CEO变革型领导与高管团队创造力:一个被调节的中介模型

CEO Transformational Leadership and TMT Creativity: A Moderated Mediating Model

战略型领导与高管团队创造力之间的作用机制是战略管理及创造力研究领域的前沿问题。本文以创造力组成理论和社会资本理论为基础,通过构建一个被调节的中介模型,对变革型领导、团队过程(学习行为、创造氛围)和外部社会资本影响高管团队创造力的机制进行研究。通过对90个企业高管团队的调查数据进行统计分析,结果表明,变革型领导通过团队学习行为对团队创造力产生积极影响,外部社会资本越高,团队学习行为发挥的中介作用越强。虽然团队创造氛围没有中介变革型领导与团队创造力间的关系,但是创造氛围对团队创造力的正向影响随着外部社会资本的提高而增强。本文的研究结论揭示了宏观层面因素对微观领域研究的作用机理,为探索社会资本理论与创造力组成理论的融合提供了新思路。

In the face of rapidly changing and extremely competitive environments, organization is confronted with the need to enhance creativity at the levels of individual, group and organization. The creativity within top management team（TMT） is of particularly importance because organizational acceptance and promotion of innovation require top management support and involvement, and TMT members play a critical role in recognizing opportunities and making decisions that affect innovation processes. Thus, whether and how CEO strategic leadership impacts TMT creativity has become an essential issue in the fields of both strategic management and creativity research. Transformational leadership（TFL） is one of the most prevalent approaches to understanding strategic leadership.Prior research has primarily focused on middle-level managers’ TFL on employee and work team creativity, while giving much less attention to an understanding of how CEO’s TFL makes impacts on TMT creativity. On the basis of componential theory of creativity and social capital theory, we present a moderated mediating model to explore how TFL, team processes（i.e. team learning behavior and team creative climate） and external social capital exert influence on TMT creativity. Using data from 90 TMTs from firms operating in Chengdu modern industrial park in China, we tested the hypothesized model. The results indicate that TFL has a positive impact on TMT creativity, and this impact is realized through the mediating role of team learning behavior. Moreover, the mediating effect of team learning behavior is more positive when TMTs have higher level of external social capital. Although team creative climate does not play a mediating role between TFL and TMT creativity, the team creative climate’s positive effect on creativity is strengthened with the enhancement of external social capital. This paper extends previous research in several important ways. First, our study is among the first effort to build theoretical and empirical connections between CEO’s TFL and TMT creativity and has made an important advance towards developing a deeper understanding of TFL and its effects within leadership, creativity and upper echelon literature. Second, in response to previous call for more research on the team process through which leadership inf luences team creativity, our study confirms that team learning behavior acts as an intervening factor in translating CEO’s TFL effects to TMT creativity. As such, our finding adds to the emerging body of empirical evidence for componential theory of creativity at a TMT level of analysis. Thirdly, our study adds value to literature on creativity and social capital by providing a fresh insight from social capital perspective to understand the boundary conditions for TFL’s effects on creativity. The findings show that the mediating effect of team learning behavior on TFL-TMT creativity association is contingent upon the level of external social capital that senior managers acquired from their personal network. Our study thus takes a step toward integrating the research stream of both creativity and social capital theory. Finally, this study advances our knowledge about the roles of TFL and social capital in the Chinese context. Joining in an increasing number of empirical studies that link external social capital to innovation, our study brings the question to real work settings of TMTs in Chinese firms and confirms that TMT social capital serves as critical contingency for TFL’s effects on creativity.