The Influence And Mechanism Of Moral Leadership On Employee Creativity Among Public Sector

With economic globalization,the rise of knowledge economy and the increasing market competition,innovation is becoming an important strategy choice for public sector to adapt to these new changes.Employee creativity is the source and foundation of innovation of public sector and it will be directly predicted by leaderships.However,little attention has been paid to the relationship between moral leadership and employee creativity,especially within the public company context.This study examined how and when moral leadership may be related to employee creativity within the public company sector.Specially,we explored the mediator roles of leader-member exchange(LMX)and team identification based on social exchange and social identity theories,and the moderating role of employees'perspective taking among public sector.We surveyed 325 employees among several public sector in Central China.The data analysis demonstrates that moral leadership is positively related to creativity,LMX and team identification.Further,LMX partially mediates the relationship between moral leadership and team identification.In particular,LMX greatly enhances team identification,thereby leading to high employee creativity.Overall,the relationship between moral leadership and employee creativity is mediated by both LMX and team identification.In addition,perspective taking plays an important moderating role:the direct positive effect of moral leadership on LMX is stronger when perspective taking is high rather than low.However,employees' perspective taking cannot serve as a moderating role in the relationship between moral leader and team identification.