The Effect Mechanism Of Empowering Leadership On Employee Radical Creativity

Fierce market competition and rapid developing global economy make employees’ creativity as the potential resources for the transformation,innovation and survival of organizations.As one of the important dimensions of creativity,radical creativity has attracted extensive attention from researchers and managers because it can bring huge potential benefits to organizations.Research on the antecedents of radical creativity is a research hotspot.However,existing research mainly focuses on the impact of individual employee variables on radical creativity,and less research focuses on the impact of leadership behavior on employees’ radical creativity.The present research selects empowering leadership to explore its dual effects,enrichment and depletion,on employees,radical creativity within the framework of the Job Demands-Resource Model(JD-R model).Based on the JD-R model,this research analyzes that empowering leadership may not only provide employees with job resources,but also raise job demand to employees.Therefore,it may influence employees’ radical creativity from the enrichment path and the depletion path.Based on this,this research builds an overall model of the dual impact of empowering leadershiphip on employees’ radical creativity.On the one hand,based on the motivation perspective,empowering leadership will supply employees with job resources,enhance employees’ job control,and increase their willingness to take risk,ultimately positively affect employees’ radical creativity,as an enrichment path;on the other hand,based on the cognitive perspective,empowering leadership will raise job demand to employees,increase employees’ workload,and trigger their need for cognitive closure,ultimately negatively affect employees’ radical creativity,as a depletion path.This research empirically tested the theoretical model through three sub-studies.Sub-study one verified the enrichment path through 409 leader-member suvery data from 88 teams at multiple time points.The study found that empowering leadership can positively affect employees’ radical creativity through the chain mediatos of job control and willingness to take risks.The error management climate of the team can enhance this indirect effect.Sub-study two verified the depletion path through 346 supervisor-surbodinate survery data at multiple time points.The study found that empowering leadership can negatively affect employees’ radical creativity through the chain mediatos of workload and the need for cognitive closure.Employee’s empowering role identity could weaken this indirect effect.Sub-study 3 simultaneously verified the enrichment and the depletion paths through 389 leader-member suvery data from 83 teams at multiple time points.The study found that empowering leadership can increase employees’ radical creativity by enhancing job control,and can also deplete employees’ radical creativity by increasing workload.Leader instrumental support can enhance the enrichment indirect effect of empowering on employees’ radical creativity,while weakening the depletion indirect effect;while leader emotional support has no significant effect on the two indirect effects.The status-conferral ways can affect the depletion indirect effect of the empowering leadership on employees’ radical creativity,but it has no significant effect on the enrichment indirect effect.Specifically,the flexible conferral way can weaken the depletion indirect effect.By constructing and testing the dual-path effect model and the boundary conditions of empowering leadership on employees’ radical creativity,this research not only enriches the researches on the antecedents of individual radical creativity,but also provides a theoretical framework explanation and empirical data evidence to understand the paradoxical mechanism of empowering leadership more balanced and systematic.It also explores the boundary conditions from the three perspectives,employee trait,leadership behavior and team situation,providing a powerful practical guidance on how to strengthen the effectiveness of empowering leadership and enhance employees’ radical creativity.