How leaders impact employee creativity: a study of Indian R&D laboratories

Purpose – The apparent differences between the leadership requirements of traditional and empowered environments suggest that traditional measures of leadership may not be applicable to empowered work environments. Through an exhaustive literature review and a series of in‐depth interviews with scientists in five national R&D labs in India, the purpose of this study is to develop a set of leader behaviors having high potential to impact creativity of R&D professionals. Design/methodology/approach – A total of 52 interviews were conducted with scientists of five Indian R&D labs located in five different cities of India. The interview transcripts were content coded and a list of behavior items were generated. The list of items was given to five doctoral students to sort them into different behavior categories. Each behavior incident was coded using a modified version of the leader behavior taxonomy presented in the Managerial Practices Survey (MPS) (Yukl, Wall and Lepsinger). Findings – Based on the consistency score, a final list of 52 behavior items representing five behavior metacategories was generated that has high potential of promoting employee creativity. A set of contextual variables was identified that can moderate the impact of leadership on employee creativity. Research limitations/implications – A large‐scale follow‐up survey would be useful to find outz which of the identified leader behaviors do indeed have the proposed connection with employees' creativity. Practical implications – The identified behaviors can be of immense help to practitioners who often wrestle with the task of identifying appropriate behaviors that can ensure leader effectiveness. Originality/value – This is the first study of its type and identifies a set of leader behaviors that can enhance creativity of R&D professionals.