Handbook of Organizational Creativity: Leadership, Interventions, and Macro Level Issues

By Sam Hunter

Handbook of Organizational Creativity: Leadership, Interventions, and Macro Level Issues, Second Edition covers creativity from many perspectives in two unique volumes, including artificial Intelligence work, creativity within specific applied domains (e.g., engineering, science, therapy), and coverage of leadership. The book includes individual, team and organizational level factors and includes organizational interventions to facilitate creativity (such as training). Chapters focus on creative abilities and creative problem-solving processes, along with individual differences such as motivation, affect and personality. New chapters include the neuroscience of creativity, creativity and meaning, morality/ethicality and creativity, and creative self-beliefs.

Sections on group level phenomena examine team cognition, team social processes, team diversity, social networks, and multi-team systems and creativity. Final coverages includes different types and approaches to leadership, such as transformational leadership, ambidextrous leadership leader-follower relations, and more.

• Focuses on the key need to increase creativity and innovation in organizations
• Identifies factors influencing organizational creativity in specific subject domains
• Discusses effects of rewards, training, and performance management on creativity
• Contains new coverage of virtual teams, creative meetings, and multiteam systems
• Presents interventions to improve organizational creativity
• Explores use of AI, technology, and design thinking for organizational creativity
• This expanded second edition is divided into two volumes. For further information on Individual and Group Level Influences visit https://shop.elsevier.com/books/handbook-of-organizational-creativity/reiter-palmon/978-0-323-91840-4

• Language: English
• Publisher: Academic Press
• Release date: Jun 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9780323984829

Book preview

Part I

Leadership

Chapter 1: Creativity in organizations macro perspectives: Leadership, interventions, and applications

Sam Hunter; Alexis L. d’Amato; Averie E. Linnell; Roni Reiter-Palmon    Industrial and Organizational Psychology, University of Nebraska, Omaha, NE, United States

Abstract

The intent of the second volume is to bring together organizational and interventional focused research and theory that bears importance for creativity and innovation. The chapters in this section explore four macro phenomena: leadership, organization, interventions, and fields. Leadership theories, such as transformational, shared, and CIP, are examined as unique approaches to leading for creative and innovative efforts. Also illustrated in this volume is the central role organizations play in creative output. Specifically, phenomena such as change, culture, obstacles to innovation, and constraints to creative performance. To sustain creative performance, authors explore interventions like motivation, training, and best practices for identifying and selecting creative talent. The role of organizational creativity in niche fields, such as marketing, engineering, and education, are examined, as there is a sizable research gap in these areas. Finally, the closing chapter of this volume provides a substantive summary of the progress made in the study of organizational creativity and offers recommendations for the future.

Keywords

Creativity; Innovation; Leadership; Interventions; Applications

In the first edition of the Handbook of Organizational Creativity, Mumford et al. (2012) outlined the traditionalist view of creativity, epitomized by a quote from John D. Rockefeller, who readily dismissed the importance of novel thinking in favor of pure business acumen, noting that he … can always hire scientists (Chernow, 1997, p. 187). Implicit in this quote is that creative thinking was perceived as disposable and, as such, of significantly lesser value. The advancement of creativity, Mumford and colleagues argued, required a new way of thinking about the modern organization, where creativity was accurately depicted as central to success.

Reflecting on the advancement of the field over the more than 10 years since the first edition of the Handbook was published reveals that the days that Mumford et al. (2012) argued for have, by many accounts, arrived. In the 1940s, Lockheed Martin stood alone as unique for its Skunk Works program aimed at isolating, protecting, and supporting its most creative minds in the pursuit of radical innovation. Now, Amazon, Google, Boeing, Nike, and Apple all have their own variants of Skunk Works, named Lab 126, Google X, Phantom Works, The Innovation Kitchen, and the Design Lab, respectively. Gone, or at least fewer in number, are Rockefeller-esque leaders, who held that business acumen was, and should be, divorced from innovation. Instead, we herald our modern business leaders as oscillating between innovative rock stars and, at times, genius supervillains. Elon Musk smokes pot on a high-profile podcast and an internet meme of a maniacal, Twitter-overtaking, flamethrower-developing innovator is born. Richard Branson graces the covers of Forbes and Wired magazines. Mary Barra lands on the cover of Time. Twice. The latest version has her touting the new era of electric vehicles and how they will reshape the driving and climate landscape. Our former rock star innovators are even becoming part of popular culture, with historical figure Nikola Tesla revered more today than in his own era. Indeed, organizational creativity is recognized as the top requirement to succeed by many, if not most, organizations (Epitropaki, Mainemelis, & Kark, this volume).

These changes in perspective about the importance of creativity to success bring a different, albeit not wholly unique, set of challenges. Rather than being tasked with helping organizations and leaders recognize the importance of creativity, our mission now is readily identifying the buzzwords of the day and separating those from what the genuine effects attest to, grounded in data, science, and empirical support. This handbook represents a means not to convince an audience that creativity is worth considering for success, but rather how to best facilitate the phenomenon most organizations are highly concerned with. Stated colloquially, these days are less about convincing others that creativity matters, and more about separating the novel wheat from more derivative chaff.

To help guide this new era of creativity in organizations, we have mirrored the complexity of encouraging organizational creativity and expanded the breadth of topics covered in the new handbook. We are not throwing the baby out with the bathwater, however, as we have retained the general structure of the original handbook as a foundational guide. The breadth of the new handbook required splitting it into two volumes, with this volume, the second, containing chapters focusing on the topics of leadership, organizational level, intervention, and field phenomena. The specific topics, content areas, and chapters of this second volume of the handbook are summarized in the following paragraphs.

Leadership

In this second volume of the Handbook, the topic areas shift from more micro to more macro, considering organizationally focused and intervention-focused phenomena. As an exemplar of this shift, this first section includes chapters that examine the role of leadership in shaping and shepherding creativity. In the first chapter, Tse, Ashkanasy, and Kaur provide a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between transformational leadership and creativity by identifying emotions present at five levels of organizational analysis. The authors argue that transformational leadership helps raise employees’ levels of achievement, motivates them to work towards a collective goal, and develops their intellectual capacities by enabling them to feel a sense of inspiration and consideration, to question routines, and engage in risk-taking behaviors throughout their creative ventures. Inspiration is not without its drawbacks as an influence mechanism, however. In this vein, Epitropaki, Mainemelis, and Kark examine creative and leader identity conflict aimed at understanding triggers, solutions, and implications for leaders tasked with enabling and supporting creative efforts. More specifically, the authors discuss the triggers and provide solutions, strategies, and implications to highlight this tenuous relationship, as creativity can often be a double-edged sword for leaders. One additional means of managing conflict in leading for creativity is to empower subordinates. Dong and Tang review empowering leadership as an important leadership style for creativity by granting power and resources to followers and involving them in the decision-making process. Empowering leaders create work contexts wherein employees have authority, resources, and responsibility, as well as feel motivated via psychological empowerment to engage in creative activities. This chapter examines how and when managers can promote creative thinking and action by exhibiting empowering leadership skills.

Extending and expanding the discussion around managing the challenging components of leading for innovation, Rosing and Zacher consider ambidextrous leader characteristics that facilitate idea generation and idea implementation among followers. The authors present a model of opening (e.g., encouraging new ideas, allowing for independent thinking) and closing (e.g., establishing routine, monitoring goals) leader behaviors. An extension of ambidextrous leadership is the work on shared leadership. That is, rather than a single leader possessing capacity for potentially competing sets of behaviors, Nguyen and Hunter make the case that distributing these behaviors is an alternative pathway to leading for creativity. The authors examine various forms of shared, or distributed, leadership, as the pressure for one leader to regulate follower creative behaviors is onerous and has various complex task and skill requirements. Individual leadership requires complex cognitive and social skillsets to lead innovative endeavors as they expand in scope. Each leader guides a team’s work tasks and innovative processes in different stages while being adaptable and efficient. Finally, and related to the topic of shared leadership, Watts, Nandi, and Linhardt challenge the popular belief that there is one way to lead for creativity. The authors present an updated review of charismatic, ideological, and pragmatic (CIP) leadership theory and creativity, as there are many ways to lead for creativity. Each type of leader in the model tends to be a creative thinker, while also being capable of facilitating creativity among their followers. CIP theory provides a unique and multifaceted paradigm for studying the multiple approaches to leading creative efforts.

Organization

As the title of the Handbook indicates, organizations play a central role in creative output. In the first chapter of this section, Ford discusses the role of change in organizations pursuing creativity. More formally, this chapter assesses a narrative perspective to describe the conceptual, social, and material connections of creative ideas to organizational development and change. The journey from creative ideation to realization of change is nonlinear, interpersonal, and may produce results that differ from the original idea. This chapter emphasizes the importance of performative actions to implement. Change, however, does not exist in a vacuum and context is critical to understanding the nature of change. Camargo, Ross, and Glăveanu discuss cross-cultural creativity in organizations. The authors examine the important link between culture and creativity by delineating Western and Eastern organizational definitions of creativity and creative outputs. Cultural systems offer means for creative goals and processes by defining creativity as a psychological, material, social, and political dimension. Applying the stage model of creativity (Mumford et al., 1991), the authors argue how culturally diverse teams can benefit and fuel creativity. Building off the stage model, Blocker similarly uses the process perspective on creativity to emphasize the importance of bridging the gap between conception and implementation. Great ideas often lose momentum as they encounter obstacles to innovation, preventing solutions to complex problems from materializing. Blocker examines the reasons implementation is difficult in organizations, as innovation requires different skills from generating ideas. Because most research in creativity and innovation focuses on earlier stages, implementation is less developed but more complex. The chapter emphasizes implementation planning as a key component of transforming creative ideas to successful innovations.

Organizational form and membership are changing and the work by Keith and Ponce-Pore discusses the emerging area of the gig economy. In a review of literature from top journals, this chapter examines the characteristics of gig economies and how they impact creativity. Gig work, or nonstandard work arrangements, is linked to creativity by increasing flexibility in unstable economic and labor conditions. Much of the focus is on the contextual factors that influence gig works, such as autonomy and precarity, to examine creativity in a new world of work. In the final chapter of this section, Medeiros, Damadzic, and Tromp present a sociocognitive model of constraints and creativity, such that both individual and contextual factors influence constraints on creative performance. The authors suggest that the perception of constraints has a bigger impact on creativity than the constraints themselves. A sociocognitive perspective allows leaders and teams to leverage constraints in their favor.

Interventions

As most, if not all, chapters in the Handbook note, creative achievement is difficult. In many cases, direct interventions are necessary to sustain creative performance. In this section, chapter authors explore these interventions. Abdur, Malik, and Zahid examine the role rewards have on creativity, and the effects this relationship has on employee characteristics and contextual settings. The authors account for in-role and extra-role creativity, extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, nonlinear relationships between rewards and creativity, and the underlying mechanisms that affect different rewards on different types of creativity. Along similar lines, McKay and Reiter-Palmon examine the emergence of creativity, innovation, and related cognitive skills (e.g., problem-solving) as some of the most critical skills required for employees. The authors argue that organizations must consider training and developing their current work force to foster those skills. Specifically, McKay and Reiter-Palmon note that training should (1) reduce fixation, (2) teach employees ways to generate ideas and make associations, (3) include divergent and convergent thinking, and (4) develop motivational and affective mechanisms important for creativity. Improving skills through training is one type of intervention to improve creative achievement. Another approach is through personnel selection. Friedrich and Griffith discuss best practices and models for identifying and selecting creative talent. More formally, the authors review key findings and discuss the knowledge, skills, abilities and other characteristics (KSAOs) shown to predict creative performance.

Wigert and Sutton note the challenges of matrixed organizations in the pursuit of creativity. The authors discuss ways to improve team-based creativity in such organizations, sharing practical advice paired with key empirical findings. Along similar lines, Basadur, Basadur, and Calic review the field of organizational development, focusing on a new framework of continuous process for innovation. The authors argue that a process approach can enable economic and social outcomes simultaneously. In addition to broader forms of organizational development, there are more specific approaches that offer ways to improve creative output. Integrating the domains of engineering and design, Miller offers that design thinking can and should be utilized as an organizational intervention to improve creative thinking. Specifically, Miller calls attention to design thinking’s unique focus on customer needs and satisfaction, a novel human-centered solution. As an emerging area of work, Medeiros, Marrone, Joksimovic, Cropley, and Siemens explore the role artificial intelligence (AI) plays in creative problem-solving. The authors use a cognitive lens to explore the topic and argue that creativity is a uniquely human capacity, but advancements are creating avenues for interventions. Particularly, augmentation of human cognition via AI is burgeoning. Closing out this section, Unsworth, Viragos, and Song discuss the role that job design plays as an intervention to improve creative thinking. Using a multilevel lens, the authors discuss the impact of job design on both individual and team processes. Proposing a new model of job design, Unsworth and colleagues focus on agentic and social design approaches to enhancing creative performance while integrating the individual and team perspectives.

Fields

Although many creative processes are nearly universal and have wider spread applicability, some domains have unique demands. To explore the role of organizational creativity across differing areas, this section offers readers the opportunity to draw from authors with expertise in niche fields. In the first chapter of this section, Shiu argues that there is a sizable research gap in our understanding of the creative activities in marketing. The author offers that there are several misconceptions around marketing and creativity and proposes a multidisciplinary approach to help narrow the gap. Drawing from and about the field of engineering, Cropley and Cropley present the role of engineering in the future demands of work. In particular, the authors argue that the nature of engineering work is becoming more open-ended and, as such, new ways of thinking about collaboration between technology and engineers is required. Cropley and Cropley offer that two competencies are required for future work in engineering and their meshing is central to success in the field. Related to and clearly overlapping with the field of engineering, Katz-Buonincontro explores the topic of STEAM, defined as science, technology, engineering and/or mathematics. Katz-Buonincontro focuses on the integration of arts and sciences and provides tips for building an interdisciplinary STEAM-team in pursuit of creative performance.

Shifting from engineering and design, Kennel and Lowndes offer a unique perspective on the role of creativity in healthcare. Specifically, the authors make the well-reasoned case that the healthcare industry requires novel thinking to address key challenges in the field. The authors offer that there are seven categories of creativity (e.g., collaboration, curricula) that directly relate to the healthcare field and discuss these 7cs in detail. The authors close with offering ways to leverage these categories to improve creativity in the healthcare field. Orkibi takes a different approach to thinking about organizational creativity and domain challenges. The author proposes that by using a positive psychodrama framework, organizations can establish spaces that encourage and enhance organizational creativity. Hubner and Frese also embrace the importance of context in their discussion of entrepreneurship and creativity. Using the metaphor of dancing, the authors argue that entrepreneurship requires a balance of structure and action, as well as the ability to move between the two with some degree of grace. Finally, Gabriel, Marrone, and van Broekhoeven close this section with a discussion on creativity in science and mathematics. Their particular focus is on teaching and encouraging creative skills in primary and secondary education. The authors note challenges to encouraging creativity, such as limited time in an overloaded curriculum, teacher efficacy in facilitating creative thinking, and challenges around measuring creative performance. Gabriel and colleagues offer practical advice for overcoming these challenges and enhancing creativity in education environments with a focus on scientific and mathematical creative achievement.

Conclusion

Fittingly, our final chapter comes from Mumford, England, Newbold, and Fichtel. The authors summarize the progress that has been made and offer thoughts on where the study of organizational creativity must go in the future. Uniquely able to offer a lens through which to view where we started and where we must go, Mumford and colleagues present a substantive summary, as well as an inspirational starting point for future scholars. We can think of no better way to conclude this handbook than by the thoughts of the editor of the original Handbook of Organizational Creativity.

References

Chernow R. Titan: The life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. New York, NY: Vintage; 1997.

Mumford M.D., Hester K.S., Robledo I.C. Creativity in organizations: Importance and approaches. In: Handbook of organizational creativity. Academic Press; 2012:3–16. doi:10.1016/B978-0-12-374714-3.00001-X.

Mumford M.D., Mobley M.I., Reiter-Palmon R., Uhlman C.E., Doares L.M. Process analytic models of creative capacities. Creativity Research Journal. 1991;4(2):91–122. doi:10.1080/10400419109534380.

Chapter 2: Transformational leadership and creativity

Herman H.M. Tsea; Neal M. Ashkanasyb; Sabreen Kaura    a Department of Management, Monash Business School, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

b Management Discipline, UQ Business School, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

Abstract

Although transformational leadership and creativity have been studied at different levels of analysis, limited research has yet to organize and synthesize the existing literature from a multilevel perspective. This chapter aims to address this gap by adopting the five-level model of emotions in the workplace (FLMEW) as a guiding framework to organize and analyze the research about the role of transformational leadership in creativity in organizations. Our chapter proceeds in five stages. In the first, we outline the background and importance of this research stream. Next, we provide a comprehensive definition of transformational leadership and creativity. Third, we review the underlying theories used in the literature to study the role of transformational leadership in the creativity process. Fourth, we introduce the FLMEW framework and analyze the existing research according to levels of the framework. Finally, we identify promising avenues for future research endeavor.

Keywords

Transformational leadership; Creativity; Multilevel; FLMEW

Employee creativity has long been regarded as a critical indicator for organizational performance and successes (Zhou & Hoever, 2014; Zhou & Shalley, 2011). Anecdotal evidence has revealed that employee creativity has strong positive implications for many organizational outcomes (Anderson et al., 2014; Liu et al., 2016; Shalley et al., 2000). In this regard, Lee et al. (2018) and Hu et al. (2013) found that leadership plays a vital role in enabling employee creativity across different organizational levels, especially transformational leadership (e.g., see Koh et al., 2019; Shin & Zhou, 2003). This is because this style of leadership is effective in enabling employees to feel a sense of inspiration, stimulation, consideration, and motivation that questions routines; to engage in risk-taking behaviors; and to perceive autonomy in their creative pursuit (Henker et al., 2015; Shalley & Zhou, 2008; Van Knippenberg & Sitkin, 2013; Wang et al., 2011, 2014; Zhou & Shalley, 2011).

Accumulating evidence (see Gong et al., 2009; Gumusluoglu & Ilsev, 2009; Henker et al., 2015; Pieterse et al., 2010; Shih et al., 2012; Tse et al., 2018; Wang et al., 2014) has demonstrated that transformational leadership has positive implications for creativity outcomes across different levels in different organizational settings. In other research, Hu et al. (2013) and Koh et al. (2019) focused on identifying and examining relevant underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions that shape the strength and direction of the relationships between transformational leadership and creativity outcomes. These studies have served to increase our understanding of what makes transformational leadership effective in motiving employees to generate novel and useful ideas for services, practices, and procedures (e.g., see Henker et al., 2015; Tse et al., 2018; Wang et al., 2014).

In this chapter, we seek to make contributions to the existing research on transformational leadership and creativity in three ways. First, our research responds to the call by Hu et al. (2013) and Koh et al. (2019) to unify the different potential streams of research on transformational leadership and creativity. Since the research streams have appeared at individual, interpersonal, team, and organizational levels of analysis, we seek to extend the previous review articles on the topic by adopting a multilevel framework to organize and analyze the existing work. As such, we hope to consolidate the literature and provide a comprehensive understanding about the relationship between transformational leadership and creativity. Second, by reviewing the existing literature, we seek to identify underlying theories that have been used to understand the implications of different transformational leadership for creativity. In particular, Hu et al. (2013) and Koh et al. (2019) did not provide insights into the existing frameworks that are important and relevant for theoretical and practical development. We hope to address this deficiency by identifying promising areas for future research endeavors to stimulate more research attention in this area. Third, we identify research into emotions at five different levels of organizational analysis developed by Ashkanasy and his colleagues (Ashkanasy, 2003a, 2003b; Ashkanasy & Dorris, 2017; Ashkanasy & Humphrey, 2011, 2014; Ashkanasy & To, 2023; Ashkanasy & Tse, 2000) to develop a link between transformational leadership and creativity.

We present our chapter in four main sections. In the first, we introduce the concepts of transformational leadership and organizational creativity and then, in the second section, discuss four theoretical perspectives that authors have employed to study the relationship of these concepts. In the third section, we introduce the five-level model of emotions in the workplace (FLMEW) and demonstrate how emotions at each level play a central role in connecting transformational leadership and creativity. In the fourth and final section of our chapter, we identify some promising areas for future research based on our analysis.

Defining transformational leadership and creativity

Transformational leadership

First introduced by Burns (1978) (see also Burns, 2003), the concept of transformational leadership was further elaborated on by Bass (1985), who suggested that this form of leadership differs from other leadership approaches insofar as it can motivate employees to perform above and beyond what they think they are capable of (See Khanin, 2007 for discussion of the difference between Bass’s and Burns’s approaches to transformational leadership.). According to Bass (1985), transformational leadership is unique insofar as it consists of four primary behaviors, where transformational leaders: (1) exhibit behaviors of inspirational motivation to create and articulate a compelling vision and high expectations that can motivate, inspire, and challenge employees to transcend their personal interests for collective welfares; (2) display idealized influence behaviors, being a good role model to behave in ways that are consistent with higher ethical and moral standards to do right things for greater good in the workplace; (3) intellectually stimulate their followers to challenge existing ways of thinking, approach problems from different angels, and solicit followers’ inputs for problem-solving; and (4) show individualized consideration to their followers by attending the needs of their followers and treating each follower as a unique individual to create a strong sense of trust in and a greater satisfaction with the leaders (see also Podsakoff et al., 1990).

Bass (1985) emphasizes that transformational leaders help to raise employees to a higher level of achievement, to motivate them to transcend their personal interests for the collective welfare, to focus them on their abilities to facilitate personal growth, and to develop their intellectual capabilities to approach problems in new ways. In this regard, Koh et al. (2019) and Wang et al. (2014) conceptualize transformational leadership as a multilevel construct spanning as an individual perception, a team climate, and an organizational culture to exert cross-level influences on creativity outcomes that can contribute to positive improvements for and functioning of their organization (see also Ashkanasy & Humphrey, 2014).

Creativity

According to Woodman et al. (1993), creativity is a key component of human capital which involves the creation of novel and useful ideas which can be used to improve organizational functioning constantly. The emphasis on creativity is the outcome, leading to better products, services, procedures, and processes (rather than the mental process through which creative ideas emerge). Zhou and Hoever (2014) note that novelty and usefulness are key aspects of creativity that underlie the generation of creative ideas. Moreover, Anderson et al. (2014) conceptualize (and operationalize) creativity as an individual, dyadic, team, and organizational outcome. Accumulating research evidence has also revealed that employee creativity has strong implications for many important performance-related outcomes that can lead to long-term organizational success (Anderson et al., 2014).

Four theories that link transformational leadership and creativity

In this section, we review and discuss four main theories that past researchers have used to study the relationship between transformational leadership and creativity. The theories comprise: (1) cognitive evaluation theory (CET: Deci, 1975; Deci & Ryan, 1985), (2) social learning theory (SLT: Bandura, 1977), (3) social identity theory (SIT: Tajfel, 1978), and (4) self-regulatory focus theory (SRF: Higgins, 1997, 1998). In the following paragraphs, we discuss each of these theories in turn as a means to draw out their implications for the nexus of transformational leadership and employee creativity and creative behavior.

Theory 1: Cognitive evaluation theory (CET)

In proposing this theory, Deci and Ryan (1985) developed Deci’s (1975) earlier theory of intrinsic motivation (that individuals have an innate desire to gain an increased sense of control over their work role) to propose that this is a key driver of employee motivation. Ryan and Deci (2000) subsequently proposed that fulfillment of this desire for control becomes the motivational basis for personal achievement within a work role. This idea was developed further by Gagné and Deci (2005) who argued that, when individuals experience the sense of control over their work role and being able to influence how to achieve the outcomes, their innate desire can be fulfilled—thereby motivating them to engage in creative behavior (cf. Van Yperen, 2003). CET theorists further emphasize that controlling and noncontrolling work conditions can hinder and promote the need for satisfaction of control. Controlling conditions are interpreted by individuals as constraints that prevent them from experiencing the sense of control over their work roles. In contrast, noncontrolling conditions are perceived by individuals as the absence of such constraints.

Past research (e.g., Ashforth & Saks, 2000; Tangirala & Ramanujam, 2008) has tended to focus on identifying relevant factors that can promote the need for satisfaction of control to engage in creativity. In this regard, Tse et al. (2018) argue that transformational leadership is especially viewed as a key noncontrolling condition to influence creativity by motivating employees to experience high levels of personal control within a work role based on the prediction of cognitive evaluation theory. In an empirical demonstration of this effect, Tse and his colleagues found that transformational leadership enables employees to experience a strong sense of personal control over their work role that increases their tendency to engage in creativity. In essence, these authors confirmed that personal control is an important job-focused motivational mechanism that underlies employee creativity at work.

Theory 2: Social learning theory (SLT)

In this theory, Bandura (1977) postulates that individuals acquire new behaviors through direct experience and by observing and imitating the actions of others in a social context. According to Bandura (1986), all behavioral learning can be achieved via vicarious experience (i.e., observing others’ behaviors and the consequences of those behaviors). This learning process can occur within the interpersonal relationships between an employee and leaders within organizations. Thus employees tend to look upon their leaders as the source of influence to learn what behavior is expected, rewarded, and punished via role modeling.

Based on the SLT and subsequent research (Eisenbeiß & Boerner, 2013; Gong et al., 2009; Mittal & Dhar, 2015), we argue that employees learn to be creative by observing their (transformational) leaders’ displays of behaviors of idealized influence, intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation, and individualized consideration. For example, employees can observe the organizational context that welcomes dissenting opinions and feedback by experiencing their transformational leaders’ intellectual stimulation. Employees can also learn about their leader’s individualized consideration behaviors through their direct experience of learning, growing, and embracing their creativity without fear of adverse reactions and concern of failure. Such a learning process enables the employees to have stronger confidence that overcomes the setbacks and challenging goals associated with the journey of pursuing creative success.

To demonstrate the theoretical effect, Gong et al. (2009) adopted social learning theory to explain why and how transformational leadership influences employee creativity via increasing employees’ creative self-efficacy. Specifically, Hong and his team confirmed that employees can learn how to be more creative by observing their leaders’ transformational leadership behaviors. The role of team creative self-efficacy in promoting the effects of transformational leadership on team creativity has also been explored. For example, Shin and Zhou (2007) found that transformational leaders can enable teams that have higher educational heterogeneity to be more creative via a boost in their team creative efficacy. Team creative efficacy can impact team members’ motivation and team creativity-related processes, leading to creativity as an output (Shin & Zhou, 2007).

Theory 3: Social identity theory (SIT)

Tajfel (1978) developed SIT based on the idea that people are motivated to see themselves positively, and therefore seek to extend this motivation to include the individual’s group memberships or social identities (Tajfel & Turner, 1985, p. 16). A group member’s self-concept is comprised of a personal identification encompassing idiosyncratic characteristics (e.g., individual traits, abilities, or past experiences) and a social identification (i.e., salient group classifications and characteristics such as group attributes, processes, and composition, see Tajfel & Turner, 1985). In subsequent SIT research, Hogg (2001) found that both personal and social identification are important to reflect the different levels of self-esteem and self-worth of individuals. Hogg’s research suggests that leaders occupying the most prototypical position within a group (i.e., a leader) can achieve the ability to influence employees’ personal and social identification to drive their creativity. On one hand, transformational leaders can increase creativity by elevating individual employees’ personal identification with the leaders’ behaviors and values (Tse & Chiu, 2014). On the other hand, transformational leaders can facilitate creativity by encouraging individual employees to integrate their identity as team members into their own self-concept. For example, transformational leaders’ idealized attributes and individualized consideration can encourage creativity because individual employees can be motivated by the role model for taking risk and by personalized support for overcoming fear to identify with the leader (Wang et al., 2013). Transformational leaders’ intellectual stimulation and inspirational motivation also enable employee creativity by promoting collective identification with the shared value/climate toward innovation and creativity (Wang et al., 2013).

While fewer studies have explored the impact of transformational leadership on team creativity, researchers have used the SIT to study the impact of transformational leadership on creativity at the team level. Using the basic assumptions of SIT, Koh et al. (2019) highlight that since transformational leaders display behaviors high in inspirational motivation and intellectual stimulation, these behaviors eventually get diffused among their subordinates who identify themselves with their leaders. This further improves their perceptions of an innovative climate, leading to better creativity. Studies have also provided support for this relationship. For example, Eisenbeiß et al. (2008) found a positive relationship between transformational leadership and support for innovation that contributed to better innovation in teams.

Theory 4: Self-regulatory focus theory (SRF)

In putting forward Self-Regulatory Focus (SRF) theory, Higgins (1997, 1998) worked from a proposition that individuals are motivated via two different self-regulatory systems: (1) promotion focused or (2) prevention focused. Promotion-focused individuals are motivated by growth and development needs that encourage them to move toward becoming their ideal selves while striving to achieve positive outcomes (e.g., pleasure or gain). Prevention-focused individuals, on the other hand, respond to their security needs, trying to prevent any loss or negative outcomes (cf. Brockner & Higgins, 2001).

Promotion-focused individuals have been found to be more creative in studies (e.g., see Lam & Chiu, 2002; Wu et al., 2008), owing to their exploratory orientation, abstract thinking, and openness to new experiences in addition to tolerance for ambiguity and risk-taking (Higgins, 1997; Kark et al., 2018). In addition, a promotion focus contributes to positive emotions that can further enhance creativity in individuals (Henker et al., 2015).

This applies especially to transformational leaders, who display behaviors that are unconventional and creative (Bass, 1985). By doing so, transformational leaders motivate their followers to behave in similar ways (i.e., by intellectually stimulating them and becoming a role model for promotion-focused behaviors). In addition, by focusing on visionary ideals, transformational leaders can help their employees become more promotion focused (i.e., as compared to transactional leaders who focus more on the responsibilities and mutually decided norms of the organization, see Brockner & Higgins, 2001). In this regard, Kark et al. (2018) argue further that transformational leaders can spur creativity in followers by eliciting a promotion-focused regulatory mechanism in their followers. Thus, by developing compelling visions and by encouraging their followers to think creatively and originally, transformational leaders may be able to help followers move closer to their ideal selves.

In an empirical demonstration of this idea, Kark et al. (2018) aggregated individual responses to workgroup level and found a positive relationship between transformational leadership and promotion focus. Kark and her colleagues also found a positive relationship between prevention focus and transactional leadership. This finding emphasizes the important role transformational leaders play in promoting creativity in their followers (when compared to transactional leaders).

Transformational leadership, emotions, and creativity at five levels of analysis

In this section of our chapter, we move on to discuss how the four theoretical perspectives can be used to understand the role of transformational leadership played in the creativity process. In this regard, like To et al. (2015), we adopt Ashkanasy’s (2003a, 2003b) FLMEW as a useful organizing structure (see also Ashkanasy & Dorris, 2017; Ashkanasy & Humphrey, 2011, 2014).

The five levels of analysis within the FLMEW comprise: (1) within-person temporal variations, (2) between-person individual differences, (3) interpersonal interactions as dyadic relationships, (4) group dynamics and leadership, and (5) emotional climate and culture at the organization level. As Ashkanasy (2003b) notes, the five levels in the FLMEW represent an integrated model of organizational leadership, linked together via the biological bases of emotional neurobiology. Thus short-term temporal variations in emotions (at Level 1) involve electroencephalographic brain activity that, in turn, drive the neural processes behind perceptions of emotional states in others (at Level 3, Ekman, 2005) and transmission of emotions via contagion processes (Level 4, Hatfield et al., 1993) (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1

Fig. 1 A five-level model of transformational leadership, affect, and creativity.

More recently, Ashkanasy and To (2023) applied the FLMEW as a means to understand the nexus of emotions and creativity at each of the five levels. Within this view, the authors argue that employees’ creativity and creative behavior vary moment by moment and day by day depending upon fluctuations in their affective state (at Level 1). Drawing upon Affective Events Theory (AET: Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996), Ashkanasy and To argue that these (fluctuating) affective states determine employees subsequent attitudes and behaviors (including their level of creativity at the time), but that this process is also influenced by the employee’s personal traits, such as trait affect or emotional intelligence (at Level 2). Then, via processes of perception and communication of emotion (at Level 3), these affective experiences (including creativity and creative behavior) influence fluctuations in creativity at the team (Level 4) and organizational (Level 5) levels of analysis. Ashkanasy and Humphrey (2014) apply similar logic in an analysis of leadership and emotion, which suggests the likelihood that the nexus of emotions and both leadership and creativity may be subject to a parallel etiology. Hence, we review and organize the existing research on transformational leadership and creativity using this five-level multilevel framework. More recently, To et al. (2015) applied the model in an analysis of transformational leadership, affect, and creative process behavior.

Level 1: Within-person temporal variations

At this level of analysis, employees react on a moment-to-moment basis to their environment. In this regard, Weiss and Cropanzano (1996) refer to affective events, stemming from the organizational environment that organizational members perceive, who experience affective or emotional reactions, resulting in changes in their attitudes and behaviors. Importantly, as Ashkanasy (2003a) points out, emotions are, by their nature, relatively short-lived, acute, and event orientated (cf. Frijda, 1987). For example, an employee may experience the emotion of anger in response to a perception of unfair treatment at the hands of their supervisor; or they may experience sadness when they fail to achieve a desired goal; or possibly happiness after achieving of a desired goal.

An important aspect of this model, which Weiss and Cropanzano (1996) call Affective Events Theory (AET), is that employees’ emotional reactions to these affective events can result in one of two distinct effects. The first of these is an immediate behavioral response. This response can be either positive or negative. For example, an employee’s experience of anger can result in a violent outburst. On the other hand, an experience of happiness can result in spontaneous generosity. The second entails formation of affect-related attitudes such as job satisfaction and commitment that, in turn, lead to judgment-driven behavior. Such behavior is more distal than affect-driven behavior and includes a decision to remain with or to quit the organization. I can also refer employees’ propensity to engage in either counterproductive versus productive work behavior, as well as a decision to engage in pro-organizational creative behavior.

Ashkanasy and Humphrey (2011) note that leaders form a central part of an employee’s organizational environment and therefore must be considered a source of affective events for the employees (see also Ashkanasy & Tse, 2000). Moreover, and despite popular misconceptions of leadership roles (cf. Meindl et al., 1985), leaders are also organizational members and therefore are just as beholden to affective events as are their subordinate. In particular, subordinates can themselves be a source of affective events for their leaders (cf. Dasborough et al., 2009; Tee, Ashkanasy, et al., 2013; Tee, Paulsen, et al., 2013) via a process of upward emotional contagion that affects the leader’s emotional states and performance. Ashton-James and Ashkanasy (2008) argue, from a more macro perspective, that forces for organizational change as well as other external stakeholders act to shape leaders’ momentary affective states via a process of affect infusion (Forgas, 1995).

As we noted earlier, emotional states are important drivers of creativity (Ashkanasy & To, 2023). In this chapter, we make the point that a leader’s capacity to influence employees’ moods at work (Humphrey, 2002; Pescosolido, 2002) relates directly to the leader’s ability to facilitate creativity and creative behavior in subordinates. Moreover, and consistent with AET, leaders play a central role in buffering the hassles and uplifts that employees experience in their daily work life (cf. Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996; Weiss et al., 1999). Pirola-Merlo et al. (2002) showed that this applies especially to transformational leaders who, by managing the emotional states of their subordinates, improve both their moods and performance.

McColl-Kennedy and Anderson (2002) subsequently confirmed this effect. They found that effective transformational leaders have the capacity to transform employees’ feelings of frustration, resulting in an optimistic outlook and more creative and effective subordinate performance (see also Bono et al., 2007). Ashkanasy and Daus (2002) emphasize further that the improved mood effects tend to persist, leading to longer term improvements in employee effectiveness and creative behavior (cf. Pescosolido, 2002).

Notably, however, while the preponderance of research (e.g., Judge et al. (2008); Wagner & Ilies, 2008) demonstrates that positive emotions promote employee performance and creativity, evidence exists that, under certain circumstances, negative affect can lead to improved performance (Jordan et al., 2006). More recently, To and his associates (To et al., 2012, 2015) demonstrated that employee creative behavior can result from either positive or negative emotions, depending on the learning orientation of the employee and the situation.

This effect also carries over to group performance, as demonstrated by George and Zhou (2007) and To et al. (2021). These researchers found that a workgroup’s effectiveness and creativity can be maximized when members experience a combination of positive and negative mood (dual tuning theory, George & Zhou, 2007) or even if different members of a group experience different emotions (affect heterogeneity, To et al., 2021). As Ashkanasy and Humphrey (2014, p. 6) point out, a high performing team working on an important project may experience a combination of exhilaration coupled with an anticipatory fear that a deadline is looming. In other research, De Dreu et al. (2008) and Nijstad et al. (2010) proposed a related theory that they called a dual pathway model, where the key is the idea of activation, as a critical cognitive state leading to creative behavior. Consistent with these perspectives, combined with Pescosolido’s (2002) conclusions, it is clear that transformational leaders play an important role in engendering the appropriate emotional state that is most likely to result in employee and group creativity and performance.

Level 2: Between persons individual differences

Among all of the levels of analysis, individual-level research on transformational leadership and creativity has attained the most attention and more studies have been conducted at this level than the studies undertaken at the other levels (Koh et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2014). Over the last 10–15 years, researchers have begun to explore the underlying mechanisms through boundary conditions on which transformational leadership can influence creativity-related outcomes. In this regard, CET, SLT, and SIT have often been used to guide the theoretical development of major mediating roles such as creative efficacy, creative identity, psychological empowerment, and relational identification in the relationship between transformational leadership and creativity at the individual level of analysis.

One group of researchers, including Ma and Jiang (2018), Stanescu et al. (2020), and Afsar et al. (2014), adopted the CET/componential theory of creativity and used its key assumptions to explain why and how psychological empowerment can be a major mediator to transmit the effect of transformational leadership on employee creativity. Their results provide consistent support showing that transformational leadership behaviors are effective in enabling employees to experience a great sense of psychological empowerment (e.g., competent to influence their work role in meaningful ways; they behave proactively, show initiative to make impacts in their work environment, and act independently) (Spreitzer, 1995; Thomas & Velthouse, 1990), and these psychologically empowered individuals are more likely to engage in creativity. Another group of researchers, including Wang et al. (2014) and Gong et al. (2009), focused on extending the application of social learning theory to propose creative self-efficacy as another relevant mechanism to understand how transformational leadership can enable employees to have a greater sense of confidence and competence in managing the setbacks and risk of generating new ideas for organizational improvement. Their findings confirmed the key assumptions of SLT, demonstrating that employees can learn new creative behavior by observing their leaders’ behavior.

In addition to CET and SLT, identification-based constructs underpinned by SIT have also received much attention in the literature. For example, Qu et al. (2015), Wang et al. (2014), and Tse and Chiu (2014) also applied SIT to frame how the identification process can serve as a strong motivational basis that encourages employees to develop new ideas in the workplace. These researchers found that transformational leaders are effective in transcending employees’ self-concept into relational and group identity—which is instrumental for employees’ creativity.

Taken together, the studies provide support for the application of SLT, SIT, and CET to guide important psychological mechanisms through transformational leadership behaviors that can shape employee propensity to generate new and novel ideas for products, services, and procedures. The findings of these studies demonstrate that the direct effect of transformational leadership on employee creativity is more complex than what we thought previously and employees can be encouraged by motivation-, learning-, and identity-based mechanisms to perform creative activities at work (Koh et al., 2019).

Level 3: Interpersonal relationships

At the third level of analysis, attention turns to consideration of the relationships between leaders and their followers. In this regard, Yukl and Gardner (2019) define leadership in organizations in terms of managing interpersonal relationships. This idea is also consistent with the idea of Leader-Member Exchange theory (LMX: Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995), which is based on the idea that leaders and members communicate thoughts and emotions via a process of vertical dyad linkages (Dansereau et al., 1975). Central to this is the exchange of emotions, which Mumby and Putnam (1992) argue is key to effective leadership (see also Ashkanasy & Jordan, 2008). Within this view, effective leaders regulate both their own emotions and the emotions of their followers (cf. Troth et al., 2018) in order to develop and enhance their relationships with them. In this regard, Martin et al. (1998) conclude that effective leadership essentially involves the management of emotional states and emotional expression both in leaders and their followers.

The concept of leaders as managers of emotional states and expression was further developed by Humphrey (2006), who coined the expression, leading with emotional labor (see also Ashkanasy & Humphrey, 2011; Humphrey et al., 2008). This concept is founded in Hochschild’s (1983) original definition of emotional labor as management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display (p. 7) but extends the concept leader-member relationships. Similar to LMX theory, leading with emotional labor implies that leaders manage the emotional states of themselves as well as their followers. It follows therefore that leaders must play a critical role in managing the emotional states and moods of their followers that, as we established earlier, are key elements in engendering creativity and creative behavior in followers.

Level 4: Groups and teams

Research at the team level has been somewhat muted when compared to studies at the individual level, however. Nonetheless, like at the individual level, the relationship between transformational leadership and team creativity has been studied using the SLT and SIT theories, in addition to the SRF theory at the team level. These theories have been used to explore the mediating roles of variables, like team creative self-efficacy and support for innovation, and moderating roles of variables, like organizational learning culture and climate of excellence, to explain the relationship between transformational leadership and creativity at the team level.

For example, Eisenbeiß et al. (2008) studied the impact of transformational leadership on team innovation. Based on the SIT framework, these authors argue that transformational leadership positively affects team innovation only through its relationship with support for innovation under the moderating influence of high levels of climate for excellence. Transformational leaders enable exploratory and critical thinking in their followers leading to an environment where the unconventional and risk-taking approaches to problem-solving would be valued and encouraged. They also emphasize team betterment and encourage the transcendence of self-interest for the larger interest of the team, leading to greater identification with the team and attachment to team membership. Thus, while encouraging their followers to collaborate, transformational leaders enhance supportive behavior among team members by creating a common commitment to innovation.

Also similar to the individual level, based on the SLT, researchers such as Shin and Zhou (2007) have studied the role of creative self-efficacy as an important mediating mechanism in the relationship between transformational leadership, creativity, and educational heterogeneity at the team level. The authors argue that the behavioral modeling and verbal persuasion of transformational leaders helps teams with more educational heterogenization develop greater team self-efficacy that is likely to help them improve their team creativity. Team creative self-efficacy can boost the creative performance of teams by improving their motivation.

In addition to these theories, the SRF theory has also been employed by some researchers to study the relationship between transformational leadership and the team-level creativity in employees. Using the key assumptions of the SRF theory, Kark et al. (2018) argue that the regulatory focus is an important underlying mechanism that can enable leaders to influence creativity in their followers. The authors propose that transformational leaders can somewhat enhance promotion-focused self-regulation in their employees by acting as role models for promotion-focused behaviors leading to a congruent regulatory focus in their employees, ultimately encouraging more creative behaviors in them.

In addition to these, some other variables have also been found to influence the relationship between transformational leadership and group-level creativity. Phipps et al. (2012) propose a model highlighting the moderating role of the organizational learning culture in increasing the impact of transformational leadership on group creativity such that a strong learning culture can enhance the impact of transformational leadership on creativity (Phipps et al., 2012). In addition to organizational factors, team-related processes such as team communication and trust have also been explored as important mediating mechanisms in the relationship between transformational leadership and creativity. Boies et al. (2015) explored the relationship between transformational leadership behaviors like intellectual stimulation and inspirational motivation and creative performance in teams. The authors found that leaders exhibiting inspirational motivation behaviors can trigger increased communication among team members, leading to greater exchange of information, better trust among teammates, and ultimately improved novelty in teams. Employee psychological safety and individual employee creativity have also been found to be important mediators explaining the relationship between transformational leadership and creativity at the team levels (Kim et al., 2019). When employees feel safer in their organizations, they are likely to feel safe to innovate and take risks, leading to an increase in their individual creativity. Individual creativity, in turn, can create an upward influence on team creativity as individual members’ creative efforts could influence others in the team to innovate and may become the emergent behavioral norm (Kim et al., 2019).

Taken together, much like the individual level, the studies at the team level suggest that theories like SIT, SLT, and SRF have been used to explore how transformational leadership impacts creativity in teams. These studies have also explored the mechanisms of this relationship using variables at the individual, team, and organizational level, suggesting that multilevel variables can influence the relationship between transformational leadership and creativity at the team level.

Level 5: The organization as a whole

This level of the multilevel model encompasses the idea of a creative climate or culture, and the role of transformational leaders. As Bass (1985) noted, transformational leaders play a pivotal role in establishing the kind of positive organizational climate necessary to enable creativity to flourish. Note, however, that climate and culture are conceptualized in different ways. Thus, while culture derives from the collective experiences of organizational members, often based on unstated assumptions (Ashkanasy & Härtel, 2014; Schein, 1992), climate comprises employees’ collective perceptions of their work environment (Schneider et al., 2011).

In this chapter, we focus on the idea of a creative climate that, as Härtel (2008) emphasizes, derives from a positive work environment (PWE) (see also Härtel & Ashkanasy, 2011). In this regard, Härtel and Ashkanasy (2011) note that members of an organization with a PWE are respectful, inclusive and psychologically safe; leaders and co-workers as trustworthy, fair and open to diversity; and characterized by ethical policies and decision-making (p. 584). Ashkanasy et al. (2020, p. 379) note further that this is achieved via facilitating positive workplace relationships (Krzeminska et al., 2018), constructive conflict management (Ayoko & Härtel, 2016), trust (Kimberley & Härtel, 2007), diversity openness (Härtel & Fujimoto, 2000), and organizational justice (Kimberley & Härtel, 2007).

This idea is supported by the work of Amabile et al. (1996), who developed a scale to measure the work environment for creativity (p. 1154) that emphasizes the role of positivity and leadership. More recently, Breevaart et al. (2014) demonstrated that transformational leaders tend to be more likely than transactional leaders to set up a PWE that links to employee positivity and engagement, including creative behavior.

In sum, based on the foregoing review of the multilevel literature on transformational leadership and creativity research, we argue that that the nexus of transformational leadership and creativity can be conceptualized and operationalized across five different levels of analysis. We argue further that an appropriate theoretical framework, such as CET, SIT, AET, or SRF, is needed to underpin the alignment between conceptualization and measurement across the five levels in future research. In the next and final section of this chapter, we discuss emerging areas of research on transformational leadership and creativity that involve the four theories we identified earlier across the five levels of analysis in the Ashkanasy (2003a, 2003b) FLMEW.

Future research directions

According to To et al. (2015), transformational leadership and creativity can be considered as multilevel constructs to provide insights into new theory development of transformational leadership and creativity in the literature. For example, researchers such as Wang and Howell (2010) and Wu et al. (2010) suggested to reconceptualize transformational leadership as a dual model which includes group focused (idealized influence and inspirational motivation), emphasizing that transformational leaders display similar behaviors to influence the group as a whole, and also individual focused (individualized consideration and intellectual stimulation), emphasizing that the same leaders exhibit different behaviors in addressing the uniqueness of each member in a group. Tse and Chiu (2014) followed the reconceptualization to examine whether group-focused transformational leadership affects helping behavior toward groups through the mediating role of group identification, and individual-focused transformational leadership influences followers’ creative behavior through the mediating effect of individual differentiation. These findings suggested that group- and individual-focused transformational leadership behaviors are target specific and they can be directed toward different focal mediators and outcomes resided at different levels of analysis. Thus future research considers developing and testing more new theoretical frameworks. Group-focused transformational leadership is directed toward group-related or collective-based creativity outcomes at the team level, whereas individual-focused transformational leadership is directed toward interpersonal-related and individual-based focal creativity outcome at the individual level (see Tse & Chiu, 2014; Wang & Howell, 2010; Wu et al., 2010).

Owing to ongoing interest in team-based structures in organizations, it is important to conduct more research on transformational leadership and creativity in different types of team settings (e.g., virtual teams, cross-functional work teams, project teams). This is because each type of team has its own characteristics that may require leaders to be more flexible in terms of displaying relevant transformational leadership behaviors. For example, members in the cross-cultural work teams may find it harder to understand and appreciate how the other members in a functional area approach the work tasks in a different way, and, therefore, transformational leaders would need to focus on the collective goals and shared perception to mitigate the conflict during the idea generation process (Hüttermann & Boerner, 2011). As the team dynamics and the team structure have become more diverse, exploring the role of transformational leadership in the team creativity context will become a promising avenue for future research.

As we discussed earlier, four major theoretical perspectives have been used to identify relevant psychological processes and boundary conditions to understand the relationship between transformational leadership and creativity, especially at the individual level (Koh et al., 2019). To advance this line of research, we believe that future researchers can benefit from adopting additional theoretical perspectives and assumptions to provide a more comprehensive explanation of the relationship between transformational leadership and creativity. For example, intrinsic motivation underpinned by self-determination theory has recently received more attention to be a strong mediator in explaining the transformational leadership-creativity relationship (Le & Nguyen, 2019). Leader-member exchange underpinned by social exchange theory can also be considered as an alternate framework to understand the relationship (Zhang et al., 2017).

Finally, we note that, to date, research on the nexus of transformational leadership and creativity at the within-person level of analysis has been sparse. Based on AET (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996), we would expect that the emergence of employee creativity is likely to depend on the presence of a PWE that can vary over the course of a day (cf. Ashkanasy & Härtel, 2014) and, as we argued earlier, transformational leaders play a pivotal role in developing a conducive culture for employee creativity.

Conclusion

In summary, we proposed a five-level framework to analyze and organize the existing research on transformational leadership and creativity outcomes. We identified and reviewed four major theories that have been used to study the nexus between transformational leadership and creativity. We also presented a comprehensive review on the research relating to transformational leadership, emotions, and creativity across the five levels of analysis in the Ashkanasy (2003a, 2003b) FLMEW. We finally proposed a few promising research avenues for future research across within-person, individual, interpersonal, and team levels of conceptualization and analysis.

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