The negative effect of supervisor bottom-line mentality on employee creativity: The mediation of harmonious passion and moderating effect of humble leadership

Integrating social information processing theory with self-determination theory, we explored the negative influence towards employee creativity from supervisor bottom-line mentality (BLM), which refers to a one-dimensional mindset solely focusing on bottom-line outcomes and neglecting other considerations. By introducing harmonious passion as a potential mechanism beneath the relationship, we proposed that supervisor BLM may deliver information about exclusively pursuing the bottom line and hinder employees from internalization of work activities into their identities, hence weakening their harmoniously passionate motivation at work and in turn impairing their creativity. We further probed humble leadership from behavioral perspective as a boundary condition of such negative influence, referring to supervisors' admitting their weaknesses and acknowledging employees' contributions as well as keeping open for new ideas. When supervisors present more humble leadership behaviors, the impeded internalization of employees may be recovered to some extent and the negative relationship between supervisor BLM and employee harmonious passion would be mitigated. An overall moderated mediation was proposed in our research model that humble leadership buffered the indirect effect from supervisor BLM to employee creativity. Our hypotheses were generally supported by a multi-wave survey data collected from an online platform. Theoretical contributions and practical implications of the study are discussed.