Leadership and Creativity

Descriptive statistics, reliabilities and correlations are provided in Table 2. As expected, entrepreneurial leadership is significantly correlated with employee creativity (r = .58, p < .01), team creativity (r = .64, p < .01), creative self-efficacy (r = .52, p < .01) and team creative efficacy (r = .35, p < .01). Furthermore, creative self-efficacy is significantly correlated with employee creativity (r = .50, p < .01), and team creative efficacy is correlated with team creativity (r = .53, p < .01).

We use HLM to examine the multilevel influences on employee creativity (see Table 3), and we use hierarchical regression analysis to examine the team-level influences (see Table 4). Before testing the hypotheses, we run a null model to examine the significance of systematic between-group variance. The results show that the proportion of variance is 20%, and the chi-square test is significant (χ² [42] = 255.44, p < .001), supporting the use of HLM.

Table 4 Results of hierarchical regression analysis predicting entrepreneurial leadership, team creative efficacy and team creativity

Entrepreneurial leadership is significantly related to employee creativity, as shown in Table 3 (γ = 0.75, p < .001), and to team creativity, as shown in Table 4 (β = 0.77, p < .001). Thus, H1 and H2 are both supported.

H3 predicts that entrepreneurial leadership is positively related to creative self-efficacy. Model 2 in Table 3 shows significance (γ = 0.69, p < .001), supporting H3. To test the mediational effects of creative self-efficacy in H4, we regress both creative self-efficacy and entrepreneurial leadership in model 3. The results indicate that both creative self-efficacy (γ = 0.19, p < .01) and entrepreneurial leadership (γ = 0.75, p < .001) are significantly related to employee creativity, in accordance with H4.

Regarding the cross-level effects, in Table 3, we first regress team efficacy in model 4 to establish the effect of team-level efficacy on individual-level creativity and then simultaneously add entrepreneurial leadership and team creative efficacy to model 5 in order to determine the mediator of team creative efficacy. H6 is supported in model 4, as the team creative efficacy-employee creativity relationship is significant (γ = 0.84, p < .001). Likewise, the results in model 5 show that both entrepreneurial leadership (γ = 0.60, p < .001) and team creative efficacy (γ = 0.57, p < .001) are significantly related to employee creativity, supporting H7.

Table 4 shows the results of the influences at the team level. Model 2 supports H5 that entrepreneurial leadership is positively related to team creative efficacy (β = 0.28, p < .05). Model 3 shows that both entrepreneurial leadership (β = 0.60, p < .01) and creative team efficacy (β = 0.60, p < .01) are significantly related to team creativity, lending support for H8.

Bootstrapped CIs corroborate the significant indirect effects of entrepreneurial leadership on employee creativity through creative self-efficacy (CI_95% = [0.04, 0.22]) and through team creative efficacy (CI_95% = [0.05, 0.18]); in addition, the indirect effects of entrepreneurial leadership on team creativity through team creative efficacy (CI_95% = [0.01, 0.39]) are significant. That is, the entrepreneurial leadership-employee/team creativity associations are partially mediated by creative self-efficacy and team creative efficacy, again supporting H4, H7 and H8.