Responsible leadership and employee creativity: a moderated mediation model based on social cognitive and situational strength theories

Abstract

Background: In today’s uncertain organizational environment, employee creativity has become the key driver of enterprise sustainability. Although previous studies have found the influence of responsible leadership on employee creativity, there remains a lack of study on how responsible leadership promotes employee creativity via intrinsic motivation mechanisms and what situational factors may moderate this process. This paper aims to construct a moderate-mediation model to examine the impact of responsible leadership and employee creativity through social cognitive theory and situational strength theory. Design/methodology/approach: The authors conducted a multi-source, time-lagged data collection between June and July 2023. At Time 1, subordinates assessed responsible leadership and psychological empowerment. At Time 2, conducted 4 weeks later, the same subordinates evaluated the leader’s encouragement of creativity and their employee creativity. In total, 1,126 participants completed both waves of data collection. Findings: The results suggest that responsible leadership has a positive effect on both psychological empowerment and employee creativity. Moreover, psychological empowerment partially mediates the relationship between responsible leadership and employee creativity. The extent to which a leader promotes creativity can influence how responsible leadership and psychological empowerment contribute to employee creativity. Conclusions: This study reveals the internal psychological mechanisms and situational boundaries through which responsible leadership influences employee creativity, thereby enriching the theoretical foundation of leadership and creativity research. The findings indicate that organizations should prioritize the development of responsible leadership, strengthening psychological empowerment mechanisms, and promoting a supportive, creative environment. This includes encouraging creativity, promoting fault-tolerant experimentation, and implementing recognition systems to fully unlock employees’ creative potential.