Transformational leadership dimensions and employee creativity in China: A cross-level analysis

China's rapid economic growth is staggering but the country still has a long way to go before becoming a center for innovation and creativity. We examine whether or not transformational leadership can encourage employee creativity, using a Chinese-specific transformational leadership model. The study proposes a positive relationship between organization-level transformational leadership and individual level creativity which will be mediated by psychological safety climate. Analyses of multisource and multilevel data from 123 branches of a retail bank in mainland China show that two dimensions of transformational leadership, moral modeling and individualized consideration, are positively related to employee creativity. Although these two dimensions relate to a psychologically safe organizational climate, the climate does not relate to employee creativity. We discuss the findings in light of the Chinese cultural context. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.