational and transactional leadership had indirect positive effects on employees’ creative behaviour through job satisfaction. The results have practical and meaningful implications for managers interested in fostering employee creativity through leadership, work motivation, and job satisfaction. Keywords: creative behaviour, leadership, mediating effects, structural equation modelling, South Korea
1. Introduction Given rapid technological advances, heightened competition, and turbulent operating environments, firms are increasingly recognizing that innovation and employee creativity are critical factors in organizational performance and success (Amabile 1997; Bharadwaj and Menon 2000; Yang and Wang 2010). Managers increasingly realize the importance of fostering employee creativity (Shalley and Gibson 2004) because creative employees facilitate and implement the development of novel ideas, useful products, and effective procedures (Oldham and Cummings 1996). There is considerable evidence that employee creativity plays a critical role in organizational performance. For instance, firms belonging to Business Week’s ‘50 Most Innovative Companies’ outperformed the S&P Global 1200 firms in terms of increased profitability from 1997 to 2006 (McGregor 2007). Previous studies on creativity have examined creative behaviour by exploring what creativity is, how creative potential can be enhanced, what conditions facilitate creativity, and how employees can be encouraged to suggest new ideas. Recent studies have suggested that the production of ∗
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ISSN 1976-1597 print/ISSN 2158-6721 online # 2011 Korean Society for Innovation Management and Economics (KOSIME) http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19761597.2011.632590 http://www.tandfonline.com
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creative ideas by employees depends on individual characteristics as well as on perceptions of their work environment (Amabile, Conti, Coon, Lazenby and Herron 1996). One of the most important factors that influences employees’ daily work experience is the leadership of supervisors or managers. This is why recent studies on creativity have tended to focus on exploring the relationship between leadership and the creative behaviour of followers (e.g. Shalley and Gibson 2004; Shin and Zhou 2007; Zhang and Bartol 2010; Yang and Wang 2010). Researchers have started to investigate broader theories of leadership behaviour that includes transformational, transactional, and empowering leadership. Theories of leadership suggest that transformational leadership is particularly effective in enhancing creative behaviour, whereas transactional leadership negatively influences the creative behaviour of employees. However, previous studies have provided mixed empirical evidence for this argument (Pieterse, Knippenberg, Schippers and Stam 2010; Zhang and Bartol 2010) to suggest that our understanding of the relationships between transformational and transactional leadership and creative behaviour may benefit from the identification of intervening variables that can provide a better understanding of how these relationships can be positive or negative. In addition, few studies have examined the effects of leadership on employees’ creative behaviour in the Asian context (e.g. Yang and Wang 2010), that is previous studies of creativity have typically focused on Western countries. This study builds and empirically tests a theory about the relationships between transformational and transactional leadership and employees’ creative behaviour in the Korean workplace and considers the two important intervening variables of work motivation and job satisfaction. We posited that these two mediating mechanisms would help explain the relationships between transformational and transactional leadership and employees’ creative behaviour and explored the indirect effects of transformational and transactional leadership on employees’ creative behaviour through work motivation and job satisfaction as well as their direct effects. The rest of this paper is organized as follows: Section 2 provides a brief review of previous research on creative behaviour and presents the research framework and hypotheses about the relationships between leadership, work motivation, job satisfaction, and creative behaviour. Section 3 describes the research method, and Section 4 presents the results of the empirical analysis. Section 5 discusses this study’s implications and limitations and provides some interesting avenues for future research.
2. 2.1.
Literature review and the research framework Approaches to creative behaviour
Although creativity represents a highly complex and diffuse construct, such as intelligence (Sternberg 1985), it is generally understood as the product of creative efforts such as the generation of novel and useful ideas (Mumford and Gustafson 1988; Woodman, Sawyer and Griffin 1993; Amabile 1996). In line with the common definition of creativity, creative behaviour has recently been defined as a ‘behaviour that results in identifying original and better ways to accomplish some purpose’ (Shalley 1995, p. 483). Previous studies have taken various approaches to identify the factors that foster creativity and creative behaviour. These studies on creativity can be classified into at least three perspectives (Woodman and Schoenfeldt 1990): individual attributes, social contexts, and interactive influence. First, the individual attribute perspective argues that creativity is determined by a fairly stable set of personality traits that characterize creative individuals such as extraversion, broad interests, autonomy, risk-taking attitudes, an achievement-oriented mindset, and an interest in and openness to new experiences (e.g. Moukwa 1995; George and Zhou 2001). Second, the social context perspective focuses on social or contextual factors that influence creative behaviour
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(Shalley 1995). Contextual variables can influence creativity by structuring problem-solving efforts as well as provide the support and resources necessary for the implementation of new ideas (Mumford and Gustafson 1988; Zhou and George 2001). Finally, the interactive influence perspective explains individuals’ creative behaviour by considering individual attributes and contextual factors simultaneously. Based on this perspective, several variables have been found to have a considerable influence on creative behaviour, including leadership (e.g. Yang and Wang 2010; Zhang and Bartol 2010), job complexity (e.g. Shalley, Gilson and Blum 2009), and the organizational climate (Wang and Rode 2010). This study focuses on the interactive influence perspective but also considers individual attributes and social contexts to explore the factors influencing employees’ creative behaviour. This study examines transformational and transactional leadership as the main factors that influence employees’ creative behaviour based on the interactive influence perspective and considers work motivation and job satisfaction as the mediating factors based on the individual attribute and social context perspectives. 2.2.
Direct effects of transformational and transactional leadership on creative behaviour
Recently, researchers have paid increased attention to leadership as one of the most critical factors that influence employee creativity. A number of studies have stressed the increased importance of the role of leaders in enhancing employees’ creative behaviour (e.g. Shin and Zhou 2007; Sung and Choi 2009). However, such studies have typically focused on leader support (e.g. Amabile, Schatzel, Moneta and Kramer 2004; Yang and Wang 2010) and leader – member exchange (e.g. Tierney, Farmer and Green 1999). Researchers have started to investigate broader theories of leadership styles, particularly theories of transformational and transactional leadership, but produced mixed results (Tierney 2008; Zhang and Bartol 2010). Transformational leadership has been defined as ‘the process of pursuing collective goals through the mutual tapping of leaders’ and followers’ motive bases towards the achievement of the intended change’ (Pawar and Eastman 1997, p. 83) and is composed of four attributes: idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individual consideration. According to this theory, transformational leadership may have a considerable influence on creative behaviour. For example, intellectual stimulation can enhance subordinates’ creativity by encouraging them to apply non-traditional thinking, individualized consideration can motivate subordinates to suggest novel ideas by providing more psychological safety, and inspirational motivation can be effective to enhance creativity by elevating individual inspiration and needs (Shin and Zhou 2007; Wang and Rode 2010). A number of studies have provided evidence of the positive effects of transformational leadership on employee creativity (e.g. Sosik, Kahai and Avolio 1999; Jung, MacKenzie and Podsakoff 2003; Shin and Zhou 2003). In addition, previous studies have provided support for the positive effects of supportive and empowering leadership on employee creativity (Amabile et al. 2004; Zhang and Bartol 2010). Strong transformational leadership means that managers provide subordinates with the necessary resources and information to facilitate task performance, help their subordinates to acquire more ideas for innovation, consider their subordinates’ concerns, and show support and concern for their subordinates’ feelings. Such behaviours of supervisors are expected to have positive effects on subordinate creativity. In this regard, we propose the following hypothesis: Hypothesis 1a: Transformational leadership encourages employees’ creative behaviour.
Transactional leadership is characterized as an exchange relationship in which expectations are clarified and the immediate self-interests of leaders and followers are addressed (Bass 1999).
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In addition, transactional leadership has the contingent reward and management-by-exception (Avolio, Bass and Jung 1999; Pieterse et al. 2010) attributes. The contingent reward attribute is based on active and positive transactions between leaders and followers (i.e. clarifying what the follower should do to be rewarded). The management-by-exception attribute includes monitoring employee performance and taking corrective action when problems arise. Limited studies have examined the effects of transactional leadership on creativity. Further, previous studies have produced mixed results for the relationship between transactional leadership and employees’ creative behaviour (e.g. Boerner, Eisenbeiss and Griesse 2007; Moss and Ritossa 2007). However, transactional leadership may have negative effects on employees’ creative behaviour because it focuses more on facilitating employee performance and less on stimulating innovation (Pieterse et al. 2010). Jung (2001) examined the effects of transformational and transactional leadership on brainstorming tasks and found that transformational leadership is more likely to induce ideas than transactional leadership. Other studies have provided support for the argument that transactional leaders are less likely to emphasize innovation than transformational leaders (e.g. Church and Waclawski 1998). Because transactional leadership clarifies the leader’s expectations, followers’ perceptions of their leaders’ preferences are likely to suppress the followers’ motivation to engage in creative behaviour. In this regard, we propose the following hypothesis: Hypothesis 1b: Transactional leadership discourages employees’ creative behaviour.
2.3. Mediating effects of leadership on creative behaviour: work motivation and job satisfaction 2.3.1. Leadership, work motivation, and creative behaviour There is evidence that demonstrates a close relationship between leadership style and employee motivation over the roles of transformational and transactional leadership that facilitate employees’ creative behaviour. Work motivation is defined as ‘a broad construct pertaining to the conditions and processes that account for the arousal and direction, magnitude and maintenance of effort in a person’s job’ (Katzel and Thompson 1990, p. 144); in addition, intrinsic motivation refers to the extent to which an individual is interested in a task and engages in it for the sake of the task itself (Utman 1997). Thomas and Velthouse (1990) argued that empowered employees are more likely to be motivated. Others have addressed the positive relationship between transformational leadership and work motivation, especially intrinsic motivation (e.g. Gagne, Senecal and Koestner 1997). By contrast, transactional leaders actively monitor employees’ deviance from standards, mistakes, and errors, and they sometimes wait passively for employees to make mistakes (Bass and Avolio 1994). These leaders tend to influence subordinates through economic means, are unlikely to individualize the needs of subordinates, and place no emphasis on employee development. These attributes may reduce an employees’ work motivation, particularly for employees in hi-tech industries. In this regard, we propose the following hypotheses: Hypothesis 2a: Transformational leadership is positively related to (intrinsic) work motivation. Hypothesis 2b: Transactional leadership is negatively related to (intrinsic) work motivation.
Numerous studies have indicated that creative behaviour requires a substantial amount of time and effort on the part of the individual (Amabile 1983). For individuals to be creative, they have to focus on pertinent issues and must be motivated to work hard to find novel and useful
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solutions. Motivation is believed to play an important role in creativity in the context of emerging problems through the emphasis of the identification of novel solutions. Thus, motivation has been a topic of special interest in creativity research for explaining individual differences in creative behaviour (Woodman and Schoenfeldt 1990; Shalley 1995; Amabile 1997). For instance, previous studies have found that R&D professionals emphasize work motivation for creativity (Amabile and Gryskiewicz 1989). In this regard, we propose the following hypothesis: Hypothesis 3: (Intrinsic) work motivation encourages creative behaviour.
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2.3.2.
Leadership, job satisfaction, and creative behaviour
Numerous theoretical and empirical studies have demonstrated that the supervisor’s leadership style has considerable influence on employees’ job satisfaction (e.g. Bass 1985; Nielsen, Yarker and Randall 2009). Job satisfaction is defined as a pleasurable or positive emotional that results from job appraisals and job experience (Locke 1976). Transformational leaders are likely to intrinsically foster job satisfaction because of the ability to motivate employees by instilling confidence and elevating the value of work-related outcomes. In the process of motivating employees, a transformational leader may help subordinates better understand their work and facilitate shared feelings that may increase job satisfaction. Bass (2006) suggested that transformational leaders are inspirational, committed to their organizations, challenge subordinates to think differently, show genuine concern for their followers, and are likely to increase their followers’ job satisfaction; however, taking the management-by-exception approach, transactional leaders are more likely to be perceived as reactive than proactive (Bass 1985). Further, followers of these leaders, who typically take a quid-pro-quo approach, are likely to be dissatisfied with reward system equity. These leaders often consider one mistake to outweigh multiple contributions, thereby fostering dissatisfaction among their followers. In this regard, we propose the following hypotheses: Hypothesis 4a: Transformational leadership is positively related to employees’ job satisfaction. Hypothesis 4b: Transactional leadership is negatively related to employees’ job satisfaction.
Few studies have examined the relationship between job satisfaction and employee creativity. Kim, Hon and Crant (2009) examined the effects of employee creativity on career satisfaction and found that employee creativity increases new employees’ career satisfaction. Although the causal relationship between job satisfaction and creative behaviour in Kim et al. (2009) is opposite to that in the present study, their study provided strong evidence of a positive relationship between the two variables. Similarly, Seibert, Crant and Kraimer (1999) showed that job satisfaction and career success are positively related to innovative behaviour. When employees are satisfied with their job and work, they are more likely to have the motivation to generate new ideas, find new solutions, and work together to solve complex problems. Thus, employees’ creative behaviour may be related to job satisfaction; therefore, we propose the following hypothesis: Hypothesis 5: Job satisfaction encourages employees’ creative behaviour.
Based on the literature review and the hypotheses, this study considers a research framework that focuses on the relationships between transformational and transactional leadership and employees’ creative behaviour as well as on two important intervening variables: work motivation and job satisfaction (Figure 1).
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Figure 1: Hypothesized model
3. Research design and methodology 3.1. Sample and data collection An empirical survey was conducted at a major semiconductor company headquartered in South Korea. This company was selected because the semiconductor industry is a turbulent and hightech industry and its employees are required to be creative in their innovation-oriented tasks. The entire survey was translated from English into Korean and then back-translated into English by two independent bilingual individuals to ensure correspondence in meaning (Brislin 1980). The questionnaire and instructions were sent to the company’s human resources (HR) manager, who distributed and collected the questionnaire. A total of 610 employees participating in a company-wide training programme took part in this study. A total of 51 questionnaires were excluded because of a large number of missing items, and there were 559 usable questionnaires for the data analysis. In terms of these 559 participants, 88.9% (497) were male, and 58.7% were 26 to 35 years of age. In addition, 0.5% (3) had a doctoral degree, 5.4% (30) had a master’s degree, 39.7% (221) had a bachelor’s degree, 46.5% (260) had a high school diploma, and 7.9% (44) did not indicate their education level. 3.2.
Survey instruments and validation
All the variables were measured by the participants’ responses to items on a five-point Likert-type scale from 1 (‘strongly disagree’) to 5 (‘strongly agree’). The specific measures are discussed below. Leadership. For transformational and transactional leadership, we used the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (Bass and Avolio 1995). This 20-item measure has multi-item subscales corresponding to the following four dimensions: idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individual consideration (Cronbach’s a ¼ .73, .71, .74, and .72, respectively). Transactional leadership was measured with eight-item scales for the following two dimensions (four items each): management by exception and contingent rewards (Cronbach’s a ¼ .86 and .65, respectively). A total of two items were excluded through the validation of their reliability. Work motivation. Employee (intrinsic) work motivation in the workplace was measured with five items (Cronbach’s a ¼ .74) adapted from Amabile, Hill, Hennessey and Tighe (1994) and Thierney et al. (1999). Job satisfaction. For the level of job satisfaction, a six-item Likert-type scale (Cronbach’s a ¼ .75) was adapted from Mueller and McClosky (1990) and Warr, Cook and Toby (1979). These items referred to various aspects of work or the work environment.
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Creative behaviour. Creative behaviour, the dependent variable, was measured by using a modified scale of creative performance. A four-item Likert-type scale (Cronbach’s a ¼ .82) was adapted from Oldham and Cumming’s (1996) and Scott and Bruce’s (1994) measures of creative performance. The measurement instruments of this study were tested for their reliability, validity, and unidimensionality. In terms of their reliability, Cronbach’s a for all the constructs (except for the contingent reward construct) exceeded the recommended value of .70 (Nunnally 1978). Cronbach’s a for the contingent reward construct was .65; however, all of the indicators were retained because previous studies have found this measurement to be reliable. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted to evaluate the construct validity and unidimensionality. Table 1 presents the standardized factor loading, Cronbach’s a, averaged variance extracted (AVE), and composite reliability for the measures. In general, the loading of each indicator should exceed .50 with a significant t-value (t . 2.0) (Li, Humphreys, Yeung and Cheng 2007). In this study, all of the loadings exceeded .50 except for three items (.49, .45, and .43); however, all the indicators were retained because they were reasonably close to .50.
3.3. Analysis Structural equation modelling (SEM) with LISREL 8.30 (Joreskog and Sorborn 1996) was used to simultaneously estimate the relationships between latent constructs. The SEM results indicate that the hypothesized model provided a good fit to the data (Hu and Bentler 1999). Table 1 provides the descriptive statistics and correlations and Table 2 summarizes all the fit indices.
4. Results and discussion 4.1. Direct effects of leadership on creative behaviour The results do not provide support for H1a, which predicted that transformational leadership would have direct positive effects on employees’ creative behaviour. As shown from Figures 2 – 5, the path coefficients for idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individual consideration were .04, .09, 2.01, and .08, respectively, which were not significantly different from 0 (p . .10). This implies that although supervisors focused on idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individual consideration, their subordinates did not perceive that these transformational leadership attributes would directly induce creative behaviour. The results for the transactional leadership model in Figure 6 and Figure 7 do not provide support for H1b, which predicted that transactional leadership would have negative effects on employees’ creative behaviour. First, the path coefficient for management by exception was 2.02 (Figure 6), which was not significantly different from 0 and indicated that management by exception had no influence on employees’ work motivation. Second, in contrast to the expectation, the other attribute of transactional leadership (contingent rewards) was positively related to employees’ creative behaviour. Its coefficient was .15 (Figure 7), which was significantly different from 0 (p , .05). This indicates that employees’ creative behaviour was enhanced when supervisors clarified performance targets and rewards and expressed satisfaction with the achievements of subordinates. Most of the attributes of transformational and transactional leadership (except for contingent rewards) did not have direct effects on employees’ creative behaviour. These findings suggest that the identification of mediating variables that can help predict and explain these relationships can
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Table 1: Constructs’ reliabilities and validity Construct Transformational leadership Idealized influence (IN)
Inspirational motivation (IM)
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Intellectual stimulation (IS)
Individual consideration (IC)
Transactional leadership Management-by-exception (MBEP)
Contingent reward (CRW) Work motivation
Job satisfaction
Creative behaviour (Self-reported)
Loadings
Cronbach’s a
AVE
Composite reliability
IN1 IN2 IN3 IN4 IM1 IM2 IM3 IS1 IS2 IS3 IS4 IC1 IC2 IC3 IC4
.66 .49 .61 .78 .55 .53 .67 .63 .65 .67 .63 .76 .65 .45 .61
.73
.50
.82
.61
.50
.74
.74
.59
.85
.72
.52
.81
MBEP1 MBEP2 MBEP3 MBEP4 CRW1 CRW2 CRW3 MOT1 MOT2 MOT3 MOT4 MOT5 JSAT1 JSAT2 JSAT3 JSAT4 JSAT5 CB1 CB2 CB3 CB4
.67 .78 .86 .75 .62 .54 .70 .62 .61 .71 .43 .66 .65 .57 .56 .68 .59 .78 .82 .76 .55
.86
.68
.89
.65
.53
.77
.74
.48
.82
.75
.51
.84
.81
.67
.89
Code
provide a better understanding of the relationship between transformational leadership and employees’ creative behaviour.
4.2. Indirect effects of leadership on creative behaviour through work motivation H2a predicted that transformational leadership would operate through work motivation to ultimately influence employees’ creative behaviour. As shown in Figures 2– 5, all the attributes of transformational leadership except for idealized influence (inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individual consideration) had significant effects on employees’ work motivation (the path coefficients were .19, .14, and .13, respectively). These results are consistent with the findings of previous studies that report that transformational leaders are likely to foster subordinates’ intrinsic work motivation through the use of various strategies such as inspirational
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Table 2: Correlation matrix
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Mean SD 1. Idealized influence (IN) 2. Inspirational motivation (IM) 3. Intellectual stimulation (IS) 4. Individual consideration (IC) 5. Management-byexception (MBEP) 6. Contingent reward (CRW) 7. Work motivation 8. Job satisfaction 9. Creative behaviour
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
3.14 3.13
.75 .70 .73∗∗ -
3.02
.75 .67∗∗
.62∗∗ -
2.81
.81 .65∗∗
.59∗∗
.73∗∗ -
.00
.12∗∗
.16∗∗ -
.58∗∗ .13∗∗ .29∗∗ .21∗∗
.67∗∗ .08+ .31∗∗ .15∗∗
.69∗∗ .27∗∗ .08+ -.02 -.01 .36∗∗ .08+ .32∗∗ .15∗∗ .22∗∗ .02 .20∗∗ .24∗∗ .32∗∗ -
2.52 1.02 .01 3.05 3.13 3.30 3.07
.79 .64 .71 .71
.65∗∗ .02 .33∗∗ .18∗∗
Notes: +p-value , .10, ∗ p-value ,.05, ∗∗ p-value , .01.
motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individual consideration (e.g. Gange et al. 1997; Utman 1997). By contrast, the results for the transactional model in Figure 6 and Figure 7 do not provide support for H2b, that is, management-by-exception and contingent reward (attributes of transformational leadership) had no influence on employees’ work motivation. The results provide support for H3 that predicted that employees’ work motivation would be positively related to creative behaviour. As shown from Figures 2 – 8, the path coefficients for the relationship between work motivation and creative behaviour for all leadership attributes were significantly different from 0 (p , .01). That is, employees were likely to be creative when they were intrinsically motivated. These results are consistent with the findings of previous studies that reported that the relationship between transformational leadership and employee creativity is mediated by several important intervening variables such as intrinsic motivation (e.g. Zhang and Bartol 2010). In addition, transactional leadership had no relationship with employees’ innovative behaviour, as indicated in some studies (e.g. Boerner et al. 2007; Moss and Ritossa 2007).
Figure 2: Idealized influence (transformational leadership) structural equation model Note: Solid paths indicate significant results, where: (∗ ) indicates significance at p , .05, (∗∗ ) indicates significance at p , .01; dashed paths indicate non-significant results
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Figure 3: Inspirational motivation (transformational leadership) structural equation model Note: Solid paths indicate significant results, where: (∗ ) indicates significance at p , .05, (∗∗ ) indicates significance at p , .01; dashed paths indicate non-significant results.
4.3.
Indirect effects of leadership on creative behaviour through job satisfaction
The results from Figures 2 – 5 provide support for H4a, which predicted that transformational leadership would influence employees’ creative behaviour in an indirect manner through job satisfaction. All the attributes of transformational leadership (idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individual consideration) had significant effects on job satisfaction, as indicated by the coefficients (.44, .42, .43, and .50, respectively). This result is consistent with the findings of previous studies that report that subordinates are likely to be satisfied with work and job when supervisors are transformational leaders (e.g. Bass 1985). H4b predicted that transactional leadership, unlike transformational leadership, would have negative effects on employee creativity because it would reduce employees’ job satisfaction; however, the results in Figure 6 and Figure 7 illustrate that even transactional leadership had positive effects on employee satisfaction. The attributes of transactional leadership (management by exception and contingent rewards) had significant positive effects on job satisfaction, as indicated by the coefficients .12 (p , .5) and .48 (p , .01), respectively. H5 predicted a positive relationship between job satisfaction and creative behaviour. The significant path coefficients (p , .01) in Figures 2 – 7 provide strong support for H5: .35, .33, .36,
Figure 4: Intellectual stimulation (transformational leadership) structural equation model Note: Solid paths indicate significant results, where: (∗ ) indicates significance at p , .05, (∗∗ ) indicates significance at p , .01; dashed path indicates a non-significant result.
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Figure 5: Individual consideration (transformational leadership) structural equation model Note: Solid paths indicate significant results, where: (∗ ) indicates significance at p , .05, (∗∗ ) indicates significance at p , .01; dashed path indicates a non-significant result.
and .32 for idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individual consideration (transformational leadership attributes), respectively, and .37 and .29 for management by exception and contingent rewards (transactional leadership attributes), respectively. The results for H4 and H5 indicate that both transformational leadership and transactional leadership worked through job satisfaction to influence creative behaviour. Transformational leadership has traditionally been considered to foster job satisfaction and creativity because of its ability to provide a sense of purpose and intellectual stimulation and to encourage followers to be more responsible and autonomous. However, previous studies have suggested that transactional leadership can reduce job satisfaction by excessively emphasizing a quid-pro-quo approach that in turn can limit the production of new ideas and products (Emery and Barker 2007). The results of the present study suggest that even transactional leadership may play an important role in fostering job satisfaction and creative behaviour. Strong transactional leadership in the form of contingent rewards may lead to situations in which deeper levels of trust are formed, thereby facilitating job satisfaction and performance (Podsakoff, Todor, Grover and Huber 1984).
Figure 6: Management-by-exception (transactional leadership) structural equation model Note: Solid paths indicate significant results, where: (∗ ) indicates significance at p , .05, (∗∗ ) indicates significance at p , .01; dashed paths indicate non-significant results.
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Figure 7: Contingent reward (transactional leadership) structural equation model Note: Solid paths indicate significant results, where: (∗ ) indicates significance at p , .05, (∗∗ ) indicates significance at p , .01; dashed paths indicate non-significant results.
5. Conclusion 5.1. Summary and implications Understanding the direct and indirect effects of different leadership styles such as transformational and transactional leadership on employees’ creative behaviour is crucial for fostering the potential for innovation and creativity. In this study, we developed and empirically examined a theory on how leadership works through two important intervening variables (work motivation and job satisfaction) that influence employees’ creative behaviour in the Korean workplace. The results have important theoretical and managerial implications. First, the results verify the mediated effects of transformational and transactional leadership on employees’ creative behaviour, to demonstrate that the relationship between transformational and transactional leadership and employees’ creative behaviour should not be seen as straightforwardly causal. Leadership is believed to indirectly influence employees’ creative behaviour through individual- and work-related mediating variables such as work motivation and job satisfaction instead of influencing it directly. This explains why previous studies of the direct relationship between leadership and employee creativity have produced mixed results. Second, the results demonstrate the important mediating roles of work motivation and job satisfaction on employee creativity. These provide strong support for the positive relationship between them and suggests that work motivation and job satisfaction play crucial roles to encourage employees’ creative behaviour. Work motivation and job satisfaction are influenced by leadership as well as by diverse factors such as personality traits, team climate, and organizational systems; therefore, managers should take a more comprehensive approach in consideration of employees’ work motivation and job satisfaction when influencing their creative behaviour. Third, the results suggest that transactional leadership plays an important role in employees’ creative behaviour. Previous studies have typically taken a negative view of transactional leadership (e.g. Bass 1985); however, the results of this study illustrate that certain forms of transactions (e.g. contingent rewards) between leaders and followers may have positive effects on job satisfaction and performance. For example, employees whose leaders set clearly defined expectations and agreed-upon levels of performance are more likely to achieve their goals; therefore, managers should consider the positive side of transactional leadership that includes contingent rewards to foster their followers’ job satisfaction and creativity. The results provide support for the argument that a ‘one-size-fits-all approach’ should be avoided when encouraging employees’ creative behaviour. For instance, the positive form of
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autonomy to enhance employee creativity is evident in behaviour patterns of leaders whose subordinates perceive a high level of leader support and perform effectively, whereas the negative form is evident in those of leaders whose subordinates perceive a low level of leader support and perform ineffectively (Amabile et al. 2004). Transformational and transactional leadership can have positive as well as negative attributes depending on employees’ capabilities, awareness, and desires. Therefore, leaders wishing to foster employee creativity should consider diverse aspects of the work atmosphere as well as the individual characteristics of subordinates.
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5.2.
Limitations and future research
This study has two limitations. First, we collected all the data from self-reports that may result in common method variance. Previous studies suggested that self-report bias cannot be avoided because of social desirability and the respondent’s consistency motif (Podsakoff and Organ 1986). In this study, we verified that common method variance did not influence the data and the data were reasonable. However, future research should enhance the generalizability of this study’s findings by using more bias-free data (e.g. leader – member exchange data), employing ratings by others, and observing employees in real work settings, among others. Second, all the participants were employees at the same company in South Korea. We selected these participants to control for confounding variables at the organizational level (e.g. Yang and Wang 2010); however, this may have reduced external validity. In this regard, future research should consider diverse organizational settings in various Asian countries to enhance the generalizability of the findings to other types of employees, organizations, and industries. Acknowledgement The second author is grateful for the financial support provided by the Research Foundation of the College of Business Administration, Chonnam National University, Republic of Korea, 2011.
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