19. Creative Leadership and Work Role Proficiency: The Mediating Role of Employee Innovativeness

Since the prevailing norm adopted by many successful businesses is that creativity is no longer an optional but a necessary feature of leadership, the present study develops and tests a model of the mechanisms linking different stages of the innovation process (delivered by different actors) and work role proficiency. Specifically, by examining a sample of 177 leader-member dyads from four public sector organizations based in a European Union member state, we showed that (1) leader creativity is positively related to employee organizational citizenship behavior (a direct effect) and (2) employee innovativeness mediates the positive relationship between leader creativity and employees’ work role proficiency dimensions (an indirect effect). Thus, we provided new evidence on the importance of leaders’ creative role modelling for achieving higher levels of followers’ task performance and organizational citizenship behavior.