“The power of ethical leadership”: The influence of corporate social responsibility on creativity, the mediating function of psychological safety, and the moderating role of ethical leadership

Abstract

A body of existing literature delves into how corporate social responsibility (CSR) affects employees’ cognition, emotion, and behavior within an organization. These previous studies, however, pay relatively little attention to the influence of CSR on levels of creativity in employees. Considering that creativity is closely related to innovative capability, which is critical for a firm to survive, the relationship between CSR and employees’ creativity and its elaborate underlying processes need further investigation. Based on a group creativity model, we argue that CSR may increase levels of creativity in employees through mediation of enhanced levels of psychological safety in employees. In addition, existing works on CSR have relatively underexplored the contextual role of leadership in translating CSR practices into employees’ attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors. Using three-wave time-lagged survey data from 311 employees in South Korea, we found that CSR enhances employees’ creativity via mediation of psychological safety. Additionally, ethical leadership positively moderates the relationship between CSR and psychological safety. Our findings suggest that psychological safety in employees functions as an important underlying mechanism to describe the CSR–employee creativity link. Furthermore, this paper emphasizes the importance of the moderating role of ethical leadership in the process of CSR activities.