Servant leadership, workplace well-being and employee creativity: The roles of psychological availability and experienced creative time pressure

Abstract

To better understand the effect of workplace well-being on employee creativity, we examine the effect of servant leadership on employee creativity. Using the social exchange and conservation of resources theories, we constructed a research model to identify how servant leadership affects employee creativity and to investigate its mechanism and boundary conditions. Using data collected from employees and their supervisors, we adapted the hierarchical regression analysis and bootstrapping approach to test our research model. The results showed that servant leadership positively affected workplace well-being, which enhances employee creativity. Psychological availability moderated the relationship between workplace well-being and employee creativity. We also found that the indirect effect of servant leadership on employee creativity via workplace well-being was significant when the employees had a high level of psychological availability. Moreover, the results indicated that experienced creative time pressure was negatively related to employee creativity and negatively moderated the link between workplace well-being and employee creativity. The indirect effect of servant leadership on employee creativity was significant when the employees had a low level of experienced creative time pressure. The results of this study provide important theoretical and practical implications for servant leadership and employee creativity.