Effects of Leadership Style, Creativity Technique and Personal Initiative on Employee Creativity
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2012.00849.x |
| Published date | 01 April 2014 |
| Date | 01 April 2014 |
| Author | Jörg Felfe,Daniel Herrmann |
Effects of Leadership Style, Creativity
Technique and Personal Initiative on
Employee Creativity
Daniel Herrmann and Jörg Felfe
Holstenhofweg 85, 22043 Hamburg, Germany
Corresponding author email: herrmann@hsu-hh.de
Transformational leadership is assumed to enhance employees’ creativity. However,
results of meta-analytic research on the relations between transformational leadership
and creativity have fallen short of expectations. The authors argue that, besides leader-
ship style, the creativity technique that a leader employs is an important means of
stimulating employees’ creativity. In addition, it is assumed that leadership styles and
creativity techniques may have different effects, depending on the measure of creativity
output (quantitative vs qualitative). Therefore, in an experimental setting, the effects of
different creativity techniques (provocation technique vs brainwriting) and leadership
styles (transformational vs transactional) on both quantitative and qualitative creativity
were examined. Results showed that transformational leadership and provocation tech-
nique led to higher levels of qualitative creativity than transactional leadership and
brainwriting, respectively. Conversely, transactional leadership and brainwriting were
more effective for quantitative creativity. The additional benefit of the provocation
technique in qualitative creativity was found to be higher in the transactional leadership
condition than in the transformational leadership condition. Moreover, personal initia-
tive made a significant and independent contribution to both qualitative and quantitative
creativity. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.
In times of strong economic competition, the sur-
vival of organizations depends on sustained inno-
vation (Mumford and Licuanan, 2004). Idea
generation can be regarded as an important stage
in the organizational innovation process (Litch-
field, 2008). A growing body of research has
examined the role of transformational leadership
as an important driver for employees’ creative
idea generation (Chen, Li and Tang, 2009).
However, meta-analytic research on the relations
between transformational leadership and creative
or innovative behaviour have shown relatively
weak to moderate relations (Rosing, Frese and
Bausch, 2011).
Therefore, Rosing, Frese and Bausch (2011)
suggest that a single leadership style cannot effec-
tively promote creativity, and that leadership
research should pay more attention to concrete
leadership behaviour. Following their proposi-
tion, we expected to achieve a better understand-
ing of the role of leadership for follower creativity
when we broadened our perspective. In addition
to general leadership behaviour (i.e. leadership
styles), we also considered the meaning of more
specific behaviour (i.e. creativity techniques) as a
means of stimulating follower creativity. For
clarification, we note that, when we refer to lead-
ership styles, we mean a set of behaviours that
represents a specific leadership concept or style
(i.e. transformational or transactional leader-
ship). When we mention creativity techniques, we
mean leader behaviour in terms of the concrete
sequence of steps that a leader takes to promote
creativity in a specific situation. Techniques may
be embedded in a transformational or a transac-
tional style.
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British Journal of Management, Vol. 25, 209–227 (2014)
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8551.2012.00849.x
© 2012 The Author(s)
British Journal of Management © 2012 British Academy of Management. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA, 02148, USA.
Creativity techniques focus on the specific crea-
tivity session at hand and provide strategies for
exactly how new ideas can be developed. For
example, brainstorming provides the user with
a clear set of rules and steps for how to get to
new ideas. Transformational leadership theory,
however, does not focus on what exactly leaders
should do in a creativity session. Transforma-
tional leaders, rather, develop an environment or
climate where creative ideas are likely to emerge.
They encourage and stimulate their followers to
develop new ideas. They display confidence and
do not blame someone if a new idea fails. They
communicate an attractive vision of what can be
accomplished; by serving as a role model, they
thereby provide additional motivation. Therefore,
the influence of transformational leadership on
creativity can be characterized as more generic,
interpersonal and cross situational (cf. Herold,
Fedor and Caldwell, 2007).
An encouraging climate and an inspiring per-
sonal relationship are important prerequisites for
the emergence of creative ideas. This reasoning is
in line with Agars, Kaufman and Locke (2008),
who state that probably the most important
insight of research on leadership and creativity is
that leadership styles create a ‘climate or context
that is supportive of creativity’ (p. 44). However,
in a concrete creativity session, a leader has more
options for stimulating creativity. By the use of
creativity techniques, leaders can positively influ-
ence processes that are relevant for followers’ per-
formance on a creative task (cf. Amabile, 1982).
Therefore, in creativity sessions, leaders often
decide to employ creativity techniques (Rickards
and Clark, 2006). Actually, in their review of lead-
ership behaviours that contribute to creativity,
Mumford et al. (2002) propose that the applica-
tion of creativity techniques is a powerful strategy
for stimulating followers’ creativity.
However, previous field and experimental
research on leadership and creativity has provided
very little information regarding whether the
leader employed a creativity technique at all and,
if so, which techniques were involved. Therefore,
this research has provided little insight into the
role of the creativity techniques and their inter-
play with leadership styles. Moreover, though we
gained information about the general leadership
style, we were not informed about the amount
of encouragement, confidence and inspiration
employed during a specific task or project. Previ-
ous experimental studies that compared the effect
of transformational vs transactional leadership on
creativity (Jung, 2000–2001; Kahai, Sosik and
Avolio, 2003; Sosik, Avolio and Kahai, 1997)
focused exclusively on different brainstorming
conditions during the phase of idea generation
and did not consider alternative creativity tech-
niques. We argue that there may be alternatives
such as the provocation technique that may help
leaders to encourage follower creativity more
effectively (Sternberg and Lubart, 1999). A com-
parison between different techniques would be
informative for leaders and help them to employ
the appropriate technique. Even though in prac-
tice a leader’s leadership style may be more or less
associated with a certain creativity technique, we
consider both these concepts as two independent
factors, i.e. transactional leaders may decide
whether they apply brainwriting or the provoca-
tion technique. The same applies to transforma-
tional leadership, which is not inherently or
necessarily linked to a specific technique. Trans-
formational leaders may apply brainwriting or the
provocation technique as well.
Given the largely independent traditions of
these two approaches that are both supposed to
enhance creativity, little is known about the inter-
action between leadership styles and creativity
techniques. Therefore, the current study is a pre-
liminary step towards a deeper understanding of
the interplay between leadership styles and differ-
ent creativity techniques.
Another reason why previous experimental
research on leadership style and creativity has
been somewhat inconsistent (Jung, 2000–2001;
Kahai, Sosik and Avolio, 2003; Sosik, Avolio and
Kahai, 1997) may result from inappropriate
outcome criteria. As Kahai, Sosik and Avolio
(2003) state, the quality of idea generation was
not considered sufficiently. Whereas Jung (2000–
2001) found that transformational leadership
outperformed transactional leadership in stimu-
lating creativity, Kahai, Sosik and Avolio (2003)
and Sosik, Avolio and Kahai (1997) found the
opposite.
It is possible that there is no clear evidence for
the superiority of transformational over transac-
tional leadership, because only the quantity, but
not the quality, of idea generation was taken
into account. This reasoning is in line with Jung
and Avolio (2000), who speculate that, relative
to transactional leadership, transformational
210 D. Herrmann and J. Felfe
© 2012 The Author(s)
British Journal of Management © 2012 British Academy of Management.
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