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Implicit followership theory to employee creativity: The roles of leader–member exchange, self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 July 2017

Ming Kong ,
Haoying Xu ,
Aiqin Zhou  and
Yue Yuan
Ming Kong*
Affiliation:
Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management, Beijing, China
Haoying Xu
Affiliation:
Business School, Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing, China
Aiqin Zhou
Affiliation:
Faculty of Business, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong
Yue Yuan
Affiliation:
School of Economics and Management, Southwest University of Science and Technology, Mianyang, Sichuan Province, China
*
Corresponding author: kongm.13@sem.tsinghua.edu.cn
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Abstract

Leaders’ implicit followership theory describes leaders’ personal assumptions about the traits and behaviors that characterize followers. Unlike traditional organizational behavior research, studies on leaders’ implicit followership theory can deepen our understandings of ‘how leaders and followers perceive, decide and take action’ from follower-centric perspective. Adopting 267 follower–leader dyads from 16 Chinese enterprises as our final sample, we found that: (1) positive leaders’ implicit followership theory had significant positive effect on followers’ creativity; (2) followers’ leader–member exchange with leader, intrinsic motivation and creative self-efficacy mediated the positive relationship between positive leaders’ implicit followership theory and followers’ creativity; (3) no significance difference was found between the mediating effects of leader–member exchange, intrinsic motivation and creative self-efficacy. The current study not only extended the application of social cognitive theory in leadership research, but also made contributions to the enrichment of social exchange theory and componential theory of creativity.

Keywords

followers’ creativityleader–member exchangeintrinsic motivationcreative self-efficacy
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Management & Organization , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , January 2019 , pp. 81 - 95
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management 2017 

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Footnotes

†

Ming Kong and Haoying Xu contributed equally to this article.

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