Participative leadership and employee creativity: a sequential mediation model of psychological safety and creative process engagement

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to draw upon social information processing theory to examine the sequential mediating roles of psychological safety and creative process engagement between participative leadership on creativity.Design/methodology/approachUsing a time-lagged sample of 526 supervisor–subordinate dyads from R&D teams of five enterprises located in the southwest part of China, we tested the theoretical model using structural equation modelling (SEM) as well as with the MPLUS 7.0 software.FindingsResults indicated that participative leadership is positively related to creative process engagement; psychological safety significantly mediates the relationship between participative leadership and creative process engagement; creative process engagement significantly mediates the relationship between psychological safety and employee creativity; psychological safety and creative process engagement sequentially mediates the relationship between participative leadership and creativity.Practical implicationsThe study findings imply that the participative leadership behaviors of managers or supervisor's nurtures employees psychological safety to take risk and promotes employee engagement in creativity relevant ventures leading to creativity.Originality/valueThe findings contribute new knowledge on the relationship between participative leadership and creativity by uncovering the causal chain of a cognitive mechanism (psychological safety) with a behavioral mechanism (creative process engagement).