Abstract: Carbon peak and carbon neutralization are two important national strategic goals in China (i.e., dual carbon goals). Employees’ green creativity, which refers to the generation of novel and useful ideas about green product, technology, service, and practices, is considered the micro-basis of the achievement of national dual carbon goals. As such, identifying negative predictors of employee green creativity can help inspire managers on how to remove obstacles in the process of achieving the “dual carbon” goals. Based on the social learning theory, we expect that exploitative leadership hinders employees’ green creativity because exploitative leadership make employees learn self-serving cognition, resulting in the lack of sufficient resources that are necessary for the generation of green creative ideas. Based on three-wave data from 203 employees and their leaders, the results of multi-level analysis show that: exploitative leadership is negatively related to employees’ green creativity, and employees’ self-serving cognition mediates the above relationship. In addition, the above indirect relationship depends on employees’ emulation propensity. When employees have a higher (vs. lower) tendency to emulate their leaders’ behaviors, the indirect relationship between exploitative leadership and employee green creativity through employee self-interest cognition is stronger (vs. weaker). This study promotes the enrichment of the theoretical system of green creativity from the perspective of negative leadership, while reminding managers to avoid some leadership-related barriers in the green creative process.

Key words: exploitative leadership, green creativity, self-serving cognition, emulation propensity