An examination of leadership and employee creativity: The relevance of traits and relationships

Creativity is becoming a topic of ever-increasing interest to organizationa l managers. Thus, there is a need for a greater understanding of the dynami cs between the personal and contextual factors responsible for creative per formance in work settings. In particular, there is a need to identify the r ole of leadership for creativity. Until now, creativity studies have examin ed leadership and employee characteristics from a single-domain perspective . Data from 191 R&D employees of a large chemical company were used to test a multidomain, interactionist creativity model of employee characteristics , leader characteristics, and Leader-Member Exchange (LMX). Results suggest that employee intrinsic motivation and cognitive style, LMX, the interacti ons between employee intrinsic motivation and leader intrinsic motivation, and between LMX and employee cognitive style relate to employee creative pe rformance as measured by supervisor ratings, invention disclosure forms, or research reports. Implications for practicing managers and research on lea dership and creativity are discussed.