Ethical and Empowering Leadership Styles and Follower Creativity: A Meta-Analytic Review

Abstract

The importance of creativity in contributing to organizational innovation, survival, and growth is widely recognized, especially in today’s knowledge-based economy. Although leadership has been identified as an essential factor driving creativity in organizations, few studies have compared the effects of different leadership styles on employee creativity. Therefore, this meta- analytic review synthesizes the literature on the effects of leadership on creativity by comparing the effectiveness of six ethical and empowering leadership styles (i.e., authentic, empowering, ethical, humble, transformational, and servant) and contrasting them with charismatic and transactional leadership. Our meta-analytic sample was derived from 140 primary sources, which included 141 independent samples and 37,604 individual observations. Overall, the effects range from essentially nil to moderate in size. A relative weights analysis confirmed the effectiveness of authentic leadership when compared to the other ethical and empowering leadership styles. Examining several contextual and methodological moderators, we found that source of creativity ratings, study setting (laboratory vs. field), and sample characteristics (i.e., individualism and power distance) had a noticeable influence on the strength of the observed effects. Other factors, including level of analysis, did not moderate the effects. Implications of our findings for practice and avenues for future research are discussed.