How responsible leadership pays off: Role of organizational identification and organizational culture for creative idea sharing

Abstract

Encouraging employees to share their creative ideas has been widely acknowledged as a crucial factor in enhancing organizational effectiveness. This research examines whether employees' idea sharing depends on leadership behavior and how organizational identification and culture explain the variations in creative ideas sharing among employees. Building on social learning theory, this research postulates a positive relationship between responsible leadership and creative idea sharing directly and indirectly by the development of organizational identification; additionally, a conditional indirect effect was also proposed for this research data was collected from the nurses, medical support staffs, heads of departments, and administrative personnel from primary and secondary health care units in South-Punjab. Data from 387 subordinates and their respective 67 supervisors was collected and analyzed with partial least squares (PLS) for moderated mediation, direct effects, indirect effects, conditional indirect effects, and CFA. The results indicated that responsible leadership is positively and significantly related to employees' creative idea-sharing directly and indirectly through the mediation of organizational identification. Organizational culture positively moderated the relationship between responsible leadership and creative idea sharing and between responsible leadership and organizational identification. Responsible leadership was positively related to organizational identification and creative idea sharing only when the organization has a highly supportive culture and negative otherwise. The relevant sections also discuss research contributions, limitations, and future research directions.