From ethical leadership to team creativity: The mediating role of shared leadership and the moderating effect of leader–member exchange differentiation

Abstract

Alongside ethical leadership’s effectiveness on team creativity, the superiority of shared leadership has been emphasized in the literature. Based on role theory, social information processing theory, and allocation preferences theory, this study suggests that shared leadership functions as a critical intermediating mechanism to explain the influence of ethical leadership on team-level creativity. Moreover, the dispersion value of leader–member exchange (LMXD) moderates the influence of ethical leadership on shared leadership. To empirically test our hypotheses, this paper used multisource samples and team-level data with moderated mediation model with PLS-SEM method. This study targeted a sample of 30 leaders and 233 team members who work at HRD Korea where a team structure is utilized. The results of structural equation modeling showed that ethical leadership increased shared leadership, and ethical leadership and shared leadership both positively affected team creativity. Shared leadership functioned as a crucial mediating factor in the ethical leadership–team creativity link. Moreover, the team-level LMXD moderated ethical leadership effectiveness on creativity via shared leadership.