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A Double‐edged Sword: Transformational Leadership and Individual Creativity
Author(s) -
Eisenbeiß Silke Astrid,
Boerner Sabine
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
british journal of management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.407
H-Index - 108
eISSN - 1467-8551
pISSN - 1045-3172
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8551.2011.00786.x
Subject(s) - transformational leadership , creativity , transactional leadership , psychology , social psychology , charisma , sword , shared leadership , dependency (uml) , political science , engineering , law , mechanical engineering , systems engineering
Leadership research has focused on the positive effects of transformational and charismatic leadership but has neglected the negative side effects. Addressing this gap, we analysed followers' dependency on the leader as a relevant negative side effect in the relationship between transformational leadership and followers' creativity and developed an integrative framework on parallel positive and negative effects of transformational leadership. As expected, results from a study with 416 R & D employees showed that transformational leadership promotes followers' creativity but at the same time increases followers' dependency which in turn reduces their creativity. This negative indirect effect attenuates the positive influence of transformational leadership on followers' creativity.