The Research On The Influence Of Mentor Leadership On The Graduate Student Creativity

The competition between countries is more and more depending on the innovation level.Innovative national construction is increasingly promoted to the height of the core national development strategy, and graduate students who are the important supporting force in building the innovative country are shouldering more and more missions and responsibilities. But at present the creativity level of our graduate students are far from the demand of the national construction, so it is particularly important to improve the creativity of graduate students. In our country, the mentors are responsibility of the graduate education and are very important in cultivating the graduate students, but the study on the graduate students’creativity and how the mentors influence the creativity is rare, there need to be more further in-depth research. Therefore, Basing on motivation theory and situational theory,this article study the direct and combined influence of mentor supporting and controlling leadership on the graduate students’creativity, and analyze the moderation effect of students’s personal initiative and team member support.Based on the literature of motivation theory, situational theory and research on creativity and mentoring, this article is divided into three research parts to analyze the mentor’s leadership influence on postgraduate creativity.The first part concludes the content of mentor leadership and categories it into supporting and controlling mentor leadership, using content analysis. This research collects the materials between1999and2011of the mentoring experience of mentors who have guided the "outstanding Ph.D. Thesis" and conclude the core mentor behaviors which will be compared with the definition of mentor leadership.The result shows that mentor supporting and controlling leadership is suitable for the graduate student education background.The second part use the reference of motivation theory to analyze the direct and combinational effect of the mentor supporting and controlling leadership on the graduate students’creativity, using multiple regression analysis and variance analysis. The result finds that mentor’s supporting and controlling leadership both positively influence the creativity of graduate students. The three dimensions of supporting leadership(including academic support, personal support and autonomy support) all have positive influence on student creativity, and the two dimensions of controlling leadership(issuing instructions&commands and assigning goals) also positively influence the graduate students’creativity. And the combination of high supporting and high controlling leadership is the best pattern for creativity.The third part use the reference of situation theory to analysis situational factor about mentors’behaviors. Using questionnaire survey, the moderation effect of students’personal initiative and team member support are proved. The study finds that when the students’personal initiative is higher, the relationship between the controlling leadership and students’creativity is stronger. Team member support moderates the influence of mentor’s academic support and personal support. When the team member support is higher, the relationship between academic support and graduate students’creativity is the stronger relationship, with relationship between the personal support and graduate students’creativity is lower.Though mentors play an important role in cultivating the graduate students’creativity.but the study on this is rare. Based on the background of graduate education,this research refers the supporting and controlling leadership,and analyzes the influence of mentor behaviors on graduates’creativity, which will expand the research filed and enrich related theory. The innovational points of this study mainly embodied in:1) Introduction of the research on leadership to analyze the influence of mentoring on the graduate creativityAlthough mentor plays an important role in cultivating graduate students creativity, there are few studies in this area. Some researchers points out that the future research should embodied the perspective of organizational and psychology research. Based on the postgraduate education background, this study draws lessons from introduces the concept of leadership, and investigates the direct and combined influence of the supporting and controlling leadership on the creativity.2) Expanding the situational factors of mentor’s instructionDespite the fact that situational theory points out the leaders should adjust their behaviors on the basis of the features of the objectives and the environment, especially the effect of personal initiative and team member support.the current research about the influence of the mentor’s instruction on the postgraduates’ creativity seldom investigates the impact of these situational factors. This paper analyzes the moderation effect of the students’s personal initiative and the team members’support between the mentor’s leadership and the creativity of the postgraduates. This study, to some extent, deepens the research on the situational factors of mentoring.3)Confirm and enrich the motivation theory and situational theoryAlthough the motivation theory and situational theory have been identified and verified by many scholars in many domains,few research introduce the two perspectives to analyze the influence of mentors on the graduate creativity.This study analyzes the influence of mentor guidance towards graduates’creativity. By combining with creativity research and other researches, The results will help to explore the applicability of the two theories in the graduates’creativity cultivation,and further verify and enrich the motivation theory and situational theory.