Inspiring Employee Creativity in HEI’s through Inner-Leader Effect: The Self-Leadership Pathway to Creativity through Meaningfulness, Proactive Personality and Creative Process Engagement

Abstract

Drawing upon the Ford’s theory of Creative Individual actions, this study tested a theoretical model which clarified why and how Self-leadership (SL), along with SL strategies (i.e., Behavior, Reward and Thought cognition) are more (or less) effective in promoting employee Creativity (EC) through Creative Process Engagement (CPE). The study further defined an uncover motivational conditions that might enhance the linkages between SL, CPE and EC. We speculated that both employees’ sense of Meaningful work (WM; as a Cognitive aspect) and a Proactive Personality (PP; as a personal aspect) moderates the correlation, but in diverse ways, and also this association was carried out via employees’ Creative Process engagement and hence creativity at workplace. We investigate our study propositions from 289 HEI’s employees and collected through survey data. Results specify that self-leadership is effective in stimulating employee creativity (self-rated), when the relationship is mediated through CPE. The high sense of Meaningful work (WM) and Proactive Personality (PP) heightened the engagement in creativity-related procedures and activities, which ultimately, enhanced employee creativity (self-rated). The study outcomes not only concentrated on mechanisms that trigger Self-leadership and Creativity relationship, but also highlighted the prominence of activities in Creative process engagement (i.e., Problem identification, Information searching and encoding, and Idea generation). Together, this research extends the consequences of several self-influencing dispositional factors on employee creativity and hence propose some new insights for further research.