The impacts of leadership support and coworker support on employee creative behavior

Purpose Previous research has emphasized how leadership style and collegial relationships can foster creativity in the workplace; in a related sense, understanding how support from leaders and coworkers affect the creativity process is critical too. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to seek a deeper understanding of how leadership support and coworker support influence employee creativity. Design/methodology/approach A quantitative study was conducted among 299 employees working at eight organizations in a non-western country. Findings The results of this research revealed that both leadership support and coworker support exert positive influences on employee creativity, moderated by several additional variables. Specifically, employee engagement and tenure both strengthen the relationship of leadership support with employee creativity. Furthermore, individual creativity has a positive impact on job performance. Research limitations/implications These findings offer theoretical and practical implications, as well as directions for further research Originality/value This research examined the impacts of leadership support and coworker support on employee creative behavior and individual performance. To better understand the nature of these impacts, the authors introduced two moderators such as employee engagement and tenure. To the best of our knowledge, there are no empirical evidences regarding whether and how leadership support and coworker support interact with employee engagement and tenure to influence employee creative behavior and individual performance.