Leader–member exchange, feelings of energy, and involvement in creative work

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Abstract

This study examined how leaders create the impetus for creativity at work. One hundred ninety-three employees occupying a variety of jobs in Israeli organizations completed surveys at two points in time to assess their perceptions of the quality of their relationship with their leader (LMX), their level of energy, and their creative work involvement. SEM and regression analyses showed that LMX was positively related to employees' feelings of energy, which in turn were related to a high level of involvement in creative work. Factors that leaders should take into consideration in promoting followers' creative behaviors are discussed.

Introduction

In a knowledge-based economy, organizations face rising needs to increase not only productivity among their workers, but also their creativity. The speed of technological change as well as globalization and increasing competition, both domestically and internationally, has put enormous pressure on companies to be first-to-market, quick to solve problems, and ready to develop new ideas for products and procedures. Therefore, enhancing creativity, “the production of novel and useful ideas by an individual or small group of individuals working together” (Amabile, 1988, p. 126), has rapidly become a key goal of many organizations (Mumford, Scott, Gaddis, & Strange, 2002).3 This poses a major leadership challenge as managers seek ways to augment and maintain creativity at work. Thus, a key research question is how leaders motivate individuals to engage in creative tasks (Mumford et al., 2002).

The processes by which managers encourage employees to become involved in creative work have yet to be fully understood. Despite research suggesting that leadership is important to creativity and innovativeness (Jung et al., 2003, Scott and Bruce, 1994) and accumulating evidence that supports this notion (e.g., Redmond et al., 1993, Shin and Zhou, 2003, Sosik et al., 1998, Tierney and Farmer, 2004), the potential influence of leadership on creativity has been understudied (Mumford et al., 2002). Amabile, Schatzel, Moneta & Kramer noted, “the literature linking specific leader behaviors to group performance is scant (Kim & Yukl, 1995, p. 352), and the literature linking specific leader behaviors to individual creative performance is even smaller” (2004, p. 9).

Although researchers have long been interested in the antecedents and consequences of job involvement (Carmeli, 2005, Dubin, 1956, Kanungo, 1982, Rabinowitz and Hall, 1977), relatively little is known about involvement in creative work, i.e., “the extent to which an employee engages his or her time and effort resources in creative processes associated with work” (Carmeli & Schaubroeck, 2007, p. 36). Creative work involvement is of importance for creative achievements and innovation (Carmeli and Schaubroeck, 2007, Keller, 1997, Mumford et al., 2002). However, how and why individuals are motivated to become involved in creative work remains unclear and needs further research. As Carmeli & Schaubroeck noted: “although outcomes of the creative process are often studied, one of the key questions in creativity research relates to the motivation of individuals to become and remain creatively engaged at work” (2007, p. 36).

This theoretical call to better understand why some employees are more involved in creative tasks than others is crucial because creative work requires high levels of mental energy, focus and persistence and it differs from more repetitive work in terms of the demands it places on workers and leaders. Workers in jobs that require a high level of creativity are often individuals whose creative ideas do not fit into a typical 9–5 workday. They need to feel highly energized and enthusiastic about their work. The creative work environment has been described as highly dynamic “full speed”, “go”, and “breakneck” as compared to slow, job-trot environments with few surprises (Ekvall, 1996). Thus, leaders need to find ways to induce a level of energy that will result in high involvement in creative work.

Energy, the feeling that a person is capable of and eager to engage in a particular behavior or undertake a task (Dutton, 2003, Quinn and Dutton, 2005), clearly contributes to one's involvement in creative work, but as Polewsky & Will (1996) point out, “it is not all that easy to free up creative energy; new ideas and innovative vigour don't just materialize of their own free will — they require a special background and specific conditions…” (p. 43).4

How do leaders energize their employees to be involved in creative work? Researchers have directed some attention to studying how leaders provide the impetus for creativity in the workplace (e.g., Redmond et al., 1993, Shin and Zhou, 2003, Tierney and Farmer, 2004, Tierney et al., 1999). Amabile's (1983) Componential Theory of Creativity serves as the theoretical basis for the claim that supervisor's support “exerts an influence on subordinates' creativity through direct help with the project, the development of subordinate expertise, and the enhancement of subordinate intrinsic motivation” (Amabile et al., 2004, p. 6). These behaviors include serving as a role model, showing openness to new ideas, planning and setting goals appropriately, supporting the work group within the organization, shaping quality communication and interaction with work unit members, valuing individuals' contributions to the work task, showing confidence in them, and providing constructive feedback (Amabile et al., 2004). These specific, supportive leadership behaviors constitute both task-oriented and relationship-oriented actions (Amabile et al., 2004) that enhance one's willingness to become involved in creative work.

Theory and research have noted that an influential way to energize the workplace and augment involvement in the job is through high-quality interpersonal relationships (Dutton, 2003). However, studies that have focused on the relationship between leader–member exchange (LMX) and creativity have reported mixed results (Elkins and Keller, 2003, Tierney et al., 1999).

In an attempt to address this call and further contributing to this line of thinking and research, we investigate the intervening role of employee feelings of energy in the relationship between employee perceptions of LMX and creative work involvement. The present study draws on three emerging theories. First, consistent with the Componential Theory of Creativity in the workplace (Amabile, 1983), we argue that relational leadership shapes positive social exchanges between the leader and the follower. This positive exchange not only helps develop expertise and enhance cognitive thinking and flexibility but also enhances the motivation of the follower to be involved in creative work (Amabile, 1997). In this study, we focus on the employee's motivation to engage in creative work. Second, we follow a relatively new stream of research that has begun to document the effect of affect on creativity at work (Amabile et al., 2005, Fredrickson, 1998, Fredrickson, 2001). Third, we build on emerging research on high-quality interpersonal relationships at work (Dutton, 2003, Dutton and Heaphy, 2003, Dutton and Ragins, 2007) which enriches the Componential Theory of Creativity (Amabile, 1983). Dutton (2003) argues that high-quality relationships lead to positive emotions such as joy and interest, which help increase individuals' capacity to think and act in the moment.

Section snippets

Leadership and creativity

Until the early 1980s, conventional wisdom prompted creativity researchers to focus on the background, personality traits and work style of creative people and how they differ from ‘normal’ (not outstandingly creative) people. However, this approach was “both limited and limiting” (Amabile, 1997, p. 42) because it did not take into account the work environment and its role in influencing employee creative behaviors. Amabile's (1983) watershed work about the Componential Theory of Creativity

Respondents and data collection

Two hundred and fifty-five employees working for industrial and service organizations in Israel were asked to participate in this study. In total, we sampled individuals from 24 different organizations and nearly 50 job types. Participants were asked to complete a structured survey at two points in time, with a lag of two weeks between Time 1 and Time 2. The questionnaires were distributed on site by research assistants who had approved access to administer surveys in the sampled organizations.

Results

The means, standard deviations, reliabilities and correlations among the research variables are presented in Table 1. The bivariate correlations indicate that employee perceptions of LMX were positively related to feelings of energy, (r = .47, p < .001) supporting Hypothesis 1. Individuals' feelings of energy were positively associated with creative work involvement (r = .59, p < .001) supporting Hypothesis 2. We also found that compared to individuals in service organizations, employees in

Discussion

In this study, we examined how employee perceptions of leader–member exchange (LMX) were related to employee energy and creative involvement at work. The findings indicate that leader–member exchange was positively associated with feelings of energy in employees, which, in turn, was related to a high involvement of employees in creative work.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Suzanne Peterson, John Schaubroeck, Esther Singer and Fred Walumbwa for their helpful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper. We also wish to thank the editor and three anonymous reviewers of this journal for their helpful comments and suggestions. All remaining errors are entirely our own.

Leanne Atwater is a professor of management and the chair of the management department in the C. T. Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston. She received her Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate School. Her research interests include leadership, feedback processes, self-other rating agreement and counter-productive work behavior.

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    Leanne Atwater is a professor of management and the chair of the management department in the C. T. Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston. She received her Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate School. Her research interests include leadership, feedback processes, self-other rating agreement and counter-productive work behavior.

    Abraham Carmeli is an associate professor of management and strategy at the Graduate School of Business Administration at Bar-Ilan University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Haifa. His current research interests include strategic fit, strategic leadership and top management teams, organizational images, organizational identification, relational dynamics, crisis management and individual behaviors at work.

    1

    Tel.: +1 713 743 6884.

    2

    The authors contributed equally and are listed in alphabetical order.

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