The influence of leader regulatory focus on employee creativity

Cindy Wu, Jeffery S. McMullen, Mitchell J. Neubert and Xiang Yi

Journal of Business Venturing, 2008, vol. 23, issue 5, 587-602

Abstract: Brockner and Higgins (Brockner, J., Higgins, E. T. 2001. Regulatory focus theory: Implications for the study of emotions at work. Organizational Behavior & Human Decision Processes, 86(1), 35-66.) suggest that a leader's behavior may be perceived as an organizational endorsement of promotion-focused or prevention-focused concerns and that this perception will influence employee behavior by eliciting a congruent state of regulatory focus. We tested this hypothesis using matched pairs of leaders and employees from a Chinese firm and found that employee creativity is positively associated with the promotion focus of the supervisor's behavior. Consequently, through their actions, promotion-focused leaders may increase the likelihood of entrepreneurial action in their firms by eliciting a promotion-focused state of eagerness from their employees.

Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0883-9026(07)00076-6
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbvent:v:23:y:2008:i:5:p:587-602

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Venturing is currently edited by S. Venkataraman

More articles in Journal of Business Venturing from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().