Impacts of Paradoxical Leadership Behavior on Employee Creativity

Abstract

Abstract: Based on social cognitive theory and the dual pathway to creativity model, this paper explores the mechanism of how paradoxical leadership behavior influences employees’ creativity from the perspective of employees’ behavioral response, adopts questionnaire survey data including 256 leader-subordinates dyads from Wuhan, Guangzhou, Suzhou etc. Specifically, this study investigats the mediating role of employees’ hard work and smart work, the moderating role of employees’ regulatory focus between paradoxical leadership behavior and employees’ creativity. The results show that paradoxical leadership behavior has significant positive influence on employees’ creativity. Employees’ hard work and smart work partly mediates the relationship between paradoxical leadership behavior and employees’ creativity. Employees’ one-dimensional regulatory focus negatively moderates the relationship between paradoxical leadership behavior and employees’ hard/smart work. Furthermore, employees’ one-dimensional regulatory focus negatively moderates the indirect effect of paradoxical leadership behavior on employees’ creativity via employee hard/smart work. Paradoxical leadership behavior has a stronger positive effect on employees’ hard work when employees have both high promotion and high prevention regulatory focus. This paper enriches the influence mechanisms of paradoxical leadership behavior on employees’ creativity and echoes the call for further exploring the boundary conditions of the effectiveness of paradoxical leadership.

Key words: paradoxical leadership behavior, creativity, hard work, smart work, regulatory focus

Tao Houyong, Wu Qianqian, Hu Wenfang. Impacts of Paradoxical Leadership Behavior on Employee Creativity[J]. Management Review, 2022, 34(2): 215-227.

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