Linking Visionary Leadership and Creativity: A Multi-Level Investigation from the Goal Perspective

Abstract

Prior research mainly examined visionary leadership at either the individual level or the team level separately, which overlooks the integration of individual-level processes with team-level processes although it is acknowledged that leadership functions inherently multilevel. In the current study, we aim to fill this research gap by incorporating goal theories into multilevel leadership theories to further understand the effectiveness of visionary leadership. Specifically, we conceptualized visionary leadership as a multilevel phenomenon which manifests the dual-focused (i.e., team-level, and the individual perception of) visionary leadership in the team setting, and explored how it influences multilevel creativity-a core but neglected outcome-through multilevel goal processes. Using a two-wave data collected from 272 employees and their 75 corresponding supervisors in China, we found that visionary leadership affected creativity through multilevel pathways. Specifically, team-level visionary leadership influenced team creativity via its influences on team goal commitment, while individual-level visionary leadership influenced employee creativity by fostering leader-follower goal congruency. Besides, team goal commitment exerted a cross-level effect on employee creativity. Our study sets the stage for further research in theorizing dual-focused visionary leadership and understanding how it can function at multiple levels to increase creativity in organizations.