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Supporting Creativity or Creative Unethicality? Empowering Leadership and the Role of Performance Pressure

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Abstract

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.

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Notes

  1. Creative support can also come from other sources both at work (e.g., coworkers) and outside of work (e.g., friends and family). However, because of our interest in empowering leadership we chose to focus specifically on leader creative support.

  2. Our definition of creative unethicality was created via an integration of existing definitions of creativity (Amabile, 1983; 1988) and unethical behavior (Kish-Gephart, Harrison, & Treviño, 2010).

  3. The sample size for these studies was determined based on prior field and experimental research in the creativity and behavioral ethics literatures.

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Funding

Funding for this research was provided by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Number: 72002035) and the National University of Singapore (Tier 1 grant: R-317-000-135-115).

Author information

Author notes

  1. Ke Michael Mai and David T. Welsh have contributed equally to this manuscript and the authorship order was determined alphabetically.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Management & Organisation Department, National University of Singapore, Mochtar Riady Building, 15 Kent Ridge Drive, Singapore, 119245, Singapore

    Ke Michael Mai

  2. Department of Management & Entrepreneurship, Arizona State University, 300 E. Lemon St., Tempe, AZ, 85281, USA

    David T. Welsh

  3. College of Economics and Management, China Agricultural University, 17 Qinghua E Rd, Haidian District, Beijing, China

    Fuxi Wang

  4. Department of Management, University of Missouri, Robert J. Trulaske College of Business, Columbia, MO, 65211, USA

    John Bush

  5. Management and Human Resources Department, The Ohio State University, 750 Fisher Hall 2100 Neil Ave., Columbus, OH, 43210, USA

    Kaifeng Jiang

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  1. Ke Michael Mai
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Correspondence to David T. Welsh.

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Appendices

Appendix A

Creative Unethicality Measure

1. Develops innovative ways to skirt ethical rules

2. Engages in creative adjustment of data

3. Employs workarounds to ethical policies

4. Selectively reports information

5. Takes advantage of loopholes

6. Selectively discloses information when asked

Appendix B

Study 3 Manipulations

Empowering Leadership Manipulation

High Condition

[Text participants read].

I know you are about to negotiate with folks from Downtown Realty. As you know, this is a very critical case for us, but I’m very confident in your ability to get the deal done successfully. I trust you to make all the judgment calls by yourself during the meeting and you don’t need to check with me. Go ahead and pace yourself in the meeting and make the onsite call accordingly. As partners, Alex and I will fully support all the decisions you make, and we’ve got your back!

[Actual email participants receive in the simulation].

figure a

Low Condition

[Text participants read].

I know you are about to negotiate with folks from Downtown Realty. As you know, this is a very critical case for us, and, frankly speaking, I’m not very confident in your ability to get the deal done successfully. I’m not sure if you can make the correct judgment calls by yourself during the meeting and thus you should probably check with me during the meeting. As partners, Alex and I will fully monitor all the decisions you make, and we want to make sure you DO NOT make decisions just by yourself.

[Actual email participants receive in the simulation].

figure b

Performance Pressure Manipulation

High Condition

Based on how the organization is doing right now, there is a tremendous amount of pressure to produce results. This deal is extremely important to you, and you absolutely need to get this contract because you feel that your job at Jones & Jones will be at risk if you don’t get good results from this negotiation.

Low Condition

Based on how the organization is doing right now there is not too much performance pressure for the project managers. This deal is important to the firm. However, you don’t absolutely need to get this contract and you feel that your job at Jones & Jones will be very safe even if you don’t get good results from this negotiation.

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Mai, K.M., Welsh, D.T., Wang, F. et al. Supporting Creativity or Creative Unethicality? Empowering Leadership and the Role of Performance Pressure. J Bus Ethics 179, 111–131 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-021-04784-6

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