Leadership, creativity and innovation: a meta-analytic review
Open accessAbstract
This paper reports the most comprehensive meta-analytic examination of the relationship between leadership and both followers’ creative and innovative performance. Specifically, we examined 13 leadership variables (transformational, transactional, ethical, humble, leader-member exchange, benevolent, authoritarian, entrepreneurial, authentic, servant, empowering, supportive, and destructive) using data from 266 studies. In addition to providing robustly estimated correlations, we explore two theoretically and pragmatically important issues: the relative importance of the different leadership constructs and moderators of the relationship between leadership and employee creativity and innovation. Regrading creative performance, authentic, empowering, and entrepreneurial leadership demonstrated the strongest relationships. For innovative performance, both transactional (contingent reward) and supportive leadership appear particularly relevant. The current study synthesizes an important, burgeoning, diverse body of research, and in doing so, generates nuanced evidence that can be used to guide theoretical advancements, improved research designs, and up-to-date policy recommendations regarding leading for creativity, and innovation.
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BackgroundMethodInfluential
- Authors
- Lee, A., Legood, A., Hughes, D., Tian, A. W., Newman, A., & Knight, C.
- Affiliations
- University of Exeter (GB)
- University of Manchester (GB)
- Curtin University (AU)
- Deakin University (AU)
- Corresponding author
- Lee, Allan
- Venue
- European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2019-09-15
- Volume
- 29
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 1-35
- ISSN
- 1359-432X (ISSN-L)
- 1464-0643
- OpenAlex
- W2973071012
- Cited by
- 425
- References
- 29
- Citations by year
- 2026: 67 · 2025: 70 · 2024: 83 · 2023: 79 · 2022: 65 · 2021: 43 · 2020: 15 · 2018: 2 · 2014: 1
- FWCI
- 43.15
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- Licence
- other-oa
- Locations
- European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology (publishedVersion)
- Research Explorer (The University of Manchester) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- Open Research Exeter (University of Exeter) (acceptedVersion)
- Open Research Exeter (University of Exeter) (submittedVersion)
- eSpace (Curtin University) (submittedVersion)
- Figshare (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Figshare (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management › Employee Performance and Leadership
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management › Job Satisfaction and Organizational Behavior
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Team Dynamics and Performance
- Keywords
- leadership, employee creativity, innovation performance, transformational leadership, authentic leadership, empowering leadership, entrepreneurial leadership, supportive leadership, transactional leadership, leader-member exchange, destructive leadership, servant leadership, ethical leadership, authoritarian leadership, benevolent leadership
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