Creativity in non-routine jobs: The role of transformational leadership and organizational identification

An increasing number of individuals work in jobs with little standardization and repetition, that is, with high levels of job non-routinization. At the same time, demands for creativity are high, which raises the question of how employees can use job non-routinization to develop creativity. Acknowledging the importance of social processes for creativity, we propose that transformational leaders raise feelings of organizational identification in followers and that this form of identification then helps individuals to develop creativity in jobs with little routinization. This is because organizational members evaluate and promote those ideas as more creative, which are in line with a shared understanding of creativity within the organization. To investigate these relationships, we calculated a mediated moderation model with 173 leader-follower dyads from China. Results confirm our hypotheses that transformational leadership moderates the relationship between job non-routinization on employee creativity through organizational identification. We conclude that raising feelings of social identity is a key task for leaders today, especially when working in uncertain and fast developing environments with little repetition and the constant need to develop creative ideas.