Authoritarian leadership and employee creativity: The moderating role of psychological capital and the mediating role of fear and defensive silence

ORCID Identifiers

0000-0002-9468-6183

Document Type

Article

Source of Publication

Journal of Business Research

Publication Date

11-1-2018

Abstract

© 2018 Elsevier Inc. Drawing from the transactional theory of stress, we examined the relationships between authoritarian leadership, fear, defensive silence, and ultimately employee creativity. We also explored the moderating effect of employee psychological capital on these mediated relationships. We tested our hypothesized model in two studies of employee-supervisor dyads working in Africa (Nigeria; Study 1) and Asia (China; Study 2). The results of Study 1 revealed that the negative relationship between authoritarian leadership and creativity was mediated by employee defensive silence. Extending these findings in a three-wave study in Study 2, our results revealed a more complex relationship. Specifically, our results showed that both fear and defensive silence serially mediated the link between authoritarian leadership and employee creativity. In addition, we found that this mediated relationship was moderated by employee psychological capital such that the relationship was stronger when psychological capital was low (versus high). Implications for both theory and practice are discussed.

ISSN

0148-2963

Publisher

Elsevier Inc.

Volume

92

First Page

219

Last Page

230

Disciplines

Business

Keywords

Authoritarian leadership, Defensive silence, Employee creativity, Fear, Psychological capital

Scopus ID

85050675674

Indexed in Scopus

yes

Open Access

yes

Open Access Type

Green: A manuscript of this publication is openly available in a repository

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