Leadership, stress and politics: influences on creativity and innovation in emerging markets

This research explores the moderating role of empowering leadership, job-related stress and workplace politics on the link between employee creativity and innovation output.

To test the hypothesized relationships, the authors used a questionnaire survey to nest the data from subordinates (n = 388) and their supervisors (n = 151) working for the emerging markets of Pakistan and analyzed data by using the SmartPLS-SEM technique.

Employee creativity is positively associated with innovation output. The moderation by empowering leadership and employee job-related stress further strengthens the association between employee creativity and innovation output. However, the creativity of employees is not directed toward innovation if they are involved in politics.

The findings will help modern managers to understand the importance of enhancing employee creativity through empowering leadership. Such leadership delegates authority enables employee motivation, develops a conducive working environment by eliminating workplace politics and ensures the well-being of employees. It offers employees the confidence to unleash their creative efforts for innovation.

The managers can benefit from the findings: a) to enhance the abilities of creative employees for innovation outputs by practicing the role of empowering leadership, b) the extent to which employees display job-related stress and enhances their innovation outputs and c) to be aware of the inverse effects of creative employees' involvement in workplace politics on innovation.

Although the previous research was well established on the link between creativity and innovation, the authors knew a little about the factors that can strengthen/weaken this relationship. The authors believe that the findings are a small effort to solve the pieces of the puzzle in the literature.