Leadership is a principal contextual factor that influences creativity. However, transformational leadership strongly emphasizes how the leader directly influences individual members because a transformational leader can have different behavior for each member that will likely affect individual creativity, either direct or indirect, by mediating the work group's identification.
Student of Doctoral Program in Management Science, Faculty of Economics and Business, Sidum Trio Indarto, S.E., M.A., conveyed this statement in his doctoral promotion open examination on Wednesday (27/1). In the dissertation entitled, The Influence of Transformational Leadership on Group Creativity and Individual Creativity: Multilevel Approach, promovendus conducted research that involved 497 respondents that consist of team members filled out 397 questionnaires, team leaders filled out 63 questionnaires, and team leader superiors filled out 37 questionnaires. "The questionnaire used for data processing resulted from 63 teams. The analysis of this research uses a multilevel approach with single-level and cross-level models," he added.
Research-based that uses mediation of variable mechanism identification aims to examine how leadership influences employee creativity and innovation. Identification-based mediation mechanisms are essential to recognize leadership's influence on creativity. In fact, leadership is another form of motivational mechanism procured from self-conception theory, role identity theory, and relationship identification concepts.
The study results concluded that there are some differences in transformational leadership at the group and individual levels. The components of ideal influence and inspirational motivation that composed transformational leadership focus on group influence at the group and individual levels. On the other hand, intellectual stimulation and individual consideration components that composed transformational leadership focus on individuals considerably influence the individual level. "This study reinforces the result findings of some studies that other researchers conducted in other countries and found that transformational leadership was an individual and group phenomenon. Hence, its influences are likely possible to occur at the individual and group level," he said.
Additionally, he also revealed that the influence of transformational leadership befalls across levels. Transformational leadership that focuses on groups influences individual creativity, both direct and indirect, by mediating the work group's identification.
On the other side, identifying workgroups mediates the influence of group-focused transformational leadership on individual creativity. "Identification of relations with leaders mediates the influence of transformational leadership that focuses on individual creativity," he said.
Author: Gusti Grehenson
Photo: Freepik
Translator: Natasa A