The effect of Empowering Leadership and Openness to Experience on Creativity, and the mediating role of Engagement

Abstract

Many leadership styles have been studied as possible antecedents of engagement and creativity, with varying results. The present study focuses on empowering leadership as a relevant relatively novel form of leadership. In this study, the benefits of empowering leadership were investigated in relation to the important organizational assets engagement and creativity, as both engagement and creativity have been shown to be key drivers of organizational success and competitive advantage. Moreover, openness to experience was included since personality traits have also been studied in relation to both creativity and engagement with successful results. Consequently, the purpose of this study was to examine the effect of both empowering leadership and openness to experience on creativity and to investigate the mediating role of engagement. A sample of 70 employees from different organizations was surveyed to gather data. Results of regression analysis showed that higher levels of empowering leadership resulted in lower levels of engagement amongst employees. As for openness to experience, results showed that higher levels of openness to experience were associated with higher levels of creativity. Looking at the relation between openness to experience and creativity, mediation analysis showed that engagement did not mediate the effect of openness to experience on creativity. The findings have important implications for organizations as both openness to experience and empowering leadership have been shown to influence important work outcomes.