This research aims to explain whether leader perfectionism toward employees fosters or hinders employee creativity. From a self-regulation perspective, we theorize that depending on employees’ locus of control, leader perfectionism can influence two regulatory states of employees (i.e., engagement and emotional exhaustion) linearly or curvilinearly, which in turn affect their creativity in opposite directions. In a lab experiment and a multisource, multiwave field study, we found that for internals, leader perfectionism had a curvilinear effect on their engagement (but no effect on emotional exhaustion) and subsequent creativity such that the effect was positive but became weaker when leader perfectionism was extreme. By contrast, we found partial support across the two studies that for externals, leader perfectionism had a positive effect on their emotional exhaustion (but no effect on engagement), which undermined their creativity. We discuss the theoretical contributions of this research and its practical implications for organizations.

中文翻译：

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领导完美主义——员工创造力的朋友还是敌人？控制点作为关键的应急

本研究旨在解释领导者对员工的完美主义是促进还是阻碍了员工的创造力。从自我调节的角度来看，我们的理论认为，取决于员工的控制点，领导完美主义可以线性或曲线地影响员工的两种调节状态（即敬业度和情绪耗竭），从而反过来影响他们的创造力。在实验室实验和多源、多波场研究中，我们发现，对于内部人员而言，领导者完美主义对他们的敬业度（但对情绪耗竭没有影响）和随后的创造力有曲线效应，这种影响是积极的，但当领导者完美主义时，这种影响会减弱是极端的。相比之下，我们在两项研究中发现部分支持对于外部，领导者完美主义对他们的情绪耗竭有积极影响（但对敬业度没有影响），这削弱了他们的创造力。我们讨论了这项研究的理论贡献及其对组织的实际影响。