Virtuous Creativity: The Effects of Leader Behavioural Integrity on Follower Creative Thinking and Risk Taking

Abstract

Despite the preponderance of research concerning creativity and ethical leadership, the possibility of why and how a leader's ethical behaviour may stimulate follower creativity has not been examined. Employing an online experimental design, we applied a virtue ethics framework to examine associations between subordinates' perceptions of their leader's integrity and their intention to think creatively and to engage in risk taking. Subordinates' perceptions of their leader's behavioural integrity positively predicted their sense of psychological safety. Moreover, psychological safety positively predicted followers' intention to think creatively and to take risks. Copyright © 2011 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. JEL Classification: M12Keywords: virtues, behavioural integrity, ethical leadership, creativity, psychological safety Résumé Malgré le grand nombre de recherches consacrées à la créativité et au leadership éthique, la question de savoir comment et pourquoi le comportement éthique du leader stimulerait la créativité de ceux qui le suivent n'a pas retenu l'attention des chercheurs. À partir d'une conception expérimentale en ligne, nous avons utilisé le cadre de la vertu éthique pour examiner le lien entre les perceptions que les subordonnés ont de l'intégrité de leur leader et leur intention de penser de façon critique et de prendre des risques. L'étude montre que les perceptions que les subordonnés ont de l'intégrité comportementale de leur leader prédisent positivement leur sens de sécurité psychologique. Par ailleurs, la sécurité psychologique prédit positivement les intentions des suiveurs de penser de façon critique et de prendre des risques.

Virtuous Leadership: Exploring the Effects of Leader Courage and Behavioral Integrity on Leader Performance and Image

“…Strictly speaking, behavioral integrity could include adherence to anti-social or evil values, but Palanski and Yammarino (2007) proposed and subsequent research (e.g., Leroy et al 2012b; has supported that behavioral integrity is associated with virtuous behavior. Behavioral integrity has been shown to be a parsimonious construct and a robust driver of outcomes such as trust in the leader and psychological safety (Palanski and Vogelgesang 2011), as well as an important mediator for the effects of authentic leadership (Leroy et al 2012a) and moderator for the effects of constructs such as supervisory guidance (Dineen et al 2006). It is important to note that behavioral integrity is typically ''in the eye of the beholder'' as an individual-level construct .…”

Conceptualization and Measurement of Virtuous Leadership: Doing Well by Doing Good

“…Perhaps not surprisingly, virtue ethicists question the meaningfulness of empirically driven approaches (Fowers, 2008). Other self-instruments such as the Virtuous Leadership Scale (VLS; Sarros et al, 2006) focus on a single virtue only, as do many of the options for obtaining subordinatebased evaluations; for example, moral courage (Hannah and Avolio, 2010), professional moral courage (Palanski and Vogelgesang, 2011), behavioral integrity (Prottas, 2013) or benevolence (Wu and Tsai, 2012). Finally, the 34-item Virtue Ethical Character Scale (VECS; cf.…”

“…Virtue ethics, as one of the three leading moral philosophies (the others being deontology and teleology; Palanski and Vogelgesang, 2011), has its roots in both the ancient Greek civilization, especially in Aristotelianism (MacIntyre, 1984) and in Confucianism (Chan, 2003). In general, virtue ethics is "a system of ethical thought which considers the development and nurture of moral character as the best way to affect moral behavior and a moral society" (Palanski and Yammarino, 2009, p. 176).…”

Creative Leadership: A Multi-Context Conceptualization

“…Palanski and Vogelgesang (2011) conducted an online experiment and showed that followers' perceptions of leader's behavioral integrity positively predicted their intention to think creatively and to take risks via their sense of psychological safety. Gu, Tang and Jiang (2013) examined moral leadership in a Chinese context and found that the relationship between moral leadership and employee creativity was mediated by both employee identification with the leader and LMX.…”