How Authentic Leadership Promotes Individual Creativity: The Mediating Role of Affective Commitment

Abstract

This study sought to provide a more comprehensive understanding of how authentic leadership can affect employees’ individual creativity through affective commitment’s mediating role. The sample included 177 leader–follower dyads from 26 private, small- and medium-sized enterprises. Followers reported their levels of affective commitment and perceptions of authentic leadership, and leaders assessed each follower’s level of creativity. The results show that authentic leadership has a positive impact on affective commitment and creativity. Moreover, affective commitment fully mediates the relationship between perceived authentic leadership and individual creativity. Organizations can thus increase employees’ affective commitment and creativity by encouraging their managers to adopt more authentic leadership styles. Additional studies with larger samples are needed to determine more clearly not only authentic leadership’s influence on individual creativity but also other psychosocial and personal variables’ effects on that relationship.

Investigating the Relationship between Work-To-Family Conflict, Job Burnout, Job Outcomes, and Affective Commitment in the Construction Industry

“…Among the three types of commitment, affective commitment is hypothesized to have the largest effect on personal work attitude [ 12 , 14 ]. This is because the characteristics of affective commitment include attachment to the organization, identification with the organization’s culture, and the willingness to continue to be a member of the organization [ 26 ]. Compared with normative commitment and continuous commitment, individuals with affective commitment have more motivation to realize work successes and contribute more to their organizations [ 12 , 25 ].…”

“…Affective commitment arises from individuals’ positive perceptions of their organizations [ 26 ]. In recent years, the increasing demand for work quality and output have increased the importance of affective commitment [ 1 ].…”

“…This is because affective commitment reduces the perceived need of employees experiencing WFC to save and protect their personal resources, such as time and energy [ 1 ]. Individuals with affective commitment feel attached to the company they work for, identify with the company’s culture and goals, and want to stay in the company [ 25 , 26 ]. Thus, employees with affective commitment care about and protect the interests of their organizations.…”

“…The items applied to measure job burnout were designed according to previous studies (Lingard et al [ 5 ]; Enshassi et al [ 7 ]; Srivastava and Dey [ 23 ]). The items used to measure affective commitment were designed with reference to the relevant literature (Kaur and Mittal [ 12 ]; Ribeiro et al [ 26 ]; Odoardi et al [ 27 ]). The items applied to measure job satisfaction were designed according to previous studies (Cao et al [ 1 ]; Witt and Wilson [ 34 ]; An et al [ 48 ]).…”

Linking Authentic Leadership and Employee Creative Behavior: The Mediating Role of Autonomous Motivation and Job Complexity

“…This study tried to bridge the research gap by examining the underlying mechanisms through which authentic leader effect creative behaviour of his followers as very little is known about the process through which authentic leader influence his follower's creative behaviour (Rego et al, 2014). A few of the mechanisms studied between AL and creative behaviour so far are affective commitment (Ribeiro et al, 2020), hope and positive affect (Rego et al, 2014), employee psychological capital (Rego, Sousa, Marques, & Cunha, 2012), work-related flow (Zubair & Kamal, 2017), work engagement and psychological empowerment (Mubarak & Noor, 2018), happiness (Semedo, Coelho, & Ribeiro, 2017), and at the team level, leader-member exchange (LMX), and team psychological safety (Xu et al, 2017). However, there is a need to explore the additional mediating mechanism of AL and creative behaviour (Ribeiro et al, 2020).…”