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Journal of Applied Psychology 2014

Creative benefits from well-connected leaders: Leader social network ties as facilitators of employee radical creativity.

Vijaya Venkataramani1; Andreas W. Richter2,3; Ronald Clarke4

1 University of Maryland, College Park · 2 University of Cambridge · 3 Cambridge School · 4 EAE Business School

open access

Abstract

Employee radical creativity critically depends on substantive informational resources from others across the wider organization. We propose that the social network ties of employees' immediate leaders assume a central role in garnering these resources, thereby fostering their employees' radical creativity both independent of and interactively with employees' own network ties. Drawing on data from 214 employees working in 30 teams of a public technology and environmental services organization, we find that team leaders' betweenness centrality in the idea network within their teams as well as among their peer leaders provides creative benefits beyond employees' own internal and external ties. Further, employees' and leaders' ties within and external to the team interactively predict employee radical creativity. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

DOI
10.1037/a0037088
Sources
openalex

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