Organizational leaders are eager to unlock the creative potential of followers. Yet, there is growing evidence that creativity can also have a dark side within organizations. Building on research linking creativity and unethical behavior, we develop the construct of creative unethicality—behavior that is both unethical and novel. We draw on social exchange theory to develop a model that identifies both why and when creative unethicality emerges within organizations. Specifically, we investigate the exchange dynamics through which creative support provided by empowering leaders facilitates creative unethicality under conditions of high performance pressure. Across two multi-wave, multi-source field studies with employee-coworker and leader-subordinate dyads and an experimental study with a novel unethicality measure in a business simulation, we find convergent support for our theoretical model. These findings have important theoretical and practical implications for fostering creativity in organizations without simultaneously facilitating creative unethicality.

组织领导者渴望释放追随者的创造潜力。但是，越来越多的证据表明，创造力在组织内部也可能存在阴暗面。在将创造力和不道德行为联系起来的研究的基础上，我们发展了创造性不道德行为的建构，即不道德行为和新颖行为。我们利用社会交换理论来开发一个模型，该模型可以识别原因和时间组织内部出现了创造性的不道德行为。具体而言，我们调查了交流动态，在高绩效压力下，授权领导者提供的创意支持可促进创意不道德。在与员工-同事和领导者-下属二元组的两次多波，多来源实地研究以及在商业模拟中采用新颖的不道德性措施进行的实验研究中，我们找到了对我们的理论模型的一致支持。这些发现对在组织中培养创造力而不同时促进创造力不道德行为具有重要的理论和实践意义。