Empirical analysis of roles of perceived leadership styles and trust on team members’ creativity: Evidence from Korean ICT companies

Computers in Human Behavior xxx (2014) xxx–xxx

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Empirical analysis of roles of perceived leadership styles and trust on team members’ creativity: Evidence from Korean ICT companies Nam Yong Jo, Kun Chang Lee ⇑, Dae Sung Lee, Minhee Hahn SKKU Business School, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul 110-745, Republic of Korea

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Available online xxxx Keywords: Leader’s consideration Leader’s initiating structure Trust in leaders Trust in organization Creativity

a b s t r a c t This research proposes a theoretical model linking the role of trust to perceived leadership styles and team members’ creativity. Although much attention has been given to trust in the field of organizational research, relatively few empirical investigations have been conducted on the relationship between trust and team members’ creativity. We examined the relationship between two types of trust and their influence on members’ creativity. Additionally, we investigated the members’ perceptions of their leaders’ behavioral styles and the influences of these on leader trust and organizational trust. We surveyed 350 employees working in ICT companies to validate empirical evaluations of leadership styles (consideration and initiating structure), trust, and creativity. The results showed that both leaders’ consideration and their initiating structure had a positive influence on trust in both the leader and the organization. On the other hand, while trust in the organization had a significant positive influence on members’ creativity, trust in the leader did not have a significant influence on team members’ creativity. Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Recently, we have seen dramatic developments in technology and innovation in the ICT industry. Innovations and reengineering in the manufacturing industry have led to widespread prosperity in the second half of the 20th century. Moreover, the power of software makes the industry even more fertile. For example, smart technology service, characterized by software-driven contents, produced Web 2.0 and SNS (Social Networking Service). Further, we see the desperate competition between involved parties, such as two of the world’s major smartphone manufacturers, Apple and Samsung Electronics, who compete with each other continually in the long-running, worldwide patent war. Their core controversial points are design, device user interface mechanisms and wireless technology patents, all of which are highly creative software assets. In this way, software trends in the ICT industry are characterized by rapid innovation and fast-growing competition with increasingly higher stakes. For these reasons and more, creativity in the ICT industry is one of the most interesting fields of research. Among organizational researchers, it is believed that leadership style affects team members in various ways: e.g., performance; ⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (N.Y. Jo), [email protected] (K.C. Lee), [email protected] (D.S. Lee), [email protected] (M. Hahn).

commitment, and creativity (Amabile, Schatzel, Moneta, & Kramer, 2004; Amabile, Schazel, & Moneta, 2004; Bock et al., 2008; Madjar, Oldham, & Pratt, 2002; Scott & Bruce, 1994; Tierney, Farmer, & Graen, 1999, Tierney & Farmer, 2002). Together with leadership types, how mediating and moderating factors affect team members’ creativity have been favorite topics in prior research (i.e., George & Zhou, 2007; Gumusluoglu & Ilsev, 2009; Zhang & Bartol, 2010). Much past evidence has revealed the relationship between specific leadership paradigms and creativity, but few studies have discussed the mediating role of trust between members’ creativity and their perceptions of leaders’ two distinctive behavior patterns (i.e., relationship anchored leadership and task-anchored leadership). Thus, based on the theories set forth in prior research, we proposed a dyadic model of trust with antecedents of members’ perceptions of leaders’ behavior styles and their effect on members’ creativity. This study attempted to shed light on the role of trust in building members’ creativity within organizations and to reveal how successfully two contrasting dichotomies of leadership features support dyadic forms of trust. For empirical investigation of members’ creativity in organizations, we surveyed the employees of various ICT companies in Korea who hold jobs requiring creativity. This paper is organized as follows. Section 2 contains a brief overview of related works suggested in our model and lays out our proposed hypotheses. In Section 3, the study methodology and statistical analyses are presented. Finally, we discuss our results and offer concluding remarks.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.03.015 0747-5632/Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article in press as: Jo, N. Y., et al. Empirical analysis of roles of perceived leadership styles and trust on team members’ creativity: Evidence from Korean ICT companies. Computers in Human Behavior (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.03.015

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2. Research model and hypotheses 2.1. Leadership styles In the historical context of the leadership literature, the early stages of study focused on situational aspects of leadership. It moved next to focus on organizational performance (Stone, Russell, & Patterson, 2004). The Ohio State University (OST) leadership studies of 1957 represent the quintessential situational studies. This research focused on two major characteristics of leadership: (a) consideration for employees and relationship and (b) initiating structure dealing with tasks (Stone et al., 2004). Other subsequent studies emphasized two contrasting dichotomies of leadership features concerning: (a) people and (b) production (Blake & Mouton, 1964; Likert, 1961, 1967). These studies shared similar concepts of leadership, in that the relationship is held between people and the product is task output. Lately, the paradigms of transformational leadership (Burns, 1978; Bass, 1985) and servant leadership (Greenleaf, 1998) have been developed, showing a shift in research interest. Further, researchers are becoming more attracted to the study of how organizational performance is driven by leadership styles. In fact, the styles hold complementary positions, and there is a practical emphasis on both appreciation and consideration of followers. However, these studies have distinct controversial variations: the servant leadership paradigm places much more emphasis on ‘‘service on follows and service to followers,’’ and ‘‘gain[ing] influence in a nontraditional manner’’ (Stone et al., 2004). In the prior creativity literature, there have been numerous discussions of specific leadership styles and their influences on members’ creativity (Amabile, Schatzel, Moneta, & Kramer, 2004; Amabile, Schazel, & Moneta, 2004; George & Zhou, 2007; Shalley & Gilson, 2004). In those studies, leaders’ styles are considered to address the nature of creative works. Typically, transformational leadership and empowering leadership are understood as having a significant influence on individuals’ creativity by emphasizing employees’ self-influence processes and by actively encouraging them to develop self-direction and self-motivation (Pearce & Sims, 2002). Fewer research studies have compared distinctly different leadership styles as antecedents that influence members’ beliefs or attitudes; thus, we recommend the use of a dyadic model to study leadership in order to reveal its overall effectiveness within the context of creativity research.

2.2. Leadership and trust Trust is defined as a willingness to depend on another party (Ganster, Fusilier, & Mayes, 1986) and as an expectation that the other party will reciprocate if one cooperates. Another well known concept of trust is that of the willingness to accept vulnerability, based on positive expectations of the intentions or behaviors of another (Madjar & Ortiz-Walters, 2009). For the past four decades, many researchers have recognized the importance of employees’ trust in their leaders. Trust can exist on various levels: individual; organizational, and inter-organizational. Trust in leaders is related positively to organizational citizenship behaviors, employee satisfaction, and performance (Jung & Avolio, 2000; Pillai, Schriesheim, & Wailliams, 1999). In most organizations, employees’ perceptions of their leaders’ abilities are an essential factor in trusting them. Employees are not willing to trust in their leaders unless they expect them to be capable of fulfilling an expected role (Whitener, Brodt, Korsgaard, & Werner, 1998). In past leadership studies, transformational and charismatic leaders were thought to build trust in their followers (Kirkpatrick & Locke, 1996; Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Moorman, & Fetter, 1990).

Recently, however, there is a general consensus that trust seems to develop when a leader’s behavior is more open and supportive (Carnevale & Probst, 1998). As a whole, employees’ perceptions that their leaders have trustworthy attributes is an important measure of leaders’ effectiveness (Hogan, Curphy, & Hogan, 1994), and the consideration dimension of a leader’s behavior is regarded as an important measure of how well that leader fulfills his or her role (Fleishman & Harris, 1962). Moreover, from the perspective of the perception of the leader’s character and its effect on followers’ vulnerabilities in a hierarchical relationship (e.g., Mayer, Davis, & Schoorman, 1995), it is evident that trust-related concerns about a leader’s character are important because the leader has the authority to make decisions that have significant effects on followers and their abilities to achieve goals (Dirks & Ferrin, 2002). As we have seen, various studies have highlighted the important link between a leadership paradigm and trust within an organization (Jung & Avolio, 2000; Pillai et al., 1999; Whitener et al., 1998). However, few of these studies address specifically in the same model the relationship between the classical members’ perceived leadership behaviors (i.e., leaders’ consideration and leaders’ initiating structure) and their trust toward leaders concurrent with organization itself. Thus, we propose the following alternative hypotheses: Hypothesis 1. The members’ perception of leader’s high consideration lead to their strong trust in the leaders. Hypothesis 2. The members’ perception of leader’s high initiating structure lead to their strong trust in the leaders. Hypothesis 3. The members’ perception of leaders’ high consideration lead to their strong trust in organization. Hypothesis 4. The members’ perception of leaders’ high initiating structure lead to their strong trust in organization. 2.3. Trust and creativity The generally accepted idea of mutual trust is considered to be a factor in the success of innovations; however, prior research on the relationship between trust and creativity remains largely inconclusive (Bidault & Castello, 2009). Recently, some researchers have studied the relationship between trust and creativity at the organizational, as well as the individual level. For example, in the organizational unit of analysis, trust can inspire creativity significantly, regardless of its conceptual dimension (e.g., goodwill trust and competence trust; Brattströma, Löfstenb, & Richtnéra, 2012); stronger team trust does not yield significant optimal production of creative ideas, even though it does exert a beneficial effect on team performance (Langfred, 2004; Sinaceur, 2010) while mutual trust has a positive influence on creativity in R&D teams (Chen, Chang, & Hung, 2008). In other studies at the individual unit of analysis, members in a team with high levels of trust tend to conform better to the team, in the sense that they are reluctant to express diverse thoughts, question the current organizational situation, or openly oppose other members’ ideas (Ford, 1996; Lewicki & Bunker, 1996). Further, a study on cognition-based trust in supervisors and its link to employees’ creativity produced contrary results when it was moderated by the valence of followers’ emotions (e.g., positive or negative; George & Zhou, 2007). As stated above, prior studies above the relationship between trust and creativity are largely inconclusive with respect to the dimension of trust and its role as a mediator. Therefore, it is worthwhile to investigate the role of trust in the workplace where

Please cite this article in press as: Jo, N. Y., et al. Empirical analysis of roles of perceived leadership styles and trust on team members’ creativity: Evidence from Korean ICT companies. Computers in Human Behavior (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.03.015

N.Y. Jo et al. / Computers in Human Behavior xxx (2014) xxx–xxx

members are highly required to present their creativity in performing their job. Thus, we proposed the following hypotheses: Hypothesis 5. The high degree of members’ trust in leaders leads to high level of their creativity. Hypothesis 6. The high degree of members’ trust in organization leads to high level of their creativity. Fig. 1 depicts our research model and hypotheses, wherein we examine leadership types in ICT companies and their effects on members’ creativity and mediating effect of trust in leaders and organization. 3. Research methodology 3.1. Research setting and descriptions Survey data were collected by a well-known major commercial research agency in Korea. The target population for our study was comprised specifically of members who were working in ICT companies; thus, the agency distributed the survey requests via e-mail to target groups listed in its database. These survey requests included statements of survey objectives and guides for response. The e-mail had a link to the website that hosted the questionnaire, so that the responses could be stored electronically in their database. Each respondent had been working for an ICT company for more than two years; however, we could not obtain the exact counts of respondents’ affiliations, because we told them to fill that information optionally. The number of initial respondents was 365, but we concluded with 350 respondents [N (male) = 292; (female) = 58] after removing insincere respondents. The age range was considerable, with 54.0% of respondents in their thirties, 24.0% in their twenties, 20.9% in their forties, and only 1.4% in their fifties. The majority of the respondents worked in areas that demanded high creativity (i.e., 26.0% were R&D staff; 22.2% were requirement and system analysts; 18.3% were consultants; 16.3% were IT planning staff, and the remainder was occupied in other creative jobs). Respondents reported that the average tenure of their jobs was 7.0 years (SD = 5.5). 3.2. Measures We developed questionnaire items by adapting existing measures from prior studies (see Table 1). In measuring leadership,

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we did not distinguish between ‘‘leader,’’ ‘‘supervisor’’ and ‘‘manager’’; rather, we used the terms interchangeably (i.e., leader and supervisor/manager) because that is how they are referred to frequently in the literature (Dirks & Ferrin, 2002) as well as in real-life organizations. In addition, we adopted the measures for perception of leadership styles in Bock et al. (2008), which were adopted for the study under virtual community context from the original instruments used in the OSU study (1957; Hinkin & Schriesheim, 1989). Then, we modified them slightly to increase relevance to the context of off-line organization (e.g., ‘‘My leader ensures that his/her part in the community is understood by the members’’). Researchers have previously developed various measures for trust (Bromiley & Cummigs, 1993; Cook & Wall, 1980; Podsakoff et al., 1990; Rotter, 1967). Considering our specific interest in trust’s target, the measures should be got along with both leader and organization. The Organizational Trust Inventory (Nyhan & Marlowe, 1997) is a reliable and valid collection of 12 items for our purpose, in that it has been developed to measure the relationship between a leadership and trust in leader or organization (Joseph & Winston, 2005). The instrument uses a seven-point Likert scale anchored by ‘‘nearly zero’’ and ‘‘nearly 100%’’, and respondents were required to fill in the name of their supervisors in the first blank space of each item when measuring their trust of their leaders. However, we adopted a seven-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree; 7 = strongly agree) for all items without the leader’s name. A 13-item measure was adopted to assess the level of members’ creativity from Zhang and Bartol (2010). However, there is a difference in survey subjects in that former study gave the measure to a supervisor to assess his/her members’ creativity, whereas we gave it to members to asses themselves. Table 1 lists all of the final measurement items. 3.3. Methods In the individual creativity literature, the role of trust, such as trust in leader and trust in organization, is still in the early stages of investigation. Specifically, our research model consisted of predictors, mediators and dependents, which are latent variables consisting of reflective indicators. Thus, the structural equation model (SEM) was employed to test our research hypotheses in a simultaneous analysis. SEM is regarded as advantageous over traditional regression methods in analyzing causal paths in the diagrams with latent variables and multiple indicators (Gefen, Rigdon, & Straub, 2011). In particular, we considered whether to select the former between two most widely used types of SEM: PLS (Partial Least

Fig. 1. Hypothesized model.

Please cite this article in press as: Jo, N. Y., et al. Empirical analysis of roles of perceived leadership styles and trust on team members’ creativity: Evidence from Korean ICT companies. Computers in Human Behavior (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.03.015

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N.Y. Jo et al. / Computers in Human Behavior xxx (2014) xxx–xxx

Table 1 Operationalization of variables. Item

References

Measurement items

Members’ perception of leader’s consideration

Bock et al. (2008)

PLC1-My leader dose personal favors for the member PLC2-My leader finds time to listen to the member PLC3-My leader is friendly and approachable PLC4-My leader makes the members feel at ease when talking with them

Members’ perception of leader’s initiating structure

PLI1-My leader schedules the task to be done PLI2-My leader makes sure that his/her part in the organization is understood by members PLI3-My leader lets the members know what is expected of them PLI4-My leader sees to it that the tasks of the members are coordinated

Trust in leader

Nyhan and Marlowe (1997)

Trust in organization

Members’ creativity

TL1-My leader is technically competent at the critical element of his or her job TL2-My leader will make well thought out decisions about his or her job TL3-My leader has acceptable level of understanding of his/her job TL4-My leader will follow through on assignments TL5-My leader will be able to do his/her job in an acceptable manner TL6-When my leader tells me something, I can rely on what he/she tells me TL7-My leader does the job without causing other problems TL8-My leader will think through what he/she is doing on the job TO1-This organization will treat me fairly TO2-Supervisor and worker in this organization trust each other TO3-The people I work with on a regular basis trust each other TO4-We can depend on each other in this organization

Zhang and Bartol (2010), Shin and Zhou (2003)

CR1-Suggests new ways to achieve goals or objectives CR2-Comes up with new and practical ideas to improve performance CR3-Searches out new technologies, processes, techniques, and/or product ideas CR4-Suggests new ways to increase quality CR5-Is a good source of creative ideas CR6-Is not afraid to take risks CR7-Promotes and champions ideas to others CR8-Exhibits creativity on the job when given the opportunity to CR9-Develops adequate plans and schedules for the implementation of new ideas CR10-Often has new and innovative ideas CR11-Comes up with creative solutions to problems CR12-Often has a fresh approach to problems CR13-Suggests new ways of performing work tasks

Squares) and CBSEM (Covariance based SEM). According to Gefen et al. (2011), the two approaches are chosen based on the following four considerations: (1) the purpose of employing the method (e.g., theory testing and development or predictive application); (2) distributional assumptions to avoid bias; (3) research objectives (e.g., exploratory or confirmatory), and (4) measurement scales (formative and reflective). In the history of SEM research, the reasons for adopting PLS over CBSEM have been cited as: small sample sizes; data that are not normally distributed; employment of formative measures; focus on prediction; complex model; exploratory research, and theory development (Ringle, Sarstedt, & Straub, 2012). Although both approaches can be applied to our research, we decided to adopt PLS, focusing on its strength in exploratory tests of the relationship of trust based on weaker theoretical support (Gefen, Straub, & Boudreau, 2000). We used the SmartPLS 2.0.M3 package (Ringle, Wende, & Will, 2005) to examine our measurements and the PLS model, which is accessible at http://www. smartpls.de. 4. Results 4.1. Measurement model validation We first conducted PLS analysis to examine item reliability. A total of five constructs was included: two constructs of

members’ perceptions of leadership styles; two constructs of trust, and one measure of creativity. Any items, including constructs, were dropped if they fell below the value of insignificant item loadings (Chu, Hsiao, Lee, & Chen, 2004). Items loadings should be greater than 0.5 to ensure item reliability (Hasan & Ali, 2007; Janz & Prasarnphanich, 2003). In our factor loadings, no item had a value lower than 0.5. In addition, the lowest Cronbach’s alpha values we obtained for any indicator was greater than 0.844, exceeding the recommended value of 0.7 (Nunnally, 1978). Thus, the overall measurement items loadings demonstrated adequate reliability. Furthermore, to confirm the reliability and validity of the measurement data, we performed a confirmatory factor analysis. In the reliability test, the smallest of the composite reliabilities was 0.895, and all values of AVEs (Average Variance Extracted), which should have been at least 0.5, were greater than 0.608 (Bagozzi & Yi, 1988). Next, we assessed discriminant validity by comparing the correlation between two factors and the square root of the AVE value of each factor (Bock et al., 2005). Table 3 shows that the square roots of AVE for each construct were greater than the correlation involving the constructs. Finally, all correlations were sufficiently below 0.712, which is less than the cutoff value of 0.8 (Bryman & Cramer, 1994), indicating the presence of multicollinearity. Thus, the data in our experiments were reliable and valid.

Please cite this article in press as: Jo, N. Y., et al. Empirical analysis of roles of perceived leadership styles and trust on team members’ creativity: Evidence from Korean ICT companies. Computers in Human Behavior (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.03.015

N.Y. Jo et al. / Computers in Human Behavior xxx (2014) xxx–xxx

4.2. The structural model with results After assessing the measurement model, we performed a bootstrapping procedure with 1000 sub-samples, as is suggested by Hair, Anderson, Tatham, and Black (1998), in order to examine the statistical significance of each path coefficient using a t-test. The variance explained (R2) in the endogenous variables and the regression coefficient’s significance served as indicators of the model’s quality (Chin, 1998). The results of the analysis are shown in Fig. 2. The R2 value of trust in leaders (i.e. 0.484) indicates that the independents explains an adequate amount of variance in this model (Huang, 2009). Both members’ perceptions of their leaders’ consideration (PLC) and members’ perceptions of their leaders’ initiating structure (PLI) significantly influenced trust in leader with path coefficient of 0.281 (p < 0.01) and 0.467 (p < 0.01) for each. Thus, both hypotheses 1 and 2 were supported. Likewise, the R2 value of trust in organization (i.e. 0.254) indicates the independents accounted for a considerable amount of the variance in trust in organization. Again, both paths from PLC and PLI to trust in organization were statistically significant with each coefficient value of 0.231 (p < 0.01) and 0.312 (p < 0.01). Thus, hypotheses 3 as well as 4 were supported. Finally, the R2 value of members’ creativity indicates that the mediators accounted for 22.8% of variance in the dependent construct, however only trust in organization was significantly related to members’ creativity with the path coefficient of 0.445 (p < 0.01). The path from trust in leader to members’ creativity was not significant with value of -0.035 (p > 0.1). Accordingly, hypothesis 6 was supported but hypothesis 5 was not supported. The paths from PLC and PLI to members’ creativity were not significant in the structure. However, when we ran separate PLS in subdivided models (Baron & Kenny, 1986), we found trust in organization fully mediated leaders’ initiating structure and members’ creativity. Thus, we did not further conduct Sobel’s test (1982, 1986) to investigate partial mediating effect. Tables 2–4 summarize our test results. 5. Discussion The results of this study help us better understand the role of members’ trust, their antecedents on the subject of perceived leadership and their influence on members’ creativity within the context of Korean ICT companies. In addition, our findings suggest a modification to the classical two-factor theory of leaders’ behavior by introducing the factor of members’ trust target (Amabile, Schatzel, Moneta, & Kramer, 2004; Amabile, Schazel, & Moneta, 2004; Fleishman, 1953). Our findings address the fact that members’ perceptions of the leader’s consideration and initiating structure both have positive effects on trust in the leader and trust in the organization; however, between the two trust targets, only trust in the

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organization influenced members’ creativity significantly. Therefore, from the standpoint of trust, it appears that only trust in the organization mediates leadership styles and members’ creativity successfully. The first key finding in our research is the pioneering focus on the relationship between perceived leaders’ behavior and trust in the organization as antecedents of individual creativity. The results showed that the style of the leaders’ behavior positively influenced both members’ trust in the leader (i.e., individual level) and trust in the organization (i.e., organizational level). Most research that has tried to reveal the relationship between trust and leadership has focused on the facilitating role of leadership in developing trust in the leader, which describes the interpersonal outcomes between leader and member (Avolio & Bass, 1995; Casimir, Waldman, Bartram, & Yang, 2006; Podsakoff et al., 1990). Given that the value of R2 for trust in leader was higher than that of trust in organization (0.484 > 0.254) and the coefficient values were stronger in the path to trust in the leader (0.281 > 0.231 from leaders’ consideration, and 0.467 > 0.312 from leaders’ initiating structure), members’ perceptions of the leaders’ behavior strongly influence their trust in the leader, which supports prior research. However, our study contributes to the literature, in that members’ perceptions of their leaders’ behavior also influenced their trust in the organization significantly. This result is important in the study of individual creativity because trust in the organization was revealed to be the only significant antecedent for members’ creativity within the context of ICT companies. Further, we found that the links from trust in leader and trust in organization to members’ creativity were counterintuitive. Interestingly, when the target of members’ trust was the leader, the influence on the members’ creativity was not significant, even though it was more strongly developed by an increasing positive perception of leaders’ behavior styles. In contrast, when the object of the members’ trust was the organization, the relationship was significant and positive. Considering that the relationship between trust and creativity remains largely inconclusive in prior research, this finding is worthy of note, in that the environmental feature of trust may be a more robust factor in increasing individual creativity. Indeed, in prior research, when trust referred to the mutual relationship between the member and leader only, the effect of trust on creativity was complex and inconclusive. The results depended on moderators in some models and in other models, there was an inverted U-shaped curve showing a maximum level relationship between trust and creativity (Bidault & Castello, 2009; George & Zhou, 2007). However, our results on the relationship between trust in the organization and members’ creativity (b = 0.445, p < 0.01) is more consistent with prior literature when we consider that the organization has an environmental feature (Amabile, Schatzel, Moneta, & Kramer, 2004; Amabile, Schazel, & Moneta,

Fig. 2. Results of the structural model.

Please cite this article in press as: Jo, N. Y., et al. Empirical analysis of roles of perceived leadership styles and trust on team members’ creativity: Evidence from Korean ICT companies. Computers in Human Behavior (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.03.015

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N.Y. Jo et al. / Computers in Human Behavior xxx (2014) xxx–xxx

Table 2 Results of reliability and factor analyses. Construct

Indicator

Item loading

T-statistic

Cronbach’s alpha

Composite reliability

AVE

Members’ perception of leader’s consideration

PLC1 PLC 2 PLC 3 PLC 4

0.797 0.888 0.925 0.890

27.824 57.714 107.209 68.723

0.898

0.929

0.768

Members’ perception of leader’s initiating structure

PLI1 PLI2 PLI3 PLI4

0.633 0.887 0.897 0.864

11.046 60.692 60.678 51.031

0.844

0.895

0.685

Trust in leader

TL1 TL2 TL3 TL4 TL5 TL6 TL7 TL8

0.830 0.892 0.844 0.888 0.849 0.862 0.779 0.882

38.946 67.289 43.059 57.518 32.610 56.794 26.411 61.981

0.947

0.956

0.729

Trust in organization

TO1 TO2 TO3 TO4

0.809 0.835 0.885 0.853

27.559 28.351 48.187 37.259

0.867

0.910

0.716

Followers’ creativity

CRE1 CRE2 CRE3 CRE4 CRE5 CRE6 CRE7 CRE8 CRE9 CRE10 CRE11 CRE12 CRE13

0.830 0.830 0.792 0.834 0.831 0.541 0.607 0.765 0.772 0.805 0.838 0.800 0.830

43.868 46.422 32.856 49.333 42.702 9.913 13.898 17.038 26.817 35.870 47.598 34. 855 41.509

0.945

0.952

0.608

Table 3 Correlations of latent variables and AVEs.

Members’ perception of leader’s consideration Members’ perception of leader’s initiating structure Trust in leader Trust in organization Followers’ creativity

PLC

PLI

TL

TO

CRE

0.876 0.712 0.613 0.454 0.271

0.827 0.667 0.477 0.271

0.854 0.551 0.274

0.846 0.472

0.780

Note: Values on the italicized diagonal are the square roots of the AVEs.

2004; Madjar & Ortiz-Walters, 2009; Oldham & Cummings, 1996; Scott & Bruce, 1994). For example, Amabile et al. (2004) focused on leadership and its effect on the work environment with respect to subordinates’ creative performance; Madjar and Ortiz-Walters (2009) discussed how team trust influences team creativity positively, in that discussing a trusting environment encourages individuals to be more willing to take risk[s] by sharing information and co-operating with others. Thus, although there is a notable difference between the two types of trust and members’ creativity, we infer cautiously that members’ creativity is related more closely to trust in the organization as a whole rather than to members’ trust in their leaders; members who perceive task-oriented leadership tend to trust the organization and other members more, and therefore perform creative tasks better. Our results have managerial implications for organizations dependent on creative output. Our study indicates the need to pay attention not only to relational orientation, but also to methods to initiate members into performing tasks, as the link to trust in them appears more effective, but is not effective in inducing members’ creativity. Therefore, we recommend that relationshiporiented and task-oriented trust should be balanced. Next, consid-

ering the fact that our survey targeted members of ICT organizations (e.g., 26% R&D staff and 22.2% requirement and system analysts, etc.), it helps managers understand the process by which creativity is revealed in individuals who are working on limited projects. In those organizations, the leaders’ role tends to be to work temporarily until projects are completed, which results in trust in the organization rather than trust in a temporal leader. This seems to be salient to members in yielding creativity. Thus, such leaders should make greater efforts to build more collaborative, sustainable and trustworthy organizations.

6. Concluding remarks In summary, we proposed a research model to demonstrate the relationships between members’ perceived leadership styles and their creativity. Further, trust targeted toward dyadic objects was also introduced to reveal the role of members’ trust. Although recent studies have investigated a specific leadership style (e.g., transformational leadership and transactional leadership), we suggested a classical approach to perceived leader’s behavior, with

Please cite this article in press as: Jo, N. Y., et al. Empirical analysis of roles of perceived leadership styles and trust on team members’ creativity: Evidence from Korean ICT companies. Computers in Human Behavior (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.03.015

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N.Y. Jo et al. / Computers in Human Behavior xxx (2014) xxx–xxx Table 4 Results of hypothesis testing. Hypotheses

Results

H1: H2: H3: H4: H5: H6:

Supported Supported Supported Supported Not supported Supported

The The The The The The

members’ perception of the leaders’ high consideration leads to their strong trust in the leaders members’ perception of the leader leads’ high initiating structure lead to their strong trust in the leaders members’ perception of the leaders’ high consideration leads to their strong trust in organization members’ perception of the leaders’ high initiating structure leads to their strong trust in organization high degree of members’ trust in their leader leads to high level of their creativity high degree of members’ trust in their organization leads to high level of their creativity

relationship-oriented and task-oriented leadership juxtaposed to reveal the role of trust more clearly, a relationship that is still inconclusive in the existing creativity literature. Thus, trust in leader and trust in organization were introduced specifically for this purpose. By conducting PLS analysis on the survey data, which were collected from 350 employees working for Korean ICT companies, we found that: (1) members’ perceptions of leaders’ consideration and leaders’ initiating structure affected trust in both leader and organization concurrently; (2) nevertheless, between the two, only trust in the organization influenced members’ creativity significantly; (3) in our proposed model, the path starting from leaders’ initiating structures mediated by trust in the organization enhanced members’ creativity more effectively. From these results, we conclude cautiously that employee creativity is better encouraged by building trust in an organization characterized by its work environmental feature. To take advantage of these findings, leaders should balance themselves between task-oriented and relationship-oriented leadership styles in an environment of creative work such as that in ICT companies. Industries like ICT are highly dependent on fast growing, cutting-edge technology, creative ideas and innovation in order to be optimally competitive in the global market. The findings of this study provide managers as well as researchers with implications on how to enhance members’ creativity in this environment. We hope that this study will help them better understand the relationships among leaders’ behavior, trust target and creativity revelation. There are several limitations we would like to point out, as well as suggestions for future research. First, a partial mediating role of the trust we expected to find between leadership and members’ creativity could not be revealed in this study. Although there have not been sufficient studies to support a direct link between leadership and creativity, we expected to find such a relationship in our exploratory study. Nonetheless, we contend that this result may be distinct to the context of organizations that consist of temporal leaders. Thus, in future research, we suggest an organizational comparative study to investigate clearly whether or not leaders’ behavior influences members’ creativity differently in an environment of temporal leadership. Further, trust in the leader did not have a significant influence on members’ creativity in our study. This result may also be due to the features of a project-based organization that features temporal leadership. Finally, with regard to prior research, it could be argued that there may be a curvilinear relationship between trust in the leader and members’ creativity or moderating factors may exist that would make the relationship significant. Thus, we recommend that researchers conduct tests in various types of organizations and validate moderating variables in continued efforts to generalize the effects of trust. Acknowledgment This work was supported by the National Research Foundation Grant funded by the Korean Government (NRF-2009-342-B00015).

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Please cite this article in press as: Jo, N. Y., et al. Empirical analysis of roles of perceived leadership styles and trust on team members’ creativity: Evidence from Korean ICT companies. Computers in Human Behavior (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.03.015