How does proactive personality promote creativity? A multilevel examination of the interplay between formal and informal leadership

Abstract

Based on the social perspective on creativity, which highlights the importance of social network parameters for individual creativity, this study examines the relationship between employees’ proactive personality and their individual creativity in the context of visionary leadership behaviour. Using survey data from 247 employees and their direct supervisors from 54 work teams in China, we find that informal leadership status mediates the relationship between an employee's proactive personality and his/her creativity. We also demonstrate that the link between an employee's informal leadership status and his/her individual creativity is moderated by formal leaders’ visionary behaviour. Overall, a moderated‐mediation model is established such that, when a formal leader shows a high level of visionary behaviour, the relationship between an employee's proactive personality and his/her creativity via informal leadership status is stronger than with a low level of visionary leader behaviour. Practitioner points Employees with more proactive personalities should be aware of and take advantage of their potential informal leadership status in work teams for increased individual creativity. We suggest that managers recognize informal leaders and provide visionary guidance to promote the informal leaders’ creativity.

Leading the team, but feeling dissatisfied: Investigating informal leaders' energetic activation and work satisfaction and the supporting role of formal leadership

“…As such, we define informal leadership as a perceived social status reflecting the degree to which an individual is granted with leadership roles by his/her peers even without formal authority (Schneier & Goktepe, 1983). This definition is aligned with various recent informal leadership studies (e.g., Cook et al, 2019;Lanaj & Hollenbeck, 2015;Pan et al, 2018;Shaughnessy et al, 2017).…”

High-Performance Work System, Work Well-Being, and Employee Creativity: Cross-Level Moderating Role of Transformational Leadership

“…Unexpectedly, although the human resource management system could effectively improve employee’s motivation, attitude, knowledge, skill, and ability and further affect employee creativity [4], study on the relationship between human resource management system and employee creativity is scarce [3], because most of the studies published in recent years have focused on the role of personality (e.g., Emotional intelligence [5]; proactive personality [6]), organizational situational (e.g., working climate [7]; organizational culture [8]), and leadership (e.g., transformational leadership [9]; moral leadership [10]; abusive leadership [11,12]) as the antecedent variables of employee creativity. It should be noted that some studies use single human resource practice (e.g., pay for performance) to predict employee creativity, and further explore the role played by the mediation mechanism [13].…”

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“…Many studies have proved that employee creativity and personality traits are inextricably linked [88,89]. Employees with high quality of proactive personality collect more information, have a broader vision and have more initiative and execution.…”