Linking visionary leadership to creativity at multiple levels: The role of goal-related processes

Abstract

Conceptualizing visionary leadership as a multilevel phenomenon that is manifested as dual-level (i.e., team and individual level) visionary leadership, we explore how it influences multilevel creativity through multilevel goal-related processes. Using two-wave data collected from 272 employees and 75 corresponding supervisors, we find that visionary leadership affects creativity through multilevel pathways. Specifically, team-level visionary leadership influences team creativity via team goal commitment, while individual-level visionary leadership influences employee creativity by fostering leader-follower goal congruence. The results also support two cross-level effects, i.e., team-level visionary leadership strengthens the relationship between individual-level visionary leadership and leader-follower congruence, and team goal commitment amplifies the effects of leader-follower goal congruence on employee creativity. This study thus sets the stage for further theoretical research on dual-level visionary leadership and how it functions at multiple levels to increase creativity.