A multi-level test for social regulatory focus and team member creativity: Mediating role of self-leadership strategies
Leadership & Organization Development Journal
ISSN: 0143-7739
Article publication date: 14 September 2017
Issue publication date: 13 October 2017
Abstract
Purpose
In this study, self-leadership strategy serves as a self-regulatory mediating mechanism of individual differences in predicting individual creativity because it is related to actions intended to lead their own goal-directed activities. The purpose of this paper is to explore the boundary conditions of the effect of regulatory focus on employee self-leadership behaviors.
Design/methodology/approach
Considering the contextual influence, cross-level moderating effect of empowering leadership on the relationship between the promotion (prevention) focus and self-leadership has been examined. The research data were collected from 441 employees of 65 work teams from three software companies located in Northern Taiwan. A time-lagged design by implementing three time surveys was applied to minimize potential problems of cross-sectional design. At Time 1, employees completed the measures of promotion focus, prevention focus, empowering leadership, and individual-level control variables. At Time 2, employees reported the extent of their self-leadership at work. In the final survey, team leaders assessed the individual employee creativity.
Findings
This study concludes several findings. When self-leading behavior-focused strategies are considered as mediators, the indirect relationships that promotion focus and prevention focus had with individual creativity were confirmed. As an influential team-level indicator, empowering leadership could moderate the relatedness between employees promotion-focused strategies and behavior-focused strategies that positively influenced on individual creativity.
Originality/value
In this study, responding to the call by De Stobbeleir et al. (2011) to examine how employees actively manage their creative performance, the author zoomed in on self-leadership strategies and how these strategies relate to actual creative performance.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This paper was entirely supported by Taiwan Ministry of Science and Technology with project Grant No. MOST 104-2410-H-277-001-MY2.
Citation
Lin, C.-J. (2017), "A multi-level test for social regulatory focus and team member creativity: Mediating role of self-leadership strategies", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 38 No. 8, pp. 1057-1077. https://doi.org/10.1108/LODJ-05-2016-0125
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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