An Empirical Analysis of Leadership Styles and Their Impact on Creativity: Emphasis on Korean ICT Companies

This research builds and tests a theoretical model linking empowering leadership and servant leadership with several intervening variables. Using survey data from professional employees working for Korean ICT companies, we compared both leadership styles' influences on several mediating variables and found that I) both leadership styles negatively affect employees' task stress but positively affect trust in both leaders and other employees 2) they also inversely affect intrinsic motivation, in that empowering leadership positively affects motivation but servant leadership negatively affects it 3) both types of trust have a positive influence on employees' creativity 4) intrinsic motivation has a strong positive effect on employees' creativity but 5) no significant effect of stress on creativity was found.