An Inclusive Leadership Framework to Foster Employee Creativity in the Healthcare Sector: The Role of Psychological Safety and Polychronicity

Qinghua Fu, Jacob Cherian, Naveed Ahmad, Miklas Scholz, Sarminah Samad and Ubaldo Comite
Additional contact information
Qinghua Fu: Department of Business Administration, Moutai Institute, Renhuai 564507, China
Jacob Cherian: College of Business, Abu Dhabi University, Abu Dhabi P.O. Box 59911, United Arab Emirates
Naveed Ahmad: Faculty of Management Studies, University of Central Punjab, Lahore 54000, Pakistan
Miklas Scholz: Division of Water Resources Engineering, Department of Building and Environmental Technology, Faculty of Engineering, Lund University, P.O. Box 118, 221 00 Lund, Sweden
Sarminah Samad: Department of Business Administration, College of Business and Administration, Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University, Riyadh 11671, Saudi Arabia
Ubaldo Comite: Department of Business Sciences, University Giustino Fortunato, 82100 Benevento, Italy

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 8, 1-13

Abstract: Creativity at the level of employees is of utmost importance for every sector of an economy, with no exception to a healthcare system. The reason why employee creativity is important lies in the fact that employees have profound knowledge of their job and thus can serve as a source of meaningful innovation in an organization. Research shows that employee creativity is largely dependent on leadership. Corporate leaders significantly influence subordinates’ behavior. However, with the economic development, globalization, and changing business environment, a traditional authoritative leadership style can no longer be effective in understanding employees’ psychological needs to foster their creative behavior. In this regard, the role of inclusive leadership as an effective organizational management strategy was recently discussed in literature at different levels. It was also stated that an inclusive leader could foster employee creativity. However, such relationships in healthcare systems of developing economies have largely remained under-explored previously. We explored employee creativity in a healthcare context of a developing economy in an inclusive leadership framework to bridge such knowledge gaps. We also investigated the mediating roles of psychological safety and polychronicity in the above-stated relationship. We collected the data from hospital employees through a questionnaire (paper–pencil method). A hypothetical model was developed, which was tested through structural equation modeling in AMOS. Based upon the statistical outcomes, we found that an inclusive leadership style in a hospital can significantly foster employee creativity, whereas psychological safety and polychronicity mediate this relationship. This study offers different theoretical and practical insights, especially to a healthcare system. An important finding was that an inclusive leader can motivate the followers to be more creative. This finding is significant for a hospital because creative employees provide a hospital with a solid competitive base.

Keywords: leadership; creativity; psychological safety; healthcare system; polychronicity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/8/4519/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/8/4519/ (text/html)

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:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:8:p:4519-:d:789926

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().