Organizations currently operate in a highly competitive environment, making creativity a critical tool to enable employees to generate innovative ideas, engage in critical thinking, and develop new business opportunities. In the article “The effects of employees’ creative self-efficacy on innovative behavior: The role of entrepreneurial leadership,” Newman et al. (2018) examined leadership styles that motivate employees to become creative. Although the article demonstrates that entrepreneurial leaders enhance employee creativity, the study’s results cannot be effectively replicated or generalized to the entire population.
Creative self-efficacy (CSE) is a measure of creativity and it is directly linked to performance. Newman et al. (2018) adopted it to determine how leadership style impacts employees’ innovative ability. The researchers used a sample of 66 middle-level managers and 346 subordinates. They collected data through a questionnaire and used various measures for different types of leadership. These included the 8-item ENTRELEAD scale, 7-item global transformational leadership scale, and the 6-item Empowering Leadership Questionnaire. The researchers noted that entrepreneurial leaders challenged the employees with high CSE to be creative and to exploit business opportunities in order to generate unique ideas for business growth. The study ultimately used an effective methodology to show the link between leadership and CSE.
This study discussed a critical issue in the business environment because firms often look for a leadership style that will motivate employee creativity. However, the researchers did not provide detailed information about the effect of each of the styles on CSE. The lack of broad details means that the study cannot be effectively replicated in other organizations. Also, all participants were from one Chinese company, limiting the possibility of generalizing the findings to other firms which use different leadership styles. However, their research reduced the knowledge gap on the impact of leadership style on employees’ creativity and innovation. This paves the way for future researchers to explore more on the topic and to generate definitive results which can be generalized to more firms.
This article discussed a critical business topic, as firms require creativity to retain competitive advantage and to enhance customer value in the long term. It shared encouraging results on how entrepreneurial leaders motivate employees with high CSE to innovate. However, their study did not provide comprehensive details on the relation between creativity and leadership styles, and it selected participants from only one firm. Future research is therefore required to further examine the link between CSE and organizational leadership.
Reference
Newman, A., Herman, H. M., Schwarz, G., & Nielsen, I. (2018). The effects of employees’ creative self-efficacy on innovative behavior: The role of entrepreneurial leadership. Journal of Business Research, 89, 1-9. Web.