The relationship between inclusive leadership and employee creativity: A quantitative study on the potential paradoxical effect of inclusive leadership on employee creativity moderated by perceived organisational support

The study aimed to investigate the relationship between inclusive leadership and employee creativity by moderation from perceived organisational support by using the social exchange theory and social information processing theory. We look at the too-much-of-a-good thing effect to test if there is a paradoxical effect of inclusive leadership on employee creativity. A quantitative research design was applied where we conducted a survey (N=90). To test the 4 hypotheses and perform the explorative analysis, stepwise regression, PROCESS macro (Hayes, 2013), and bootstrapping were used. We found that inclusive leadership is not directly related to employee creativity, but perceived organisational support significantly moderated the relationship. Thus, inclusive leaders are unable to influence employee creativity on their own. An explorative analysis was performed in which gender was a significant moderator alongside perceived organisational support. Perceived organisational support was also found to be a significant mediator. The effect of perceived organisational support is so substantial that the effect of this construct on employee creativity seems more important than the effect of inclusive leadership.