Awe Guards My Creativity: The Interactive Effect of Perceived Abusive Supervisory Behavior, Dispositional Awe, and Creative Self-Efficacy on Chinese Employee Creativity

Abstract

The study examined the responses of employees to supervisors who exhibited abusive behavior and invoked dispositional awe to influence their followers. The proposition is that two divergent predictors of supervisor effectiveness interact to affect the behavior of subordinates. The purpose of this study was to examine the interactive effect of perceived abusive supervisory behavior and perceived supervisor dispositional awe on employee creative self-efficacy and creativity. To test the proposed model, we collected cross-sectional data from 196 working professionals pursuing their Masters of Business Administration (MBA) at a large university in China. Our findings confirmed that perceived abusive supervisory behavior and perceived supervisor dispositional awe were predictors of employee creativity. Also, perceived supervisor dispositional awe moderated the relationship between perceived abusive supervisory behavior and employee creative self-efficacy. The theoretical and practical implications for leaders and organizations were discussed.

What Makes People Hide Knowledge? Influence of Passive Leadership and Creative Self-Efficacy

“…Previous research has also proven that creative self-efficacy is influenced by leadership and predicts the creativity of employees (Zheng and Liu, 2017). However, in the previous studies, contradictory results were found wherein negative leadership, i.e., abusive leadership is seen to reduce the creative self-efficacy of individuals (Atamba et al, 2020). On the contrary, our results reveal that creative self-efficacy moderates the relation between passive leadership and knowledge hiding.…”

The dark side of leadership: A systematic review of creativity and innovation

“…For instance, benevolent leadership has been found to interact with authoritarian leadership, reducing the negative association with creativity and innovative behaviour (Tian & Sanchez, 2017). Similarly, the detrimental impact of abusive supervision on creativity can be mitigated when the supervisor is perceived as reverential (Atamba et al., 2020). However, research on the moderating effect of leader vision on abusive supervision and creativity has yielded inconclusive results (Fiset et al., 2019).…”