When Does Empowering Leadership Enhance Employee Creativity? A Three-way Interaction Test

In: Social behavior and personality: an international journal, Band 44, Heft 9, S. 1555-1564

Abstract

We proposed a 3-way interaction between empowering leadership, intrinsic motivation, and task visibility to predict employee creativity. Participants were 224 employee–leader dyads working in South Korean firms. Results showed that in situations of high task visibility, empowering
leadership related more positively to creativity for employees with low rather than high motivation. In contrast, in situations low in task visibility, empowering leadership related more positively to creativity for employees with high rather than low motivation. Thus, our results confirmed
the importance of the 3 factors for enhancing employee creativity.