Mainemelis 2015

The Academy of Management Annals, 2015
Vol. 9, No. 1, 393– 482, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19416520.2015.1024502
Creative Leadership:
A Multi-Context Conceptualization†
CHARALAMPOS MAINEMELIS*
ALBA Graduate Business School, The American College of Greece
RONIT KARK
Department of Psychology, Bar-Ilan University
OLGA EPITROPAKI
ALBA Graduate Business School, The American College of Greece
Aston Business School, Aston University
Abstract
Various streams of organizational research have examined the relationship
between creativity and leadership, albeit using slightly different names such
as “creative leadership”, “leading for creativity and innovation”, and “mana-
ging creatives”. In this article, we review this dispersed body of knowledge
and synthesize it under a global construct of creative leadership, which refers
to leading others toward the attainment of a creative outcome. Under this uni-
fying construct, we classify three more narrow conceptualizations that we
∗
Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
†
The second and the third author contributed equally.
# 2015 Academy of Management
393
394 † The Academy of Management Annals
observe in the literature: facilitating employee creativity; directing the materia-

lization of a leader’s creative vision; and integrating heterogeneous creative con-
tributions. After examining the contextual characteristics associated with the
three conceptualizations, we suggest that they represent three distinct colla-
borative contexts of creative leadership. We discuss the theoretical implications
of a multi-context framework of creative leadership, especially in terms of
resolving three persisting problems in the extant literature: lack of definitional
clarity, shortage of nuanced theories, and low contextual sensitivity.
Introduction
The concept of creative leadership has a long and interesting history in
organizational science. In his 1957 book Leadership in administration, Selz-
nick (1984) argued that while technical – rational administrative behavior
fosters efficiency when decision alternatives are restricted, under conditions
of indeterminacy and freedom the renewal of institutions requires creative
leadership. Selznick (1984) suggested that creative leadership entails the
art of building institutions that embody new and enduring values, and the
creation of the conditions that will make possible in the future what is
excluded in the present. Six years later Stark (1963) published in AMJ the
article Creative leadership: Human vs. metal brains, in which he critiqued
the interminate debate between the “formalist” and “intuitivist” perspectives
of the time. While the former emphasized exclusively the formal and
mechanically feasible processes of the human mind, the latter placed an
equal emphasis on its intuitive and creative processes. Stark (1963,
pp. 166 – 168, emphasis in the original) wrote:
Why did Professor Selznick write this particular essay? And why did he
title it Leadership in Administration? Any reply to the first question
should include, I believe, a statement to the following effect: he wrote
it as an intuitivist supplement, corrective, or antithesis to the formalist
essay that Herbert A. Simon titled Administrative Behavior. And any
reply to the second question should include, I believe, a statement to
the following effect: leadership in the old-fashioned sense, which stood
so high with the intuitivist likes of Plato, Carlyle, and Weber, stands
very low in the world of scientific empiricism; in Administrative Behav-
ior . . . the word leadership itself cannot be found in the heading of a
single chapter, chapter section, chapter subsection, or anywhere in the
index.
. . . My guess is that Professor Simon would wonder much, and that Pro-
fessor Selznick would find it exceedingly difficult to satisfy him. But we
must satisfy him if we are ever to convince him that at any given time the
Creative Leadership † 395
computer is not doing all the thinking that middle or upper managers
do. For example, when he says that “we will have the technical capability,
by 1985, to manage corporations by machine” (1960, p. 52), are we
entitled to smugly retort, “Sure, but what about leading, creatively
leading—a la Selznick—by machine?” if we cannot reach agreement
on what Professor Selznick means? It is one thing to say to Professor
Simon—“You’ve left creative leadership out of your social psychology
and out of your machine”;—and another to demonstrate that he has
omitted a piece of reality.
Today, machines control a rapidly increasing number of organizational
activities, but they have not come any closer to substituting humans in the crea-
tive functions of leadership. For example, while the music industry possesses
the technological means to manufacture any desired sound in the production
process, the creation and success of its main product, the record, are highly
dependent on the creative leadership of the music producer (Lingo &
O’Mahony, 2010; Thomson, Jones, & Warhurst, 2007). One could argue that
our discipline has never before stressed the importance of creative leader-
ship—for individuals, organizations, and the larger society—as much as it
does today (e.g. Amabile, Schatzel, Moneta, & Kramer, 2004; Mumford,
Scott, Gaddis, & Strange, 2002; Shalley & Gilson, 2004; Tierney, 2008). As
Sternberg (2007) recently observed, while in the past creativity was often per-
ceived as an optional feature of leadership, today it is no longer optional
because leaders who lack creativity are unlikely to propel their organizations
into the future.
Selznick’s (1984) distinction between administrative behavior and creative
leadership remains relevant and puzzling. Mumford et al. (2002) suggested
that creative leadership differs from other forms of leadership in three ways:
it induces rather than preserves structure; it cannot rely on influence tactics
linked to power, conformity pressure, and organizational commitment; and
it has to manage the inherent conflict between creativity and organization.
Obstfeld (2012) argued that no matter how much one stretches or redefines
the construct of routines, the latter cannot explain the emergence and unfold-
ing of “de novo” creative action in organizations. Hunter, Thoroughgood,
Myer and Ligon (2011) as well concluded that creative leadership requires a
unique repertoire of behaviors that are frequently at odds with traditional
forms of management and organizational functioning.
Despite the growing realization that creativity is a central ability for leaders
in promoting change (Shalley & Gilson, 2004), there is a striking absence of the
trait “creative” from existing lists of Implicit Leadership Theories (ILTs, e.g.
Epitropaki & Martin, 2004, 2005; Epitropaki, Sy, Martin, Tram-Quon, &
Topakas, 2013; Offermann, Kennedy, & Wirtz, 1994; Shondrick & Lord,
2010), and creative individuals are less likely to emerge as leaders (Kark,
Miron-Spektor, Kaplon, & Gorsky, 2014; Mueller, Goncalo, & Kamdar, 2011).
Most organizations tend to promote executives who preserve the status quo, do
not take risks, and stick to useful and working solutions (Basadur & Basadur,
2011; Mueller et al., 2011), although many organizations claim that creative
leadership is essential to them. For example, a 2010 IBM Global CEO Study,
which surveyed more than 1500 chief executive officers from 60 countries
and 33 industries, concluded that creativity is now the most important leader-
ship quality for success in business, outweighing competencies such as integrity
and global thinking (Nikravan, 2012).
Although the paradoxes of creative leadership are well documented (e.g.
DeFillippi, Grabher, & Jones, 2007; Hunter et al., 2011; Lampel, Lant, &
Shamsie, 2000), creative leadership research usually lacks the requisite theoreti-
cal depth to investigate them thoroughly and extensively. In a recent review
and analysis of 752 articles on leadership phenomena published in 10 top-
tier academic journals in the last decade, Dinh et al. (2014) noted that
“leading for creativity and innovation” has seen significant research during
the specific period of inquiry (72 instances), but is, nonetheless, the area of lea-
dership for which the highest mismatch between theoretical thinking and the
research designed to investigate the theory exists (in 50% of the cases). Dinh
et al. (2014) also pointed out that the majority of studies have failed to
capture the dynamic nature of the intrapersonal and interpersonal processes
associated with creative insight and performance.
While the increase in the number of empirical studies on creative leadership
is encouraging, the lack of progress on the theoretical front is disconcerting.
Research on creative leadership has long struggled with lack of definitional
clarity, shortage of nuanced theories, and low contextual sensitivity. Twenty
years ago, Ford (1995, p. 33) observed that the findings of creativity research
had “emerged from a limited array of professional settings”, which “leaves
one to wonder if the same leader behaviors would facilitate creativity” in differ-
ent situations. Mumford and Licuanan (2004) noted that the “leadership of
creative efforts is an unusually complex activity” (p. 163) and requires “a
new wave of research expressly intended to account for leadership in settings
where creative people are working on significant innovations” (p. 170). In
her review of the organizational creativity literature, George (2007, p. 459)
suggested that “for jobs that do require creativity, the same supervisory behav-
ior that potentially can encourage creativity in noncreative jobs might actually
inhibit creativity”. More recently, Hunter et al. (2011) and Vessey, Barrett,
Mumford, Johnson, and Litwiller (2014) observed that most studies on creative
leadership tend to ignore substantial differences between leaders, between fol-
lowers, and especially between contexts.
These critiques imply that a “one size fits all” conceptualization of creative
leadership is inadequate, probably because the phenomenon itself is sensitive to
contextual variability. If creative leadership is unusually complex and its
manifestations vary according to the context wherein it is enacted, we should

expect to encounter complexity and contextual differences in a critical reading
of the body of knowledge that has been generated about creative leadership to
date. This is, in fact, the case with the review that we present in this article.
What we found is that since Selznick’s (1984) original formulation of creative
leadership, the concept has evolved into three different conceptualizations
which are theoretically complementary and reflect contextual differences.
This implies that there is more than one way to exercise creative leadership,
a fact that may help explain why it has proved difficult in the past to
develop a unitary, context-general theory of creative leadership.
Three Conceptualizations of Creative Leadership in the Organizational Literature

The three conceptualizations of creative leadership that we identified in our
review are not exclusive properties of any given research strand. Rather,
each conceptualization underlies the intellectual efforts of two or more
research strands in the organizational literature. The first conceptualization
focuses on the leader’s role in fostering the creativity of others in the organiz-
ational context. This conceptualization was originally developed within a
strand of organizational creativity research that examines contextual influences
on employee creativity. Later, it expanded into a strand of leadership research
that examines the influences of various leadership styles on employee creativ-
ity. These two research strands (located in the creativity and leadership fields,
respectively) share a social – psychological foundation, have regularly
exchanged findings and insights, and they have been the most prolific contri-
butors to creative leadership research to date. Their development was propelled
by three influential theories of creativity that appeared in the late 1980s and
1990s: Amabile’s (1988) componential theory, Woodman, Sawyer, and Grif-
fin’s (1993) interactionist model, and Ford’s (1996) theory of creative action.
Because these theories argued that leadership influences employee creativity,
subsequent studies in both research strands sought to understand how
leaders foster and hinder employee creativity (e.g. Amabile, Conti, Coon,
Lazenby, & Herron, 1996; George & Zhou, 2001; Liao, Liu, & Loi, 2010;
Oldham & Cummings, 1996; Mumford et al., 2002; Shin & Zhou, 2003;
Tierney, Farmer, & Graen, 1999; Zhang & Bartol, 2010). Most studies in
these two strands have examined creativity not in the creative industries but
in industry environments where creativity is a less fundamental aspect of
organizational activity (Vessey et al., 2014). Creative leadership in these two
strands refers to fostering employee creativity. In the remainder of the article,
we refer to this manifestation of creative leadership as Facilitating.
The second conceptualization portrays the creative leader as the primary
source of creative thinking and behavior, as a creative institutional entrepre-
neur, or as a master-creator who both creates and manages his or her creative
enterprise. This conceptualization of creative leadership is evident in three

strands of organizational research that have rarely informed each other, to
date: a stream of neo-institutional case studies of creative haute-cuisine chefs
(e.g. Bouty & Gomez, 2010; Svejenova, Mazza, & Planellas, 2007); a set of
studies on orchestra conductors (e.g. Hunt, Stelluto, & Hooijberg, 2004;
Marotto, Roos, & Victor, 2007); and a set of studies on creative leadership in
the context of top-down corporate innovation (e.g. Eisenmann & Bower,
2000; Vaccaro, Jansen, Van Den Bosch, & Volberda, 2012). Creative leadership
in these strands refers to materializing a leader’s creative vision through other
people’s work. In the remainder of the article, we refer to this manifestation of
creative leadership as Directing.
The third conceptualization focuses on the leader’s role in integrating his or
her creative ideas with the diverse creative ideas of other professionals in the
work context. This conceptualization has emerged from research on creativity
in new forms of work (e.g. temporary organizations and brokerage) and in con-
texts where the traditional leader –follower distinction gives way to a group of
expert professionals who collaborate intensively in the context of a creative
project. This conceptualization is evident in a stream of studies on creative lea-
dership in filmmaking (e.g. Perretti & Negro, 2007), theatrical (e.g. Dunham &
Freeman, 2000), and television (e.g. Murphy & Ensher, 2008) settings; a second
stream of social network studies on creative leadership in the form of brokerage
in music production (e.g. Lingo & O’Mahony, 2010), industrial design (e.g.
Obstfeld, 2012), and museum settings (e.g. Litchfield & Gilson, 2013); and a
nascent stream of research on dual (e.g. Hunter, Cushenbery, Fairchild, &
Boatman, 2012; Sicca, 1997) and shared (e.g. Davis & Eisenhardt, 2011; Harga-
don & Bechky, 2006) forms of leadership. Creative leadership in these strands
refers to a leader who synthesizes his or her own creative work with the hetero-
geneous creative contributions of other professionals. This creative synthesis
may be undertaken either by a single leader or by multiple leaders in a colla-
borative leadership context. In the remainder of the article, we refer to this
manifestation of creative leadership as Integrating.
To date, some of the research strands mentioned above have exchanged
findings and insights, owing to their common conceptualization of creative lea-
dership. Other research strands have rarely interacted with one another despite
the fact that they embrace a common conceptualization. The most alarming
observation that emerged during our review, however, is that the sharing of
scientific knowledge and insight has been most constrained and even non-
existent among research strands that embrace different conceptualizations of
creative leadership. This is evident in previous reviews of the creative leader-
ship literature that emphasized one conceptualization and its associated
research streams at the expense of other conceptualizations and research
streams. For example, Mumford and Licuanan’s (2004) and Tierney’s (2008)
reviews focused on social –psychological quantitative studies that were
conducted in Facilitating contexts, but paid little attention to sociologically

oriented qualitative studies that were conducted in Directing and Integrating
contexts. The resulting lack of integration of the insights generated by
diverse research streams is largely responsible for the shortage of nuanced the-
ories and for the low contextual sensitivity of existing theories in the creative
leadership literature.
To overcome the problems of selectivity and fragmentation in the field, we
used a single and relaxed criterion for inclusion in our review: that a conceptual
or empirical study offered findings and/or insights about leadership in relation
to creativity and/or innovation in any work context. As a result, our review
incorporates multiple research strands; studies conducted in Facilitating,
Directing and Integrating contexts; both psychologically and sociologically
oriented studies; and studies that employ a wide range of quantitative and
qualitative methodologies, including survey, laboratory, interview, case study,
and ethnographic designs. To the best of our knowledge, this article is the
first attempt to integrate this diverse body of work that has remained dispersed
and fragmented, to date. We clarify at the onset that our purpose is not to
reconcile paradigmatic and methodological differences among multiple
research streams, but rather, to shed light on the three manifestations of crea-
tive leadership that permeate these research streams despite their other differ-
ences. Most importantly, we synthesize the three conceptualizations into a
unified multi-context framework, which offers to creative leadership research
a valuable analytical tool for strengthening its definitional clarity, theoretical
depth, and contextual sensitivity.
A Multi-Context Framework of Creative Leadership

The development of the theoretical framework that we present in this article
was propelled by four overarching observations that emerged during our
review. First, across all research strands, creative leadership generally refers
to leading others toward the attainment of a creative outcome. Second, differ-
ent research strands give different meaning to what it actually means to lead
others toward the attainment of a creative outcome, a fact that has led to the
emergence of the three conceptualizations. Third, the three conceptualizations
differ primarily in terms of the relative ratios of the creative and supportive
contributions that leaders and followers make in the creative process.
Fourth, the differences among the three conceptualizations are not mere arti-
facts of diverse methodological choices, but rather, they reflect actual differ-
ences in the enactment of creative leadership across work contexts.
Drawing on these observations, we propose that the definition of creative
leadership should include both a global component that captures the invari-
able, context-general aspect of the phenomenon, and three more specific com-
ponents that capture its variable and context-dependent manifestations. We
suggest that at the global level, creative leadership refers to leading others toward
the attainment of creative outcome. Under the conceptual umbrella of this
global definition, creative leadership entails three alternative manifestations:
facilitating employee creativity; directing the materialization of a leader’s crea-
tive vision; and integrating heterogeneous creative contributions. The global
definition is purposively broad in order to encompass the three specific mani-
festations, whereas the latter are defined in a more narrow and discriminating
manner in order to strengthen the definitional clarity and contextual sensitivity
of the construct. This twofold definitional approach provides to creative leader-
ship research a common conceptual platform for contrasting, comparing, and
cross-fertilizing knowledge and insights across various research strands.
In epistemological terms, we adopt a “constitutive” orientation which is pri-
marily concerned with the dynamic and complex processes through which
creativity and innovation emerge, rather than with static levels of analysis or
with the micro – macro dichotomy per se (Garud, Gehman, & Giulani, 2014).
Although the outcomes of creative leadership can be measured at distinct
levels of analysis (e.g. individual, team, and organizational), creative leadership
itself does not reside within leaders, followers, or organizations, but within the
dynamic interactions among leaders, followers, and contextual characteristics.
Evidently, creative leadership research is not concerned with solitary crea-
tivity but with collaborative contexts in which leaders and followers interact in
the creative process. Across all strands of creative leadership research, there is
substantial agreement that in such contexts creativity depends not only on one
or more individuals’ creative contributions (e.g. generating and developing new
ideas), but also on other people’s supportive contributions (e.g. providing
psychological, social, or/and material support for creativity). Supportive contri-
butions are rarely seen as creative contributions themselves, but they play a
crucial role in triggering, enabling, and sustaining creative thinking and behav-
ior by other members of the collaborative context (Amabile, 1988; Ford, 1996;
Madjar, Oldham, & Pratt, 2002; Oldham & Cummings, 1996). The three mani-
festations of creative leadership that we discuss in this article differ in terms of
the ratio between the creative contributions made by the leader and those made
by the followers; and also in terms of the ratio of the supportive (to creativity)
contributions made by the leader and the followers, as shown in Figure 1.
In the Facilitating context, employees may act as “primary creators”, but
their actual creative contributions are influenced by the level of leader suppor-
tive contributions. In Figure 1, we illustrate the latter as a space of influence
whereby, keeping constant the level of leader creative contributions, increases
in leader supportive contributions result in increases in the level of followers’
creative contributions. In the Directing context, the leader may act as the
“primary creator”, but his or her actual creative contributions are influenced
by the level of follower supportive contributions. In Figure 1, we illustrate
the latter as a space of influence whereby, keeping constant the level of
Figure 1 A Multi-Context Framework of Creative Leadership.
followers’ creative contributions, increases in follower supportive contributions

result in increases in the level of leaders’ creative contributions. We clarify that,
in both the Facilitative and the Directive creative leadership contexts, “primary
creator” does not mean lone or sole creator because other people (leaders or
followers, respectively) make creative contributions as well, albeit of lower
magnitude.
The Integrating context entails more balanced ratios of leader/follower crea-
tive and supportive contributions, and its creative outcomes are more sensitive
to the degree of leader – follower creative synergy. In Figure 1, we illustrate the
latter as a space of influence whereby increases in leader and follower creative
contributions reflect mutual synergistic gains of leader – follower creative col-
laboration. Finally, Figure 1 also depicts a conceptual space of low/non-creative
leadership whereby the creative contributions of both leaders and followers are
low or non-existent. Low/non-creative leadership may be related to a social or
relational context that is hostile to the very idea of creativity in the workplace
(Amabile & Conti, 1999; Mainemelis, 2001, 2010), or it may represent a case of
unsuccessful creative leadership in Facilitative, Directive, or Integrative con-
texts where creativity is at least desirable. Our subsequent review sheds light
on the multitude of factors that influence higher and lower degrees of creative
leadership across the three contexts. In Tables 1– 3, we offer brief descriptions
and illustrations of the three manifestations of creative leadership directly
drawn from the body of research that we review in this article.
Like past research (e.g. Amabile, 1996; Mainemelis, 2010), we view creativ-
ity as both a process and a product, namely the process that results in a novel
product that the social context accepts as useful, tenable, or otherwise appro-
priate at some point in time (Stein, 1953). As a process, creativity unfolds (lin-
early or/and recursively) in distinct stages, such as preparation, incubation,
insight, evaluation, and elaboration (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997). The creative
process plays an important role in our analysis for two reasons. First, many
studies that we review have examined in detail how creative leaders manage
the challenges and transitions associated with the stages of the creative
process in a collaborative context. Second, since Wallas’s (1926) early model
of the creative process, all psychological models that we are aware of have
described the creative process not only in terms of idea generation but also
in terms of idea evaluation, idea elaboration, and idea implementation. The
three latter stages are integral components of the creative process, and in col-
laborative contexts they may be undertaken by people other than those who
generate the new ideas. We highlight this fact because it informs our sub-
sequent analysis of the differential ratios of creative and supportive contri-
butions that leaders and followers make in the creative process.
As a product, creativity is assessed in terms of the novelty and utility of its
outcomes within a specific social domain (Amabile, 1988, 1996). As noted
above, creative outcomes can be assessed at different levels of analysis, but in
the literature that we review they are usually assessed at the individual or
team level and in short time frames. In contrast, innovation refers to the
large-scale implementation of creative ideas in the organization and is
usually assessed at the organizational level and in longer time frames
(Amabile, 1988, 1996; West & Richter, 2008). We highlight this fact because
it underlies some differences among the three manifestations of creative leader-
ship that we analyze later on. Furthermore, we note that creative outcomes may
vary in terms of their magnitude, from incremental to radical (Gilson &
Madjar, 2011; Madjar, Greenberg, & Chen, 2011; Mainemelis, 2010); and
also in terms of their problem type and driver of engagement (Unsworth,
2001). Throughout the article, we highlight these differences in the studies
that we review, and in the discussion section, we reflect on their associations
with the three manifestations of creative leadership.
Last but not least, in the extant creativity literature there is substantial agree-
ment that creative processes, creative interactions, and creative outcomes
should be investigated in close association with the characteristics of the con-
texts in which they are embedded (e.g. Amabile, 1996; Grabher, 2004; Moedas
& Benghozi, 2012; Shalley & Zhou, 2008; Shalley, Zhou, & Oldham, 2004;
Table 1 Creative Leadership in a Facilitating Context
Research descriptions Reports from the field
“ . . . Leadership as evident as the exercise of influence to increase the “Advertising is a business of big ideas. The objective of the copywriter and
likelihood of idea generation by followers and the subsequent art director is to develop the big idea. But the creative director’s objective
development of those ideas into useful products” (Mumford et al., 2002, is to help others develop big ideas. I begin by explaining the potential of
p. 706) an assignment to the creative people, so they’re excited about what can
be done. Then, I’ll try to take them right to the edge of the big idea. Once
“ . . . Leaders, at least as the occupants of a role where they direct creative they’ve begun to generate work, my job is to help them identify the truly
people, will not be the ones generating new ideas. Instead, the leader is big idea and bring it to the top. So I must enthuse, energize and, when
more likely to evaluate follower ideas” (Mumford, Connelly, & Gaddis, truly big ideas begin to emerge, help to identify and nurture them” (John
2003, p. 414) Ferrella in Oliver & Ashley, 2012, p. 342)
“Creative leadership means leading people through a common process “We’re committed to letting our people go their own way, to the largest
or method of finding and defining problems, solving them, and degree feasible. We’re like a jazz band. Individual players do their own
implementing the new solutions” (Basadur, 2004, p. 111) riffs” (Jeff Goodbyb in Oliver & Ashley, 2012, p. 342)
“We take as an exemplar of creative leadership the behaviours associated “A designer’s not a machine. They don’t always produce ideas of the
with the role of the team facilitator in the implementation of creative same quality. Nonetheless, a top designer produces a certain number of
Creative Leadership
problem-solving systems such as the Parnes-Osborn brainstorming” great ideas every year. If suddenly the number goes down over a year or
(Rickards & Moger, 2000, p. 276) two, it means there’s some sort of problem and I try to solve it. I think
that’s the sine qua non condition of being a good manager” (Jacques
“ . . . The role leaders play in the facilitation of creative production in Seguelac in Haag & Coget, 2010, p. 280)
their subordinates” (Reiter-Palmon & Illies, 2004, p. 56)
“Cool idea—you earned your cookie” (Brainstorming facilitator at
“ . . . The capacity to foster employee creativity” (Tierney, 2008, p. 95) IDEO, in Sutton & Hargadon, 1996, p. 696)
†
403
a
John Ferrell is President and Chief Executive Officer of Ferrellcalvillo in New York.
b
Jeff Goodby is Co-Chairman of Goodby, Berlin, and Silverstein in San Francisco.
c
Jack Sequela is Vice President of Havas in Paris.
404
Table 2 Creative Leadership in a Directing Context
†
“Creativity is important for leadership because it is the component whereby “A chef is an excellent artisan who is able to create the perfect prototype for
The Academy of Management Annals

one generates the ideas that others will follow” (Sternberg, 2003, p. 391) the perfect dish, to enable those who work with him to perfectly replicate it
many times. This is crucial, because no chef works directly on every dish
“Some of the most admired companies . . . appear to be those whose prepared in his kitchen. In order to make my business succeed and grow, I
leader had the creative idea. Under these conditions, a strong corporate have to become a mentor and share my knowledge with the people
culture emphasizing uniformity, loyalty, and adherence to company working with me” (Davide Scabina in Slavich, Cappetta, Salvemini, 2014,
expectations would be advantageous . . . This is not the same as promoting p. 37)
creativity from within the organization. Cohesion, convergent thought,
and loyalty help to implement an idea but tend not to enhance the “Essentially it’s the conductor who creates the performance, who actually
production of a creative idea” (Nemeth, 1997, p. 66, emphasis in the creates the interpretation of the music . . . It has to be, I mean, it’s got to be
original) one person’s interpretation. So there’s a tremendous tension between
players’ individual creativity and the conductor’s direction . . . .The
“There is only the conductor-CEO, with occasional technical and question conductor is deciding absolutely how that piece of music is going to be.
clarification from the concertmaster and principal players in carrying out He’ll decide all the speeds. He’ll decide the loud and the soft. He may
the conductor’s vision and technical desires . . . In the idea generation decide just how passionate and how the phrases are going. . . . The
stage, we expect the conductor to present interpretive vision and direction outcome is the conductor’s interpretation largely, with varying degrees to
to the orchestral musicians . . . the musicians respond to this vision and which, depending on the conductor, they enable the individual player to
. . . they must solve creatively the individual technical issues in the music shape a certain piece of music where they player has the main solo line.
individually while remaining flexible and motivated enough to change Most of the other players don’t have that freedom. When you go to a
artistic direction at the request of a conductor” (Hunt et al., 2004, pp. concert and you say that was a great performance, yes, the orchestra has a
148– 149) huge amount to do with it but, in the end, it’s really the conductor whose
interpretation you’ve listened to and you either like or don’t like” (Sir
Clive Gillinsonb in Mainemelis & Ronson, 2002)
a
Davide Scabin is chef and owner of the two Michelin stars restaurant Combal.Zero in Turin.
b
Sir Clive Gillinson is Executive and Artistic Director of Carnegie Hall in New York and past cello player (1970 –1984) and Managing Director (1984–2005) of the
London Symphony Orchestra.
Table 3 Creative Leadership in an Integrating Context
“Brokers in a collaborative context must not just have a good idea “One might say that the director is the author of the theatrical
themselves, they must be able to elicit and synthesize the ideas of others” production, except for the fact that in the collaborative art of the theatre
(Lingo & O’Mahoney, 2010, p. 64) no one can be more than a crucial collaborator” (Harold Clurmana, in
Dunhan & Freeman, 2000, p. 115)
“The collaborative nature of creativity is even more apparent in
filmmaking . . . The typical feature film is the product of the separate “You’re not working for a committee, but you’re using a committee.
contributions of directors, screenwriters, actors, cinematographers, film And that’s very complex. You’re using everybody to get this vision. You
editors, composers, art directors, costume designers, and a host of cannot expect a result for that work that is some predetermined thing.
specialists in makeup, special effects, and sound. What makes these You can see it, but then you have to let it go” (Television director in
cinematic collaborations especially intriguing is that the individual Murphy & Ensher, 2008, p. 343)
contributions are not completely submerged or blended in the final
product . . . Truly creative directors leave their personal stamp on “So, you, know, the sound guy will come with this idea. The effects
virtually every movie they make” (Simonton, 2004a, pp. 163– 170) person will have this idea. And one of the qualities of a director is to be
able to decide quickly. You have to be able to say, “yes on that sound
“Members of orchestras, for instance, are bound by the conductor’s idea, no on the special effect, I want to do it live’” (Television director in
decisions. Each member of a string quartet, however, can theoretically Murphy & Ensher, 2008, p. 346)
Creative Leadership
have one-fourth of the input in musical and business decisions . . . At the
same time, the first violinist has most of the musical opportunities and “The label wanted one thing; the artist another . . . So I found myself
responsibilities in traditional compositions” (Murnighan & Conlon, 1991, acting as the referee. . . . It’s tricky, if I butt heads with the artist, I get
p. 169) fired. If I don’t butt heads with the artist, the label fires me. I was up a
creek. I also have allegiance to me, where I don’t believe this is a good
“ . . . a rather unique solution to this paradox is simply not to have a single song for [the artist] to play. That’s the hardest part, as producer, you’re
leader, but rather share the responsibility between individuals who hired to have a strong musical opinion and with three points of view,
†
possess the requisite skills and expertise” (Hunter et al., 2011, p. 56) none of them lining up . . . I didn’t know what to do” (Music producer
405
in Lingo & O’Mahoney, 2010, p. 64)
a
Harold Clurman was an American theatrical director and drama critic.
Thomson et al., 2007). Throughout our review, we pay close attention to

several contextual characteristics, such as the degree to which the opportunities
for making creative contributions are weakly or strongly structured; elements
of social structure (e.g. stratification, institutionalization, professionalization,
roles, and normative expectations); elements of the nature of work (e.g. cumu-
lative and disruptive learning, recombination, improvisation); elements of the
nature of creativity (e.g. incremental and radical); and organizational charac-
teristics (e.g. size, permanent, temporary, and network structures). In the dis-
cussion section, we integrate these contextual factors and suggest that their
interactions influence the emergence of the three manifestations of creative lea-
dership. Put another way, we argue that long before the leader and the fol-
lowers occupy their respective roles in the collaborative context, the latter is
often ex-ante socially structured in a way that favors the emergence of one of
the three manifestations of creative leadership.
In the next three sections, we review research on Facilitative, Directive, and
Integrative creative leadership. In each of these sections, we identify the main
contributing research streams; the focal research topics; and the central themes
and findings about creative leadership. In the final section of the article, we
elaborate on our multi-context framework and suggest that the three manifes-
tations should be understood not as different leadership styles, but as three col-
laborative contexts that are shaped by the interaction among industry,
organizational, professional, personal, and task imperatives and characteristics.
We also discuss several directions for future research, and we argue that a
multi-context conceptualization can help improve creative leadership research
in terms of definitional clarity, contextual sensitivity, and knowledge transfer
among different research strands.
Facilitating
Early creativity theories suggested that leaders, as a core aspect of the proximal
social context of work, influence employee creativity (Amabile, 1988; Ford,
1996; Woodman et al., 1993). Subsequent research focused on employee crea-
tivity as the dependent variable and worked “backwards” to identify leader-
related factors that have an impact on it. In a historically parallel development,
leadership researchers started from established leadership constructs, such as
leadership styles, and worked “forward” to examine their impact on employee
creativity. Inevitably, both research orientations led to a common conceptual-
ization of the creative leader as a facilitator of employee creativity. These
research strands view employees as the primary contributors (generators) of
creative ideas and rarely focus on the leader’s creative contributions. If the
objective is to increase employee creativity, high leader involvement in idea
generation and idea elaboration may reduce the required levels of employee
intrinsic motivation and commitment (Amabile, 1988). As Basadur (2004,

p. 108) noted,
If people are asked to simply implement their leader’s predetermined
solutions, how much commitment will they feel to making those sol-
utions succeed? People naturally work harder at their own projects
than at someone else’s. Leaders must transfer to others their ownership
of these challenges. The earlier they do so, the more ownership they will
feel.
Leaders in the Facilitating context may not be primary idea generators, but
they still make both creative and supportive contributions to creativity in the
workplace. Mumford et al. (2002) argued that creative leaders are involved
throughout the creative process, from idea generation to idea structuring
and idea promotion. Leaders’ creative contributions entail providing direction
in the idea preparation phase (Mumford et al., 2002) and evaluation and com-
bination of ideas in the idea evaluation phase (Mumford et al., 2003). Mumford
et al. (2003) argued that leader creative cognition is primarily evaluative in
nature. This implies that leaders’ personal creative contributions in a Facilitat-
ing context are related more to selective retention and less to variation (cf.
Ford, 1996). In addition, leaders make important supportive contributions to
the creative process by shaping a supportive climate for creativity, by promot-
ing new ideas in the work context, and by managing properly the stages of the
creative process (Basadur, 2004; Mumford et al., 2002, 2003). Although these
contributions are rarely seen as creative themselves, they often exert a critical
influence on creativity in the work context. As shown in Figure 1, in the Facil-
itating context followers’ creative contributions can range from low to high for
the same level of leader creative contributions. This differential is influenced not
only by employees’ creative abilities, but also by a set of supportive leader beha-
viors such as idea promotion, feedback, and so forth.
In comparison to the Directing and Integrating contexts, Facilitative crea-
tive leadership appears to be more widespread across various industry and
organizational contexts. The studies that we review below have observed Facil-
itative creative leadership in work contexts far beyond the creative or cultural
industries. In Table 4, we summarize the key themes and contributions in
research on Facilitative creative leadership. The main themes that we review
below include competency perspectives; behavioral perspectives; relational per-
spectives; and transformational perspectives.
Competency Perspectives
Mumford et al. (2002) argued that technical expertise allows creative leaders to
communicate effectively with the group, adequately represent it, and properly
handle the developmental needs and interactions of its members. In a
Table 4 Facilitative Creative Leadership: Themes and Contributions

Key themes Selected contributions
I. Competency perspectives
Expertise Amabile et al. (2004), Krause (2004), Mumford et al.
(2002, 2003), Mumford, Gibson, Giorgini, and Mecca
(2014)
Creative thinking skills Mumford et al. (2002, 2003)
Creative process Basadur (2004), Basadur and Basadur (2011), Byrne,
management skills Shipman, and Mumford (2010), Mumford et al. (2003,
2014), Reiter-Palmon and Illies (2004), Rickards and
Moger (2000), Stenmark, Shipman, and Mumford
(2011)
Awareness of temporal Halbesleben, Novicevic, Harvey, and Buckley (2003)
complexity
Emotional intelligence Zhou and George (2003)
II. Behavioral perspectives
Leader support Amabile (1988), Amabile and Conti (1999), Amabile
et al. (1996, 2004), Baer and Oldham (2006), Basadur
(2004), Ford (1996), Frese, Teng, and Wijnen (1999),
George and Zhou (2007), Hunter, Bedell, and Mumford
(2007), Janssen (2005), Krause (2004), Lin, Mainemelis,
and Kark (2014), Madjar et al. (2002), Makri and
Scandura (2010), Mumford et al. (2002), Oldham and
Cummings (1996), Oliver and Ashley (2012), Reiter-
Palmon and Illies (2004), Rice (2006), Rickards and
Moger (2000), Unsworth, Wall, and Carter (2005),
Woodman et al. (1993), Zhang and Bartol (2010)
Assigned goals Baker and Nelson (2005), Carson and Carson (1993),
Chua and Iyengar (2008), Dane, Baer, Pratt, and
Oldham (2011), Ford (1996), Litchfield (2008),
Litchfield, Fan, and Brown (2011), Shalley (1991, 1995),
Sutton and Hargadon (1996)
Monitoring Amabile et al. (2004), Choi, Anderson, and Veillette
(2009), George and Zhou (2001), Gevers and
Demerouti (2013), Zhou (2003)
Expected evaluation Shalley (1995), Shalley and Perry-Smith (2001), Yuan
and Zhou (2008)
Feedback George and Zhou (2001), Mumford et al. (2014), Zhou
(1998, 2003, 2008)
Play Andriopoulos and Gotsi (2005), Fillis and Rentschler
(2010), Jaussi and Dionne (2003), Kark (2011a),
Kauanui, Thomas, Sherman, Waters, and Gilea (2010),
Heracleous and Jacobs (2008), Mainemelis and Ronson
(2006), Oliver and Ashley (2012), Statler, Heracleous,
and Jacobs (2011), Statler, Roos, and Victor (2009)
Table 4 (Continued)
Empowerment Somech (2006), Sun, Zhang, and Chen (2012), Zhang
and Bartol (2010)
Authentic leader behaviors Rego, Sousa, Marques, and Pina e Cunha (2012, 2014)
Ethical leader behaviors Palanski and Vogelgesang (2011), Gu, Li-Ping Tang, and
Jiang (2015), Yidong and Xinxin (2013)
Networks Elkins and Keller (2003), Kanter (1988), Mumford et al.
(2002, 2014), Rickards and Moger (2000),
Venkataramani, Richter, and Clarke (2014)
III. Relational perspectives
Leader – member exchange Atwater and Carmeli (2009), Basu and Green (1997),
Clegg, Unsworth, Epitropaki, and Parker (2002),
Hammond, Neff, Farr, Schwall, and Zhao (2011), Liao
et al. (2010), Olsson, Hemlin, and Poussette (2012),
Scott and Bruce (1994), Tierney et al. (1999), Volmer,
Spurk, and Niessen (2012)
IV. Transformational perspectives
Transformational Aryee, Walumbwa, Zhou, and Hartnell (2012),
leadership Eisenbeiss, Van Knippenberg, and Boerner (2008), Eyal
and Kark (2004), Gong, Huang, and Farh (2009), Jung
(2001), Kark and Van Dijk (2007, 2014), Ling, Simsek,
Lubatkin, and Veiga (2008), Rosing, Frese, and Bausch
(2011), Shin and Zhou (2003, 2007), Si and Wei (2012),
Sosik, Kahai, and Avolio (1998, 1999), Wang, Oh,
Courtright, and Colbert (2011), Wang and Rhode
(2010)
longitudinal study with 238 knowledge workers in the U.S.A., Amabile et al.
(2004) found that followers’ perceptions of creative leaders were related
more to leader behaviors that signaled intellectual and technical competence,
and less to character-focused perceptions linked to leader personality and
values. Mumford et al. (2002, 2003, 2014) suggested that leaders who lack tech-
nical expertise and creative thinking skills may find it extremely difficult to
properly evaluate employees’ ideas. This is crucial because in most organiz-
ations, leaders are responsible for evaluating, filtering, and sponsoring new
ideas (Benner & Tushman, 2003; Hargadon, 2008; Mainemelis, 2010); and
also because through their evaluations and suggestions to employees, leaders
may trigger additional levels of idea combination, generation, and refinement
(Mumford et al., 2003). In a study with 399 middle-level managers in Germany,
Krause (2004) found that leader expert knowledge was positively associated
with employees’ situational perceptions (need and susceptibility to change)
and idea-implementation behaviors, but it was not associated with idea gener-
ation. Mumford et al. (2002) argued that creative leaders must also possess
organizational expertise in order to foster the implementation of creative pro-
jects in the work context.
Halbesleben et al. (2003) suggested that many competencies related to crea-
tive leadership require awareness of the temporal complexity dimensions of
creative projects (i.e. timeframe, tempo, temporality, (a)synchronization,
sequencing, pauses/gaps, simultaneity, time personality, and timelessness).
The creative process consists of multiple stages which pose distinct and
often antithetical demands, such as generation –evaluation, and divergent –
convergent thinking (Mainemelis, 2002). Creative leaders must possess tem-
poral and other skills to manage the distinct demands of each stage
(Mumford et al., 2014). Reiter-Palmon and Illies (2004) suggested that
several creative process management skills are required for creative leadership,
including the abilities to motivate problem-solving, stimulate creative thinking,
align the creative process with organizational objectives, promote healthy
degrees of cognitive conflict, structure and enhance the information search
process, balance freedom and frugality, and articulate appropriate evaluation
criteria. Some studies have shown that creative leaders should also possess sub-
stantial strategic planning skills (Byrne et al., 2010; Mumford et al., 2003, 2014;
Stenmark et al., 2011).
Basadur (2004) and Basadur and Basadur (2011) argued that creative
leaders must also be able to recognize the differences in people’s preferred
problem-solving styles and then integrate and syncronize these styles accord-
ing to the demands posed by each stage of the creative process. Last but not
least, Zhou and George (2003) suggested that leaders’ emotional intelligence
plays a critical role in enabling the awakening of employee creativity
through five complementary routes: identification, information gathering,
idea generation, idea evaluation and modification, and idea implementation.
Behavioral Perspectives
Leader support. Several authors have argued that supportive leadership
facilitates employee creativity by fostering intrinsic motivation, psychological
safety, or/and positive moods (Amabile, 1988; Ford, 1996; Woodman et al.,
1993). Mumford et al. (2002) suggested that creative leaders provide idea
support, work support, and social support. Rickards and Moger (2000) and
Basadur (2004) suggested specific supportive practices. Amabile et al. (2004)
collected data from 238 knowledge workers in 7 companies using daily ques-
tionnaires during 8– 37 weeks. They identified specific leader behaviors that
increased, decreased, or did not affect employees’ perceived leader support.
In turn, perceived leader support was positively related to employee creativity.
Their study shows that supporting, positive monitoring (e.g. maintaining
regular contact), and recognizing leader behaviors lead to perceptions of leader

support; while negative monitoring (e.g. close monitoring), not clarifying roles
and objectives, avoiding solving problems or creating problems were negatively
related to perceived leader support. Amabile et al.’s study sheds light on specific
behaviors that affect perceived leader support, and demonstrates that the same
type of behavior (e.g. monitoring) has differential expressions and effects.
In a recent meta-analysis of 42 studies that included 13 work climate dimen-
sions, Hunter et al. (2007) found that leader support has positive effects on
employee creativity. Equally important is the fact that, to date, studies on
leader support and creativity have been conducted in various countries, includ-
ing the U.S.A. (e.g. Amabile et al., 1996), the Netherlands (e.g. Janssen, 2005)
Germany (e.g. Krause, 2004), Bulgaria (e.g. Madjar et al., 2002), UK (e.g. Uns-
worth et al., 2005), Egypt (e.g. Rice, 2006), and China (e.g. Zhang & Bartol,
2010).
Some studies highlight the mechanisms and interactions through which
leader support achieves its effect on employee creativity. In a study in manu-
facturing facilities in the U.S.A., Oldham and Cummings (1996) found that
employees produced the most creative work when they were supervised in a
supportive, non-controlling fashion, had appropriate creativity-relevant
characteristics, and worked in complex jobs. In a study in knitwear companies
in Bulgaria, Madjar et al. (2002) found that positive mood mediated the
relationship between leader support and employee creativity. George and
Zhou (2007) found that employee creativity in an oil field services company
was highest when positive mood, negative mood, and leader support (consist-
ing of developmental feedback, interactional justice, and trust) were all high. In
a study in an IT company in China, Zhang and Bartol (2010) found that leader
support positively moderated the connection between employee psychological
empowerment and employee creative engagement. In a study with 207 blue-
collar workers in a steel company in the Netherlands, Frese et al. (1999)
found that leader support was not related to writing up and submitting a sug-
gestion to a company suggestion scheme, but it was positively related to the
improvement of the quality of a suggestion. This implies that leader support
may have greater impact on idea elaboration (and idea implementation;
Krause, 2004) than on idea generation.
Unsworth et al. (2005) surveyed 1083 employees in a general hospital in the
UK and found that the creativity requirement of the job fully mediated the
relationship between leader support and creativity. They suggested that creativ-
ity requirement may be a more proximal aspect of the work climate. George
(2007) noted that because the influences of the social context on creativity
are combinatorial, a creativity requirement in a job may backfire if other sup-
portive climate factors are not present. In a study in a cereals company in the
U.S.A., Baer and Oldham (2005) found that employees exhibited relatively high
creativity when they experienced intermediate creative time pressure and
received considerable leader support. In a study of 226 ad designers in China,

Lin et al. (2014) found that supportive leaders were more likely to reward or
forgive creative deviants and less likely to punish or ignore them. Among
the creative deviant designers (those who had violated a managerial order to
stop working on a new idea), only those who worked with supportive
leaders improved their creative performance. This finding suggests that
leaders may be perceived as supportive even after having rejected an employ-
ee’s idea, and that supportive leaders are open to reconsidering an earlier rejec-
tion decision about a new idea.
Finally, one longitudinal study examined the effects of leader support on
organizational innovation. In a study of 77 high-technology firms, Makri
and Scandura (2010) found that the interaction between CEO creative leader-
ship (defined as support for exploration) and CEO operational leadership in
time 1 (1993 – 1995) was positively related to innovation quantity in time 2
(five years later, 2000), but only CEO creative leadership was positively
related to innovation quality in 2000.
Assigned goals. There is considerable agreement in the literature that crea-

tive leaders must find an optimal balance between autonomy and structure
(Anderson, Potočnik, & Zhou, 2014; Gilson, Mathieu, Shalley, & Ruddy,
2005; Mumford et al., 2002, 2003). It has been suggested that goal setting
allows leaders to influence employees’ motivation, effort, and attention in
the creative process without harming their intrinsic motivation and sense of
autonomy (Shalley & Gilson, 2004). Early experimental studies found that
people who were assigned either do-your-best or difficult creativity goals
exhibited higher creativity than people who were not assigned a creativity
goal (Carson & Carson, 1993; Shalley, 1991, 1995). In an ethnographic study
at IDEO, Sutton and Hargadon (1996) found that presenting a challenging
goal at the beginning of a brainstorming session stimulated creativity. In a
study of 29 resource-constrained firms, Baker and Nelson (2005) identified
cases where managerial instructions to solve a problem without spending
any money combined with managerial support resulted in employees generat-
ing creative solutions through bricolage.
Recently, Litchfield et al. (2011) found that individuals who were assigned a
specific, difficult novelty goal produced higher creativity with or without brain-
storming rules when goal commitment was high. Two other recent laboratory
studies found that, when individuals are given more choice in terms of
resources, only those who are explicitly instructed to be creative and also
have relevant past expertise will be more creative (Chua & Iyengar, 2008);
and that individuals who tend to think rationally are more likely to be more
creative when they receive instructions to use an intuitive approach to
problem-solving (Dane et al., 2011). In a recent conceptual contribution, Litc-
field (2008) argued that goal-based interventions provide a structure for
tailoring expectations for idea generation to the creative context. He suggested

that leaders can adjust the specificity and difficulty of goals in order to guide
the novelty and usefulness aspects of idea generation.
Monitoring. Because autonomy plays a central role in most creativity the-

ories (e.g. Amabile, 1988), close monitoring is generally expected to reduce
employee creativity and intrinsic motivation. Amabile et al. (2004) found
that while monitoring in the form of maintaining regular contact with employ-
ees had positive effects on perceived leader support, close monitoring in the
form of frequent and excessive checks of employees’ work was detrimental.
Zhou (2003) found that employees were more creative when leader close moni-
toring was low and creative coworkers were present. George and Zhou (2001)
found that employees who were high on conscientiousness had the lowest
levels of creativity when they were closely monitored by their supervisors.
On the other hand, Choi et al. (2009) found that leader close monitoring
was positively associated with employee creativity and reduced the negative
effects of aversive leadership on creativity. They suggested that, because the
scale that they used was neutral and focused on leader’s behavior instead of
the psychological consequences associated with it, it is possible that employees
perceived close monitoring as an expression of caring and attention to their
work and not as micro-managing. This explanation corroborates with
Amabile et al.’s (2004) findings about the positive and negative aspects of
leader monitoring behavior. Recently, in a diary study in an IT firm in the
Netherlands, Gevers and Demerouti (2013) found that leaders’ temporal
reminders were positively associated with employees’ experienced task absorp-
tion, which was in turn positively related to creativity. The relationship
between temporal reminders and task absorption was stronger for employees
with a preference for a deadline pacing style.
Expected evaluation. Shalley (1995) found in a laboratory setting that

individuals who exhibited the highest creativity expected evaluation, worked
alone, and were assigned a creativity goal. Shalley and Perry-Smith (2001)
found that individuals exhibited higher creativity and intrinsic motivation
when anticipating an informational rather than controlling evaluation. Yuan
and Zhou (2008) found that expected evaluation exerted differential effects
on creative performance during variation and selective retention. Individuals
were most creative when they expected evaluation only during the selective
retention phase. It appears that expected evaluation can foster creativity
under some conditions. For example, creative leaders may need to abstain
from evaluation during idea generation (Basadur, 2004), but inform employees
that their ideas will be later evaluated according to a set of given criteria
(Reiter-Palmon & Illies, 2004); and then conduct the evaluation in an informa-
tional manner (Mumford et al., 2003; Shalley & Perry-Smith, 2001; Yuan &
Zhou, 2008). However, Unsworth (2001) noted that goals and expected evalu-
ation may foster responsive, expected, and contributory creativity but not
necessarily proactive creativity. The type of creativity, thus, likely influences
the impact that goals and expected evaluation have on creativity.
Feedback. Zhou (2008) suggested that leader feedback fosters employee

creativity by strengthening employees’ intrinsic motivation; by providing
employees with standards for evaluating their own work; and by facilitating
the acquisition of creative skills and strategies. In a laboratory study, Zhou
(1998) found that individuals who received positive feedback delivered in an
informational style were more creative than those who received negative feed-
back delivered in a controlling style. George and Zhou (2001) found that office
employees, in a petroleum drilling equipment company, who were high on
openness to experience had the highest creative behavior when they received
positive feedback from their supervisors. In another study in a for-profit
hospital in the U.S.A., Zhou (2003) found that employees were more creative
when they received developmental feedback from their leaders and creative
coworkers were present. Overall, there is agreement in the field that leader
informational – developmental feedback generally fosters employee creativity
(Mumford et al., 2014). However, some authors have noted that in contexts
where radical creativity is desirable even developmental feedback may con-
strain creativity by leading individuals to think in more conventional ways
(George, 2007); and that in such cases it might be more advantageous for
leaders to provide to employees high degrees of autonomy and suspend evalu-
ation and feedback for long periods of time (Mainemelis & Ronson, 2006).
Play. More recently, some authors have suggested that leaders can facili-
tate employee creativity by fostering a playful culture and by institutionalizing
play practices (Dodgson, Gann, & Phillips, 2013; Mainemelis & Dionysiou,
2015; Statler et al., 2009, 2011). Mainemelis and Ronson (2006) proposed a
theory of play and creativity in which they argue that fostering play in the
workplace may be particular important for leaders interested in promoting
radical creativity. Andriopoulos and Gotsi (2005) found that top leader
support for a playful blue-sky project in a new product design consultancy
in California was critical for turning the blue-sky project into a context of crea-
tive thinking and imagination. In a study of strategy team retreats, Heracleous
and Jacobs (2008) found that “serious play” with physical objects triggered
mindshifts and creative insights. Oliver and Ashley (2012) found that creative
leaders in advertising perceive a playful climate as important for stimulating
the creative process, preventing burnout, and maintaining an energy-charged
social climate.
Fillis and Rentschler (2010) proposed that entrepreneurial leaders’ intrinsic
motives are translated into specific attitudes that promote entrepreneurial
passion, play, and creativity in the work context. In a study with 112 entrepre-
neurs in Southern California, Kauanui et al. (2010) found that entrepreneurial
leaders who were intrinsically motivated experienced more flow at work and fos-
tered a work culture that promoted play and creativity. Kark (2011a) argued that
leader playfulness fosters employee creativity by strengthening employees’
intrinsic motivation, by signaling psychological safety in the leader–follower
relationship, and by shaping a work culture that promotes fun, curiosity, and
exploration. This argument corroborates with early laboratory findings about
play signals (e.g. Glynn, 1994; Sandelands, 1988). Jaussi and Dionne (2003)
found that non-conventional leadership behaviors, which were manipulated in
an experiment as playful behaviors (e.g. standing on furniture and hanging
ideas on clotheslines) significantly interacted with follower perceptions of the
leader as a role model for creativity predicting followers’ creativity. Considering
that an increasing number of organizations embrace playful practices (Maineme-
lis & Altman, 2010; Mainemelis & Dionysiou, 2015), it would be useful to
examine more closely in the future the links among creative leadership, leader
play behaviors, leader unconventional behaviors, and follower creativity.
Empowerment. Zhang and Bartol (2010) defined empowering leadership

as the process of fostering the conditions that enable sharing power with
employees by highlighting the meaning and significance of the employees’
work, enhancing decision-making autonomy, showing confidence in their
capabilities, and removing hindrances to performance. Although this defi-
nition seems very broad and does not differentiate between empowering lea-
dership and other leadership styles that have some similar components,
Zhang and Bartol (2010) found support for the mediating role of psychological
empowerment in the relationship between empowering leadership and both
intrinsic motivation and creative process engagement. The latter two variables
then positively influenced creativity. Furthermore, empowerment role identity
moderated the relationship between empowering leadership and psychological
empowerment, whereas leader encouragement of creativity had an interactive
effect with psychological empowerment on creative process engagement. Their
study further suggested that leaders can actively encourage creative engage-
ment by articulating the need for creative job outcomes, spelling out what
the organization values, and calling attention to the effectiveness of engaging
in processes likely to lead to creative outcomes. For instance, Mumford et al.
(2002) suggested that creative leaders must use different influence tactics
such as intellectual stimulation, role modeling, participation, and goal setting
in order to motivate followers.
Sun et al. (2012) utilized social learning and self-determination theories and
tested a chain mediating process linking empowerment to employee creativity.
They found that psychological empowerment was a significant mediator of the
relationship between structural empowerment and creativity, and that both
structural and psychological empowerment were mediators of the relationship

between transformational leadership and creativity. Somech (2006) also found
that participative leadership had a strong positive effect on team innovation
and that team reflection was an important mediator.
Authentic leader behaviors. Authentic leadership is another construct that

has received empirical attention in relation to creativity. Various definitions
have been proposed in the literature (e.g. Gardner, Cogliser, Davis, &
Dickens, 2011) which, however, converge on two key components of authentic
leadership: (a) self-oriented, such as self-awareness, personal values, integrity
and moral processing, and (b) others-oriented, such as positive follower devel-
opment and organizational engagement. Rego et al. (2014) analyzed how auth-
entic leadership predicted employees’ creativity both directly and through the
mediating role of employees’ positive affect and hope. Their results confirmed
that (a) authentic leadership predicted employees’ creativity, both directly and
through the mediating role of employees’ hope, and (b) authentic leadership
also predicted employees’ positive affect, which in turn predicted employees’
hope and, thus, creativity. Rego et al. (2012) also found that authentic leader-
ship predicted employees’ creativity, both directly and through the mediating
role of employees’ psychological capital.
These findings are of interest, however, the construct of authentic leader-
ship has been criticized for its broad definitions; its possible overlap with
other positive forms of leadership, such as transformational and ethical leader-
ship; its loose interpretation of the philosophical works that are used as its
theoretical foundation, such as Heidegger’s (1962) notion of resoluteness;
and its favoring of a collective self at the expense of the individual self and sub-
jectivity. Concerns have also been raised regarding the validity and generaliz-
ability of existing measures (e.g. Ford & Harding, 2011; Gardiner, 2011;
Gardner et al., 2011). Eagly (2005) criticized the one-sided perspective of exist-
ing authentic leadership models and suggested that authenticity must be
acknowledged by followers for it to produce positive outcomes, naming this
two-sided concept relational authenticity. Thus, future studies may consider
the effect of relational aspects of authentic leadership on creativity, as well
as alternative, more rigorous and theoretically grounded definitions of
authenticity.
Ethical leader behaviors. To the best of our knowledge, there are only
three studies that have examined the role of ethical leadership (or related con-
structs) on creative outcomes despite the fact that research on ethical leader-
ship is booming (e.g. Brown & Treviño, 2006; Mayer, Aquino, Greenbaum,
& Kuenzi, 2012; Stouten, van Dijke, & De Cremer, 2012; Stouten, van Dijke,
Mayer, De Cremer, & Eeuwema, 2013). Palanski and Vogelgesang (2011) con-
ducted an online experiment and showed that followers’ perceptions of leader’s
behavioral integrity positively predicted their intention to think creatively and

to take risks via their sense of psychological safety. Gu et al. (2015) examined
moral leadership in a Chinese context and found that the relationship between
moral leadership and employee creativity was mediated by both employee
identification with the leader and Leader –Member Exchange (LMX). Finally,
Yidong and Xinxin (2013) found that ethical leadership on both the individual
and the group levels was positively associated with innovative work behavior.
They also found individual and group intrinsic motivation to be important
mediators. The relationship between ethical leadership and creativity might
be more complex than hypothesized in these three studies. It is, for example,
possible that ethical leaders, who encourage normative behavior and adherence
to group rules and standards, might negatively affect employee creativity by
suppressing dissent (Nemeth, 1997), creative deviance (Mainemelis, 2010),
and bootlegging (Criscuolo, Salter, & Ter Wal, 2014).
Networks. Creative leaders in the Facilitating context also need to connect

the team with various external sources of information and to successfully
champion a new idea in the work context (Mumford et al., 2002, 2014; Rick-
ards & Moger, 2000). For example, Elkins and Keller (2003) observed that in
order to increase the chances of project success in R&D organizations,
project leaders must use their networking, political, and persuasion skills in
order to secure the support of top management and other divisions inside
the organization, and also manage effectively external relationships with
clients, suppliers, governments, trade associations, and even competitors.
Although these processes are unlikely to be viewed as creative themselves,
they play a catalytic role in fostering creativity in project teams.
Mumford et al. (2002) argued that in their interactions with the larger
organization, leaders must be able to build support for the creative ideas of
their team members, which other parts of the organization may perceive as
unclear or inherently risky. Kanter (1988) argued that the more radical a
new idea is, the broader and stronger organizational support it needs in
order to be accepted and transformed into an organizational innovation. She
suggested that a major element of the innovation process is the building
of coalitions, “acquiring power by selling the project to potential allies”
(p. 184). Power, as per Kanter, involves acquiring more information, more
resources, and more support, which help not only with selling a new idea to
the larger organization but also with enriching the creative process of a
leader’s focal team or department. Mumford et al. (2002) noted that creative
leaders must be willing to engage in organizational politics and also be
aware of organizational strategy in order to be effective in gaining legitimacy
for new ideas in the work context. Lacking such willingness and ability,
leaders may still be able to foster their employees’ creative thinking but not
the transformation of their employees’ creative ideas to organizational
innovations. Future research should play close attention to this possibility

because it can help us draw more fine-grained distinctions about the differ-
ences between fostering creativity and fostering innovation in Facilitative crea-
tive leadership contexts.
Venkataramani et al. (2014, p. 966) examined leaders’ social networks as
important contextual influences affecting employee radical creativity, defined
as “ . . . the development of useful and novel ideas that deviate substantially
from the status quo”. They highlighted that the leader assumes the role of a
critical liaison, or between centrality, in the informal network of idea exchanges
and interactions. By utilizing data from 214 employees working in 30 teams,
they found that team leaders’ between centrality in the idea network inside
the team as well as among peer leaders significantly influenced employees’
radical creativity over and above employees’ own social network and ties.
Leader between centrality was predictive of employee radical creativity when
leader and employee ties targeted different sources within or external to the
team, but not when they targeted the same source within or external to the
team.
The importance of social networks for creativity has been consistently high-
lighted in prior research. For example, Baer (2010) argued for the strength-of-
weak ties perspective in creativity (see also Brass, 1995; Perry-Smith, 2006;
Perry-Smith & Shalley, 2003; Zhou, Shin, Brass, Choi, & Zhang, 2009) and
found that actors are more creative in idea networks of optimal size, weak
strength, and high diversity, and when they score high on openness to experi-
ence. Similarly, Perry-Smith (2014) in an experimental study found tie strength
to affect creativity through individual processing of non-redundant knowledge.
She specifically found distinct knowledge frames received from all contacts
(strong or weak ties) to equally facilitate creativity, but only knowledge
content from weak ties had an effect on creativity.
Nevertheless, Venkataramani et al.’s (2014) study is one of the first to
address the role of leader’s social network ties for employees’ radical creativity
(beyond employees’ social networks and ties) and acknowledges the difficulty
horizontal organizational structures within teams pose for employees’
exchange of ideas and information with all members of the team. In such con-
texts, leaders can act as critical liaisons by sharing their understanding of differ-
ent perspectives, ideas, and obstacles and by helping team members see the big
picture and connect the dots that can lead the team to radical creativity. We
note that a distinct pattern, where the leader himself or herself connects
most of the dots, is observed in research on Integrative creative leadership as
creative brokerage, which we discuss later in the article.
The above review suggests that some leader behaviors focus on the employ-
ees and how they should be treated; some focus on the task and how the crea-
tive process should be structured; and others focus on the leader’s role in
building coalitions and political support in the organization. This implies
that the Facilitating context is complex and imposes upon leaders multiple be-
havioral demands. Future research can examine in detail how contextual differ-
ences influence the ways by which leaders respond to this complex challenges.
Relational Perspectives
Relationship-based approaches to leadership (e.g. LMX theory) represent one
of the most popular approaches to understanding workplace leadership (e.g.
Erdogan & Bauer, 2013). The importance of the leader – follower relation for
creativity has been examined by several studies that consistently report a posi-
tive relationship between the two (e.g. Basu & Green, 1997; Clegg et al., 2002;
Scott & Bruce, 1994; Tierney, 1992). A recent meta-analysis reported a moder-
ate relationship (r ¼ .29) between LMX and innovative performance
(Hammond et al., 2011). In her review on leadership and creativity, Tierney
(2008, p. 107) stressed that “Given the nature of LMX, it appears that such
dyadic relations may be a natural conduit for employee creative action”.
In a study with 191 R&D employees of a chemical corporation in the U.S.A.,
Tierney et al. (1999) tested a multi-domain, interactionist creativity model of
employee characteristics (e.g. intrinsic motivation and cognitive style), leader
characteristics, and LMX. With regard to intrinsic motivation, they found
that when employees work with supervisors who possess a similar intrinsic
motivational orientation, creative performance is enhanced. When it comes
to cognitive style, they found that cognitive-innovators, no matter what type
of relationship they had with their supervisor, experienced high levels of crea-
tive output. However, cognitive-adaptors in higher quality LMX dyads were
consistently more creative than were adaptors in low-quality relationships.
Although they hypothesized that innovative cognitive style employees
working with a similar style supervisor would result in creative performance,
it was not confirmed by the data. A possible explanation is that cognitive-inno-
vators are creative loners (Kirton, 1976) that may not be interested in relation-
ship building or that these employees already possess the skills and confidence
to be creative and may not receive incremental benefit from interacting with a
supervisor who also exhibits these tendencies.
A more recent study examined how leaders create the conditions for crea-
tivity at work. By utilizing Amabile’s (1988) componential theory of creativity,
Spreitzer, Sutcliffe, Dutton, Sonenshein, and Grant’s (2005) model of thriving,
and Quinn and Dutton’s (2005) theory of coordination, Atwater and Carmeli
(2009) showed that LMX was positively related to employees’ feelings of
energy, which in turn were related to a high level of involvement in creative
work. Liao et al. (2010) in a longitudinal, multisource, and multi-level study
looked at both LMX and Team – Member Exchange. They examined how
and when the quality of the social exchange relationships that a team
member develops with the supervisor and other team members will affect
his/her creativity. They further used social cognitive theory and examined self-
efficacy as a mediating mechanism and relationship differentiation as a mod-
erator. Their basic finding is that both the relation with the leader and with
other members are important for employee creativity (depending on how dif-
ferentiated these relationships are in a work group) and that self-efficacy is an
important explanatory mechanism.
Furthermore, Olsson et al. (2012) examined the effects of LMX in leader and
member ratings on leader and member creative performance among 137
leader – member dyads in academic and commercial R&D groups. Their
study yielded mixed results. First, LMX from a leader perspective was positively
associated with leaders’ and members’ higher creative performance in aca-
demic research groups. Second, member- and leader-rated LMX was negatively
linked to higher creative performance as measured by the number of publi-
cations by leaders and members in commercial research groups. As they
used the leader –member exchange –multidimensional scale (LMX – MDM),
they further found that the affective dimension of LMX was positively associ-
ated with creative performance in the academic group and negatively associ-
ated with creative performance in the commercial group.
Volmer et al. (2012) in a longitudinal field survey integrated job design
theory and LMX theory and found support for an interactive effect of LMX
and job autonomy on creative work involvement, which has generally been
defined as “the extent to which an employee engages his or her time and
effort resources in creative processes associated with work” (Carmeli & Schau-
broeck, 2007, p. 36). Specifically, the positive relationship between LMX and
creative work involvement was stronger when employees experienced greater
job autonomy. Their findings suggest that employees who have a high-
quality connection with their supervisors, involving mutual awareness and
trust together with high job autonomy, are more creatively involved in their
work.
While LMX is a popular leadership theory focusing on the dyadic level, many
of the studies undertaken examining creative outcomes are one sided, adopting
only the followers’ perspective. As a result, they do not truly capture relational
processes or the “space between” the leader and the follower with regard to crea-
tive outcomes. Future studies can thus adopt a perspective more attuned to the
dyadic interaction. This may lead to studying LMX or other types of leader–fol-
lower relationships, such as high-quality relationships (Dutton & Heaphy, 2003)
and work intimacy in leader–follower relations (Kark, 2011b), using post-heroic
leadership relational perspectives (Fletcher, 2004) that may enable us to under-
stand the leader–follower creative process through alternative lenses (e.g. the
integrating lens). Future studies can also address the multi-level nature of
LMX (e.g. Henderson, Liden, Glibkowski, & Chaudhry, 2009) which has been
totally disregarded by existing LMX-creativity research and examine the role
of meso- and group-level constructs such as relative LMX and LMX differen-
tiation on creative outcomes.
Transformational Perspectives
Transformational leadership has been conceptualized as leadership targeted at
creativity, change, innovation, or/and entrepreneurship (e.g. Eisenbeiss et al.,
2008; Kark & Van Dijk, 2007; Wang et al., 2011). The link between transforma-
tional leadership and follower creativity and innovation has gained support
from various empirical studies, as well as from two recent meta-analyses
(Hammond et al., 2011; Wang et al., 2011) that generally report positive mod-
erate relationships between transformational leadership and creative perform-
ance (r ¼ .13 and r ¼ .21, respectively).
Recently, transformational leadership theory has been critiqued for its limit-
ations (i.e. its definition is not clear and is conflated with its effects; the lack of
understanding of the specific role of the different dimensions and how each
dimension has a distinct influence on mediating processes and outcomes;
and the validity of the measurement tools) (van Knippenberg & Sitkin,
2013). Furthermore, recent empirical research suggests that transformational
leadership and other leadership styles constructs should include not only inter-
personal and motivational dimensions, but also instrumental dimensions
linked to environmental scanning and strategy formulation (e.g. Antonakis
& House, 2014). Thus, findings based on the theory and measurement of trans-
formational leadership should be understood with caution, keeping in mind
these critiques. However, notwithstanding these limitations, there is a wide
variety of research that has linked transformational leadership with creativity
that can substantively contribute to the understanding of the ways in which
leadership may affect followers’ creativity.
Individual-level studies. Various studies found support for the hypoth-

esized relationship between transformational leadership and individual
employee creativity. For example, one experimental study in which the leader-
ship behavior was manipulated using scenarios describing either transforma-
tional or transactional leadership showed that participants who read the
scenario of the transformational leader reported that they would behave in a
more creative manner, as well as demonstrated higher levels of creativity
(Kark & Van Dijk, 2014). In field studies that focused on the organizational
context in different cultures, similar relationships were found. A multi-level
study in a large multinational company based in China showed that transfor-
mational leadership was positively related to subordinates’ creative perform-
ance, and transactional leadership was negatively related to subordinates’
creative performance (Si & Wei, 2012). This relationship was further supported
in other individual-level contexts (e.g. Gong et al., 2009).
Other studies explored interpersonal variables linked to the self as

mediators of the relationship between transformational leadership and creative
outcomes. Gong et al. (2009) found that employee creative self-efficacy
mediated the relationship between transformational leadership and employee
creativity. In a study in a large telecommunication company, Aryee et al.
(2012) found support for a model in which followers’ work engagement,
experienced meaningfulness of work, and experienced responsibility for
work outcomes mediated the relationship between transformational leadership
and followers’ innovative behavior. They suggested that transforming fol-
lowers’ self-concepts and linking them with the unit’s mission and vision
enhances positive psychological states, which are valued resources from
which employees draw on to behave in an innovative manner.
Another major mechanism that has been suggested to mediate the relation-
ship between transformational leadership and employee creativity at the individ-
ual and team levels is the self-regulatory focus. Drawing on the self-regulatory
focus theory and on self-concept based theories of leadership, Dacin, Dacin,
and Tracey (2011) developed a conceptual framework proposing that individ-
uals’ promotion foci, which represents the “ideal self” and focuses individuals
and groups on their hopes, wishes, and aspirations, is likely to moderate the
relationship between transformational leadership and creativity. In contrast,
transactional and monitoring leadership is likely to enhance followers’ preven-
tion self-regulatory foci, which represents the “ought self” and focuses individ-
uals and groups on their duties, obligations, and responsibilities and is likely
to limit creativity at the individual and team levels. A recent experimental
study that explored these relationships showed support for this model (Kark
& Van Dijk, 2014). However, a following study in the field showed that while
transformational leadership was not able to enhance individual creativity via
the promotion self-regulatory focus, transactional leadership negatively affected
employees’ creativity, through a situational prevention focus (Kark & Van Dijk,
2014). Another related study on servant leadership, which is a leadership style
that emphasizes high morality and concern to the wellbeing of others and
shares some conceptual similarities to transformational leadership, demon-
strated that the promotion focus mediated the relationship between servant lea-
dership and individual creative behavior (Neubert, Kacmar, Carlson, Chonko, &
Roberts, 2008).
Team-level studies. Many authors have argued that fostering team creativ-
ity and innovation is an increasingly important leadership function, and that
leadership style in general, and transformational leadership more specifically,
has direct and strong effects on these outcomes (e.g. Anderson et al., 2014;
Bledow, Frese, Anderson, Erez, & Farr, 2009; George, 2007). However, the
empirical evidence for the role of transformational leadership in fostering
team creativity and innovation is scarce and mixed (Anderson et al., 2014;
Eisenbeiss et al., 2008).
A study by Jaussi and Dionne (2003) used confederates in the lab as leaders
and did not find support for the relationship between transformational leader-
ship and team creativity. Other studies showed that transformational leader-
ship in an experimental context enhanced the teams’ creativity. A series of
studies examined the effect of different manipulated leadership styles (transfor-
mational versus transactional) on indicators of participants’ divergent thinking
in a team brainstorming task. The findings of these studies showed that fluency
(the number of ideas) and flexibility (the number of different types of ideas)
were higher in teams in the transformational leadership condition, as
opposed to the transactional condition (Jung, 2001; Sosik et al., 1998, 1999).
Studies that were performed in an organizational context found further
support for the relationship between transformational leadership and team
creativity in different contexts and cultures around the world (e.g. Eisenbeiss
et al., 2008; Gumusluoglu & Ilsev, 2009; Shin & Zhou, 2003, 2007).
Eisenbeiss and Boerner (2010) found a curvilinear U-shaped relationship,
showing that team innovation was high under extreme levels of transforma-
tional leadership (very high or very low levels), while in contrast team inno-
vation was low under intermediate levels of transformational leadership. The
authors contended that since R&D teams have high intrinsic motivation for
creativity and innovation, they can enjoy autonomy and be creative under
low levels of transformational leadership, or thrive when there is a high
quality of transformational leadership. However, moderate levels of transfor-
mational leadership limit the autonomy and do not offer the benefit of high-
quality leadership guidance. Although this finding may be unique to the
context of R&D, it suggests that future research should pay close attention
to contextual characteristics and various moderators.
Other studies examined team-level moderators of the relationships between
transformational leadership and team innovation. For example, Si and Wei
(2012) found support for the role of team empowerment climate as a moderator
of the relationship between transformational leadership and followers’ creative
performance. In lower levels of the empowerment climate, leaders who dis-
played transformational behaviors had a greater effect on subordinates’ crea-
tive performance, while leaders who displayed transactional leadership
behavior reduced subordinates’ creative performance. In contrast, in contexts
where the empowerment climate was high, the leader’s transactional leadership
enhanced subordinates’ creative performance. Si and Wei (2012) suggested
that team empowerment climate can play the role of a substitute for personal
leadership behavior in creative performance situations, weakening the active
effect of transformational leadership. This implies that in some work contexts
there may be a weaker need for leaders to play a personal role and that the team
climate can also provide important recognition, motivation, and inspiration.
Recent studies on the role of team climate of innovation (cf. Anderson &
West, 1998; West & Anderson, 1996) show that the moderation effect of inno-
vative team climate on the relationship between transformational leadership
and employee creativity depends on employee identification with leader.
Wang and Rhode (2010) found that for employees with low identification
with the leader, the effect of transformational leadership on employee creativity
was weaker under a high innovative climate than under a low innovative
climate. For employees with high identification with the leader, the effect of
transformational leadership on employee creativity was stronger under a
high innovative climate than under a low innovative climate. Eisenbeiss et al.
(2008) found that transformational leadership may make an important contri-
bution to team innovation, but for teams to become innovative it is also impor-
tant that team members share a concern for high-quality performance (i.e.
climate for excellence). This study also showed that the team’s support for inno-
vation, a team-level construct that reflects the extent to which team members
display supportive behaviors aimed at enhancing the development and
implementation of new ideas, is an important mediator between transforma-
tional leadership and the team’s shared commitment to innovation.
Shin and Zhou (2007) examined moderators that related to the team com-
position. According to their work, transformational leadership and the team’s
educational specialization heterogeneity interacted to affect team creativity in
such a way that when transformational leadership was high, teams with
greater educational specialization heterogeneity exhibited greater team creativ-
ity. A recent meta-analysis by Rosing et al. (2011) pointed to an important
moderator, namely the stage in time in which the creative and innovative
process is at and how this stage interacts with the leadership process. Rosing
et al. (2011) found that transformational leadership was related more strongly
with and was more effective at the initial opening-up stages of the creative
process, whereas transactional leadership was generally found to be more effec-
tive for the later stages of idea implementation. Other studies support this
finding (e.g. Axtell et al., 2000; Kanter, 1988; Mumford et al., 2002). This
suggests that more attention should be given in the future to the role of trans-
actional and monitoring leadership styles and how they may foster creativity at
different stages of the creative process.
Organization-level studies. Ling et al. (2008) found that CEOs’ transfor-

mational leadership promote corporate entrepreneurship through the CEOs’
interface with the members of the top management team. In a study conducted
in 140 elementary schools, Eyal and Kark (2004) found that transformational
leadership set the most favorable managerial behavior for organizational entre-
preneurial activism and for proactivity in generating novel ideas. However, the
contribution of transformational leadership to the teams’ creativity and to
organizational innovation did not enable the full materialization of radical,
second-order changes, since it was curtailed and shaped by the specific context
of the institutional school system and its limited ability to enable creativity and
innovation.
Lin and McDonough (2011) investigated the role of leadership and organ-
izational culture in fostering innovation ambidexterity (i.e. the ability to sim-
ultaneously generate multiple types of innovation). Although not studying
directly transformational leadership, they found that an entrepreneurial and
sharing organization culture mediated the relationship between various types
of leadership behavior and innovation. They concluded that the way in
which leadership affects innovation is complex. While prior research has
suggested that transformational leadership will foster radical innovation and
that transactional leadership will foster incremental innovation, Lin and
McDonough’s findings suggest that this is an oversimplification of the links
between leadership and innovation. Therefore, failing to take into account
the role of organizational climate and culture may lead to a distorted picture
on how leadership influences the ability of individuals, teams, and organiz-
ations to generate different forms of creativity and innovation. This corrobo-
rates our argument that the three manifestations of creative leadership
should be understood not as leadership styles but as collaborative contexts
shaped by the interaction among contextual and personal elements. Put
another way, the ability of Facilitative leaders to promote more radical creativ-
ity and large-scale innovations is related to the overarching social structure of
the work context.
It becomes obvious from the above review that the concept of transforma-
tional leadership has been quite influential in research on Facilitative creative
leadership. Its popularity can be explained by it transformative and change-
oriented nature as well as its encompassing dimensions, such as intellectual
stimulation, that have been deemed relevant for creative outcomes. It is, never-
theless, alarming that limited prior work has examined the distinct contri-
butions of the different components of transformational leadership, and this
is a critical avenue for future research. Examining the differential effects of
transformational components (intellectual stimulation, idealized influence,
charisma, individual consideration, and inspirational motivation) on followers’
creativity, at the different levels of transformational influence reviewed above
(the individual follower, the team, and organizational levels), can significantly
advance our understanding and further address some of the recent criticisms of
transformational leadership (van Knippenberg & Sitkin, 2013). Measurement
remains, however, a thorny issue that must be explicitly addressed in future
research on transformational leadership in order for solid and valid con-
clusions to be drawn regarding its contributions to creativity in Facilitating
contexts.
In summary, the research reviewed above suggests that in Facilitating
contexts, the creative contributions of followers require substantial supportive
contributions from their creative leaders; and that the latter also make some
creative contributions, especially in the idea evaluation and idea-implemen-
tation phases of the creative process. Table 4 summarizes the main themes
and contributions in research on Facilitative creative leadership.
Directing
Directive creative leaders are primary creators who materialize their creative
vision through other people’s work. The degree to which followers make crea-
tive contributions largely depends on the nature of work. For example, low-
ranked employees in large organizations may contribute mostly to the
implementation of a leader’s creative vision, while creative leaders in orches-
tras, haute-cuisine restaurants, and architectural offices expect from followers
to make creative contributions as well. In either case, Directive creative leader-
ship is not a case of solitary personal creativity. Directive creative leaders do
not create in the way individual poets or mathematicians do; rather, the
single most important characteristic that all Directive creative leaders share
is that their creative ideas can be brought into life only through the collabor-
ation of other people. Furthermore, Directive creative leaders, such as orchestra
conductors, do not expect from followers supportive contributions in the form
of “blind”, mundane execution, but in the form of high-quality, impeccable,
and even world-class execution. If the generation of a creative idea is the hall-
mark of individual creative thinking, the hallmark of Directive creative leader-
ship is the materialization of a creative idea through inspiring, eliciting, and
integrating others’ high-quality supportive contributions.
We note earlier that Facilitative contexts may impose ex-ante upon fol-
lowers the normative expectation to make substantial creative contributions,
for example, by making creativity an internal requirement of their jobs (Uns-
worth et al., 2005). In contrast, Directive contexts often impose ex-ante upon
leaders the normative expectation to generate a creative vision and communi-
cate it effectively to the followers. In our review, we found fewer studies on
Directing creative leadership than Facilitative creative leadership, which
implies that Directive creative leadership might be less widespread in organiz-
ations. Although the lower number of studies does not necessarily mean that
phenomenon itself manifests itself at lower frequencies, the subsequent analy-
sis that we present below suggests that Directive leadership may in fact be rela-
tively less widespread for two reasons. First, Directive creative leadership is
manifested in some work contexts where there is a substantial overlap
between the identity of the organization and the identity of the leader. We
assume that this high degree of identity overlap does not generalize in many
or most organizations. Second, Directive creative leadership may be manifested
in various other organizations but only episodically and in close relation to
large-scale corporate innovation that is generated and directed by top
leaders. Although the implementation of such innovations involves the entire

organization, Directive creative leadership in those cases is usually limited only
to the upper echelon of it.
While Facilitative creative leadership has been observed in a wide range of
work contexts, Directive creative leadership has been studied systematically
mainly in three contexts: top-down innovation; orchestra conductors; and
haute-cuisine chefs. In Table 5, we summarize the main themes and contri-
butions in these strands of research.
Top-Down Innovation
Selznick (1984) viewed high-ranked institutional leaders as responsible, prac-
tically wise, and capable to think strategically about complex social issues.
He argued that besides focusing on maintaining institutional character and
competence, top leaders must also be creative in order to embrace change. Selz-
nick portrayed creative leadership as a personally expressive, communicative
action that infuses “day-to-day behavior with long run meaning and
purpose” (p. 151). Today, the focus on top leaders who act as primary creators
is a central theme, albeit in different expressions, in research on Directive crea-
tive leadership. The focus of these studies is not on individual and team crea-
tivity in short time frames, but on organizational innovation in longer time
frames. In doing so, these studies shed light on some aspects of creativity
and innovation that at times only top organizational leaders can tackle.
Mumford et al. (2000) suggested that while first-line supervisors confront
managerial problems (e.g. business projection), creative leaders solve
complex social problems which are ill-defined, novel, and involve a large
number of interactions among constituencies. They proposed that creative
leaders must possess intelligence, creative problem-solving skills, social skills,
as well as wisdom. Sternberg (2003, 2007) argued that creative leaders need
intelligence (analytical and practical), creativity, and wisdom. The emphasis
on wisdom is interesting because it does not appear in the Facilitating litera-
ture. Mumford et al. (2000) suggested that wisdom enables leaders to “go
outside themselves” to gather perspectives and build wide support for the
implementation of their creative vision. Sternberg (2003) noted that wisdom
is the most important but also the rarest component of leadership. He
suggested that a leader is wise to the extent that he or she uses his or her intelli-
gence, creativity, and experience in order to reach a common good over the
short and long terms; and also in order to adapt, shape, or select environments
by balancing multiple interests.
Sternberg et al. proposed a propulsion model of eight types of creative out-
comes that leaders seek to accomplish. The types range from extending existing
paradigms (by replication, redefinition, forward incrementation, or advance
forward incrementation), to replacing existing paradigms (by redirection,
Table 5 Directive Creative Leadership: Themes and Contributions

Intelligence, creativity, and wisdom Faulkner (1973a), Mumford, Zaccaro,
Harding, Jacobs, and Fleishman (2000),
Selznick (1984), Sternberg (2003, 2007)
Creative vision Anand, Gardner, and Morris (2007), Bouty
and Gomez (2010), Conger (1995),
Eisenmann and Bower (2000), Faulkner
(1973a), Hunt et al. (2004), Kamoche,
Kannan, and Siebers (2014), Nemeth (1997),
Selznick (1984), Sternberg and Kaufman
(2012), Sternberg, Kaufman, and Pretz
(2001, 2003), Svejenova et al. (2007),
Svejenova, Planellas, and Vives (2010)
Follower evaluation Bennis (2003), Faulkner (1973a), Hunt et al.
(2004)
Identity Cardinal and Lapierre (2007), Gomez and
Bouty (2011), Fauchart and von Hippel
(2008), Hunt et al. (2004), Inversini,
Manzoni, and Salvemini (2014), Jones
(2011), Messeni Petruzzelli and Savino
(2014), Svejenova et al. (2007, 2010)
Social, symbolic, and technical capital/ Bouty and Gomez (2010), Cousins,
broad behavioral repertoire O’Gorman, and Stierand (2010), Gomez and
Bouty (2011), Hunt et al. (2004), Jones (2010,
2011), Messeni Petruzzelli and Savino
(2014), Marotto et al. (2007), Mumford et al.
(2000), Slavich et al. (2014), Svejenova et al.
(2007, 2010)
Creative freedom and renewal Cousins et al. (2010), Slavich et al. (2014),
Svejenova et al. (2007, 2010)
Apprenticeship and mentoring/ Bennis (2003), Bouty and Gomez (2010),
follower entrapment Cardinal and LaPierre (2007), Faulkner
(1973b), Inversini et al. (2014), Paris and
Leroy (2014)
Communication and involvement Bennis (2003), Faulkner (1973), Hunt et al.
(2004), Marotto et al. (2007), Mumford et al.
(2000), Selznick (1984), Strubler and
Evangelista (2009), Vaccaro et al. (2012)
reconstruction, or reinitiation), and to synthesizing existing paradigms to

create a new one (Sternberg & Kaufman, 2012; Sternberg et al., 2001, 2003).
The eight types differ quantitatively (within types) and qualitatively
(between types). The focus of this propulsion model is less on distinct creative
products or services and more on large-scale innovations.
The propulsion model posits the creative leader’s personal mark is visible or
recognizable in the final creative outcome. This is another common theme in
all studies in the Directing context. Future research should investigate the
factors (e.g. personal, contextual, and situational) that influence leaders’
decision to pursue one or more of the eight creative outcomes. Recent
studies found that incremental creativity is associated more with extrinsic
motivation, ideas that are solution-driven and developed on the basis of con-
crete practices, and organizational identification; whereas radical creativity is
related more to intrinsic motivation, willingness to take risks, career commit-
ment, and ideas that are problem-driven and abstract (Gilson & Madjar, 2011;
Madjar et al., 2011). It would be interesting to test these variables in relation to
the propulsion model. Following Tierney et al.’s (1999) study, it would also be
interesting to examine the interactive effects of leader and follower motiva-
tional orientations across the eight types.
Conger (1995) discussed examples of breakthrough innovations that were
generated by top leaders. He argued that visionary creative leaders have a see-
mingly uncanny ability to foresee market and social trends, recognize oppor-
tunities, synthesize diverse information, and capitalize on them by devising
revolutionary products or services. Nemeth (1997) argued that some of the
most admired companies at the time had a creative CEO and a cult-like
culture that emphasized conformity, commitment, and goals. She argued
that such cultures suppress employee creativity but facilitate the implemen-
tation of the leader’s creative ideas. Nemeth suggested that top-down inno-
vation is linked to a managerial philosophy that is not friendly to employee
creativity and freedom at the lower levels of the organization. In some organ-
izations, however, many employees perform work that does not permit much
creativity. Among the innovations that Conger (1995) discussed, many took
place in companies where creativity was not an internal requirement of most
jobs nor a critical factor for successful performance. In fact, Conger notes
that the top-leader generated innovations that he identified were not strategi-
cally planned but emerged from leaders’ opportunistic search processes.
Eisenmann and Bower (2000) noted that CEOs in global media firms fre-
quently drive strategic innovation in a top-down manner to capture first-
mover advantages. They argued that reliance on an “activist CEO” is useful
when environmental turbulence is high, the risk of the decision is high, and
quick action is vital. Eisenmann and Bower (2000) concluded that the “super-
human CEOs” seem to be alive and well in the media industries—from Hearst
and Luce to Murdoch and Turner. Recently, Kamoche et al. (2014, p. 990)
found that the top leaders of a large confectionery company designed a new
knowledge management system and they made the R&D personnel implement
it without using normative or coercive control, but rather, by using subtle
forms of symbolic violence, “the exercise of force or power upon social
agents with their complicit acceptance” (see also Bourdieu, 1991). Kamoche
et al. (2014) found that the company’s top leaders used the three elements of
symbolic violence: pedagogy (e.g. they introduced a new language about the
new knowledge management system); misrecognition (e.g. they allowed some
voluntary participation in order to prevent employees from feeling that man-
agers are applying too much control); and a cultural arbitrary that realized but
concealed the interests of top leaders (e.g. they stressed the new system’s role in
promoting knowledge sharing among scientists while underplaying its signifi-
cance for business results).
In another study in management consulting firms, Anand et al. (2007)
found that the emergence and embedding of new creative knowledge practices
can follow either bottom-up or top-down pathways, and that “In a top-down
context, direct intervention through goal setting and deployment of skilled or
formally powerful people might be more fruitful” (p. 425). The Directing
context of creative leadership in the latter case is evident in the view of a
senior consultant interviewed by Anand et al. (2007): “It is very much an indi-
vidual-based business, because the client buys ME. It’s me the buy into, it’s very
personalized” (p. 411).
Figure 1 illustrates that, in the Directing context, for any given level of crea-
tive contributions made by the followers, the leader’s creativity can range from
low to high. This difference is linked in part to the supportive contributions
that followers make to the creative outcome: they contribute to the success
of the creative idea by implementing it successfully. Although mere execution
is rarely seen as a creative contribution, it is an important supportive contri-
bution to the creative process. Furthermore, in work contexts located in the
media, R&D, and consulting industries, implementation rarely takes the
form of mundane execution. Rather, it usually takes the form of high-quality
execution by qualified professionals who have at least the possibility to make
some creative contributions as well.
This pattern has to be empirically examined in the future in relation to
organizational size as the moderator. In a recent study of 1000 Dutch organiz-
ations, Vaccaro et al. (2012) found that transformational leadership was more
effective in promoting innovation in large companies (by helping people over-
come bureaucratic barriers); while transactional leadership was more effective
in promoting innovation in small and less complex organizations where active
management is possible. This finding corroborates with Vera and Crossan’s
(2004) earlier suggestion that transactional leadership is helpful in the
implementation phase of innovation. Vaccaro et al. (2012) concluded that
“management innovation may be generated and directed from the upper-
echelon in organizations while the implementation of certain management
innovations may be monitored and rewarded accordingly to pre-established
goals” (p. 45).
While it is certainly possible that during the implementation process,
employees may make lower magnitude creative contributions, the Directing
context of creative leadership is in sharp contrast with the Facilitating context

discussed earlier. This does not imply that the two cannot coexist at different
parts of the same organization. For instance, Directive creative leadership may
be enacted at the top and trigger large-scale, long-term innovations, while
Facilitative creative leadership may be enacted in lower level departments
and trigger smaller magnitude, short-term creative solutions that assist the
innovation implementation (West & Richter, 2008). Such an organization, of
course, would be quite different from an organization where both top- and
middle-level leadership are Facilitative. Nemeth (1997) pointed out that organ-
izations where innovation is generated primarily at the top are fundamentally
different in cultural terms from organizations where creative ideas and inno-
vations are generated by a multitude of organizational members. Similarly,
Kanter (1988) argued that organizations that produce a greater number of
radical innovations are more complex and decentralized and utilize the creativ-
ity of various organizational members.
Future research should examine in greater detail the comparative advan-
tages of Directive and Facilitative creative leadership at the upper echelon of
organizations. A first factor to consider is organizational size. Nemeth
(1997) and Kanter (1988) focused on large organizations where the bottom-
up innovation pattern of Facilitative creative leadership is likely to produce a
greater number of radical innovations than the top-down innovation pattern
of Directive creative leadership. This is not necessarily the case, however, in
small organizations which may benefit equally or more from top-down Direc-
tive creative leadership (Vaccaro et al., 2012). A second important factor is
whether the innovation is consistent or episodic in temporal terms (Maineme-
lis, 2002). While Kanter (1988) focused on factors that produce more innova-
tive products, more frequently, and more consistently, Conger (1995) focused
on opportunistic incidents of innovation whose objective was not consistency
but a sudden and substantial redirection of an organization’s course. It is poss-
ible that the former is better served by Facilitative leadership, while the latter is
better served by the more centralized and agile nature of Directive leadership
(Eisenmann & Bower, 2000).
Last but not least, different organizational and industry contexts embrace
different interpretations of what “optimal creativity” means to them (Maine-
melis, 2010). In large and established organizations, “optimal creativity” is
usually understood primarily in quantitative terms, such as producing more
innovations more frequently by more organizational members (Kanter,
1988). This “optimum” seems to be better served by Facilitative creative leader-
ship. In contexts like symphony orchestras and haute cuisine, however,
“optimal creativity” is understood primarily in qualitative terms, such as craft-
ing and maintaining an authentic creative identity (Jones, Anand, & Alvarez,
2005). The research that we review below suggests that this may be better
served by Directive creative leadership.
Orchestra Conductors
Symphony orchestras are complex and stratified settings with well-defined sta-
tuses and roles (Faulkner, 1973b). An orchestra is led by the conductor who is
responsible for generating the creative interpretation of the score and also controls
technical and performative decisions (Marotto et al., 2007). Musicians must
respond to and follow the conductor’s interpretive vision. Their individual crea-
tive contributions are usually limited to solving creatively technical issues, except
from a few musicians who are occasionally granted the opportunity to make a
solo creative contribution during the performance (Hunt et al., 2004). The struc-
ture of orchestras, thus, offers to the conductor the opportunity to make the most
important creative contribution; it places upon the conductor demanding expec-
tations for delivering a high-quality performance; and it also allows the continu-
ous evaluation of the conductor’s skills and interpretation by the players.
While conductors give their own creative interpretation to the score, the
final outcome depends on the individual and especially collective performances
of the musicians. Faulkner (1973a) found that the musicians expect from the
conductor to manifest leadership, authority, direction, intelligence, confidence,
a sense of beauty, and technical ability with the stick. Musicians perceived as
successful those maestros who helped them predict behavioral outcomes and
enhanced their expectancies of mastery. Conversely, poor maestros provided
inconsistent directions and ambiguous definitions. In a participation obser-
vation study of an Eastern European orchestra, Marotto et al. (2007, p. 397)
examined the leadership of four different conductors and found that “the
same musical work performed by the very same musicians sounded dramati-
cally different from one conductor to the next”. The most successful conductor
in their study manifested charismatic leadership traits and was able to impose
his tempo on the orchestra. Marotto et al. concluded that an authoritarian-
charismatic leadership style can catalyze “collective virtuosity” in orchestras,
a state which entails both high-quality musical performance and a strong col-
lective aesthetic immersion in the process.
Ultimately, an orchestra performance is a collective endeavor and successful
conductors are deeply involved in all stages of the collaboration process (Hunt
et al., 2004). While in the Facilitating context this is often seen as close moni-
toring or micro-managing, in orchestras it is both expected and appreciated
(Marotto et al., 2007). In the words of Maestro Neeme Jarvi, “In the orchestra,
if there is a wrong note or we’re not together, who’s fault is it? The leader’s”
(Strubler & Evangelista, 2009, p. 120).
Most orchestra players are highly educated, skilled, and quite insightful
about any piece of music (Faulkner, 1973b; Hunt et al., 2004). Most of them
have performed in the past the same score with other conductors. Faulkner
(1973a) found that musicians agree that when an orchestra meets a new con-
ductor it needs no more than 15 minutes to determine whether the new
conductor is “charismatic”, “brilliant”, “second rate”, “poseur”, “fake”, or

“charlatan”. Therefore, while in Facilitating contexts the creative leader evalu-
ates followers’ ideas, in the Directing context of the orchestra the conductor is
the target of evaluation in terms of his or her interpretation and leadership
skills. Failure to inspire and lead the players may lead to the latter’s resistance
or/and mediocre performance (Hunt et al., 2004).
The collaborative context of orchestras offers to conductors the chance to
make high-magnitude creative contributions, but they can reach that end
only by persuasively establishing their authority and by building reciprocal
trust and respect with the players (Faulkner, 1973a). Hunt et al. (2004)
argued that conductors need to have a broad behavioral repertoire (including
skills for networking and managing relationships with external constituencies),
and the flexibility to adjust their behavior to different stages of the creative
process. Faulkner (1973a) found that interpretive ability, communicative com-
petence, and wisdom allow conductors to transform a performance from one of
merely playing notes to a genuinely creative collaborative event. Marotto et al.
(2007) found that self-confidence, eloquence, emotional expressiveness, and
permanent communication with the players were key aspects of successful
conductors.
Furthermore, Faulkner (1973b) described the “entrapment” that musicians
feel and their attempts to become virtuosos so as to gain greater freedom for
creative expression. This “entrapment” reflects the structural tension triggered
by the conductor’s interpretation-direction, which limits players’ individual
creativity. Most orchestras cannot resolve this tension by facilitating greater
musician creativity in the orchestra; instead, they often create other opportu-
nities that allow musicians to express their personal musical creativity
outside the orchestra’s regular performances (Sir Clive Gillinson in Mainemelis
& Ronson, 2002).
Another interesting issue is the conductor’s professional identity. In her
study of the tensions between the players and the administrators of the
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Glynn (2000, p. 296) does not mention any-
where the conductor except in a brief note:
The musical director had an independent occupational identity, without
strong professional ties to either the musicians or the administrators. He
seemed to neither be disclaimed nor claimed by either of the competing
groups, as he seemed to personify neither identity.
Although one could imagine alternative possibilities (e.g. Glynn mentions the
incorporation of dual identities), Glynn’s study highlights that conductors have
a distinct occupational identity.
This is not unique to orchestra conductors. Cardinal and Lapierre (2007)
discussed the identity tensions experienced by prima ballerina Karen Kain
when she became Artistic Director of the National Ballet of Canada. As a
dancer she had a brilliant career but it was always the Artistic Director that
decided her roles. As the Artistic Director she gained more decision-making
power but, despite her identification with other dancers, she now had to
meet different role demands. For example, despite her caring for the
dancers, she had to let five dancers go. The larger implication that merits
greater empirical investigation in the future is how conductors and artistic
directors manage their distinct professional identity while they are also
expected to be a “musicians’ musician” or a “dancer’s dancer”.
Haute-Cuisine Chefs
Haute cuisine is a highly institutionalized field (Ferguson, 1998) that involves
various actors (e.g. chefs, critics, and restaurateurs), among whom chefs are the
dominant players (Rao, Monin, & Durand, 2003). This gives them the power to
make more creative contributions than anyone else. Bouty and Gomez (2010)
examined the evolution of practices in a Michelin-starred restaurant in France
over an eight year period. Although the restaurant changed three head chefs in
that period, the structure of creative work remained an inverted pyramid: most
creative work (idea generation and development) was generated by the top
chef; some idea development work was done by the second chefs; and little
creative work was done by the cooks. The inverse pattern was observed for
execution: the cooks did most and the head chefs did least of the cooking. Simi-
larly, Slavich et al. (2014) noted that haute-cuisine restaurants must balance the
demand for creativity with competing demands for standardization and repro-
duction. In their study of Italian chefs Moreno Cedroni and Davide Scabin,
they found that when these chefs experiment with new recipes they use tech-
niques, such as “codification” and “teachability”, to ensure the serial and
impeccable reproduction of the new recipes later in their restaurants by
second chefs and cooks.
Jones et al. (2005) noted that authenticity can be claimed either by subject-
ing one’s creative voice to the perpetuation of tradition or by crafting a unique
and distinctive creative identity. Haute cuisine has strong norms for authen-
ticity and creativity, a fact that allows top chefs to produce creations that
carry their personal, distinctive, and discernible signature. Fauchart and von
Hippel (2008) found that Michelin-starred chefs consider their recipes as
very important for their success, and they also believe that it would be difficult
for others to reproduce their recipes without their help. Recipes are protected
not by intellectual property laws but by social norms among chefs to be honor-
able, trustworthy, and recognize a chef’s right to be “acknowledged as the
author of the recipe one has created” (p. 193). Without an authentic creative
identity, chefs cannot gain recognition and renown (Svejenova et al., 2007).
Personal creativity is thus a sine-qua-non condition for becoming a top chef.
This is not a question of being creative in mixing ingredients and crafting
recipes, but a question of doing so in a way that leads up to the formation of an

authentic identity which challenges or/and replaces ideas and practices in the
field.
We note earlier that in Facilitating contexts, “optimal creativity” usually
refers to more creativity, more frequently, by more organizational members
(Kanter, 1988). In the Directing context of haute cuisine, however, “optimal
creativity” does not refer to producing more creative recipes, more frequently,
by more chefs and cooks in a restaurant. Paris and Leroy (2014) noted that in a
creative company production is the creator himself or herself. Messeni Petruz-
zelli and Savino (2014) found that when chef René Redzepi opened his restau-
rant Noma, “despite the excellent taste . . . it was neither innovative nor true to
his cultural origin” (p. 232). Redzepi gained acclaim (for himself, Noma, and
what is now known as the “New Nordic cuisine”) only after developing a per-
sonal style that combines traditional ingredients, cultural elements, and
cutting-edge techniques. Gomez and Bouty (2011, p. 934) showed that while
until 2000 chef Alain Passard was considered creative and his restaurant was
highly acclaimed, he was perceived as a rising chef who was still under the
influence of his mentors. In 2000, he radically changed his menu to include
only vegetable-based recipes, something that no chef had done before. This
elevated his reputation and he is now seen as one of the best chefs in the
world and as the “legitimate master of vegetables”.
In haute cuisine, there is an intimate overlap between the identity of the
chefs and the identity of the institutions, organizations, products, and trends
of the field. This creates three challenges for creative leaders. First, chefs
must embody the entire organization. For example, Bouty and Gomez
(2010) found that unsuccessful chefs focused only on kitchen affairs and did
not develop external relationships or they did not express publicly their
vision of gastronomy. Second, chef succession is highly risky. For example,
Paris and Leroy (2014) observed that after the death of chef Berbard
Loiseau, “the employees knew how to run the company but there was no
one who could fill his shoes in terms of leadership” (p. 52). Third, reputation
exerts a tremendous pressure on the creativity of chefs. In order to protect his
creative freedom, Ferran Adria separated spatially and temporally his restau-
rant from a creativity workshop where he and his team could freely explore
and experiment. He kept his restaurant closed six months of the year in
order to provide to himself time and space for exploration (Svejenova et al.,
2007, 2010). Many or most top chefs use similar creative “labs” in order to
generate and test new ideas prior to implementing some of them in their
restaurants (Messeni Petruzzelli & Savino, 2014; Paris & Leroy, 2014; Slavich
et al., 2014).
Svejenova et al. (2010) examined the career of chef Ferran Adria and found
that while personal creativity was his strategic resource, the main trigger of his
career was his quest for creative freedom. They suggested that top chefs should
be understood as “individual business models” which create and capture value

while pursuing personal motives and interests. Svejenova et al. (2007) proposed
a four-stage model of chef-driven institutional change: creativity, theorization,
reputation, and dissemination. The four stages describe the flow of new ideas
from generation to acceptance by the field. There is substantial agreement in
this strand of research that chefs need high degrees of social, symbolic, and
technical capital to bring about institutional change and innovation in
haute cuisine (e.g. Bouty & Gomez, 2010; Cousins et al., 2010; Gomez &
Bouty, 2011; Svejenova et al., 2007, 2010).
Like orchestra conductors, chefs can materialize their creative vision only
through the work of highly qualified others. Unlike orchestra conductors,
however, chefs collaborate with professionally similar others. Top chefs need
a team of highly qualified chefs to work with them in developing and executing
recipes; and as a top chef’s restaurant operations grow larger, they usually
involve more their teams also in exploring and generating new recipes.
Haute cuisine follows the master –apprentice model that has been used since
the times of ancient Greek philosophers and Renaissance artists. After gradu-
ating from culinary academies, young chefs work in the restaurants of top chefs
where they practice the craft and acquire knowledge about trends, ingredients,
methods, networks, and so forth. One of the leadership qualities of top chefs
that is frequently mentioned in the literature is their ability to mentor and
develop others (Bouty & Gomez, 2010; Boyatzis, Smith, & Beveridge, 2013;
Inversini et al., 2014). The theoretical implication is that while Facilitative crea-
tive leadership is focused on fostering the creativity of others by providing
them with generous degrees of autonomy, in contexts like haute cuisine, the
close guidance of Directive creative leaders seems necessary for the creative
development of new talented chefs.
As the new chefs rise up the hierarchy, they face a tension between remain-
ing devoted to their mentor and crafting their own authentic identity (Inversini
et al., 2014). As members of a top chef’s team, they can express their creativity
but only up to a point and under the direction of the top chef. Gomez and
Bouty (2011) found that Passard considers his cuisine a training space for
elite chefs, and that two years after he has promoted them to the position of
the second chef he encourages them to start up their own restaurant. Inversini
et al. (2014) noted that chef Daniel Boulud started his restaurant when he rea-
lized that in his previous job his creativity was 50% of what he wanted. This
implies that in Directive contexts one can grow creatively under others up to
a point, after which one has to become a creative leader.
Table 5 summarizes the main themes discussed above. Most themes appear
to generalize in other fields, such as top fashion and architecture, although the
literature there is limited. Jones (2010) found that social and symbolic net-
works played a key role in the recognition and eminence of architects Corbu-
sier, Walter Gropius, Sir Edwin Lutyens, Ludwig Mies van de Rohe, and Frank
Lloyd Wright. Jones (2010, 2011) also noted that, although various pro-
fessionals contribute to the construction of a building, in the field of architec-
ture only the design architect receives credit for it. This tends to be true about
most creative leaders in the Directing context. In addition, Bennis (2003) noted
that Frank Gehry is the most influential architect of our times because he has
invented a new, personal, and authentic language. The theme of hands-on
involvement in the Directing context appears in Gehry’s statement that “You
have to control the project through to the end, really control the goddamned
thing, because it’s your design. Nobody else knows how to do it” (Bell &
Gehry, 2011, p. 168). In addition, Gehry illustrates the theme of followers’
evaluation of the creative leader’s ideas:
I also have the senior guys who draw the line in the sand technically if we
get out on a toot where we can’t go . . . having them as the gatekeepers
means that I can soar a little bit and they’ll pull me back. So I feel com-
fortable that they won’t let me get out into outer space. (Bennis, 2003,
p. 84)
The larger implication is that a creative leader in the Directing context usually
(but not always) needs highly competent collaborators—musicians, chefs,
architects—in order to evaluate, develop, and materialize his or her creative
vision.
We reiterate that while Facilitative creative leadership is widespread across
various work contexts, Directive creative leadership appears to be manifested
on a stable basis (i.e. non-episodically) in a small number of contexts where
there is substantial overlap between the identity of the leader and the identity
of the organization (or the identity of the performance). On the other hand,
while Facilitative creative leadership is enacted in contexts where creativity
may not be a central imperative of organizational activity, Directive creative
leadership tends to be enacted in work contexts where creativity is often a
defining and sine-qua-non element of organizational activity.
Integrating
Murnighan and Conlon (1991) observed that while musicians in orchestras are
bounded by the conductor’s decisions, musicians in string quartets have more
space for personal creative expression and they often have one-fourth of the
input for musical and business decisions. In a study of 20 string quartets in
Great Britain, Murnighan and Conlon (1991) identified three paradoxes.
First, while the four members are considered equal, the quartet has a leader,
the first violinist, who shapes and directs the collective effort. Second, the per-
formance of the quartet is influenced considerably by the second violinist, who
must echo rather than lead the first violinist, although in technical terms the
second violinist is often as good or even better violinist than the first. Third,
because the four members are highly interdependent, they deal with their con-
flicts through the extremes of confrontation and compromise. Murnighan and
Conlon found that the most successful quartets had a first violinist who acted
as a decisive leader while simultaneously advocating democracy; they had a
second violinist who accepted his or her role as a “second”; and they absorbed
(rather than suppressed) their conflicts into their music so as to produce an
integrated, unified sound. The successful quartets recognized and maintained
the paradoxes of their collaboration by creatively transforming them.
While string quartets are highly idiosyncratic contexts, Murnighan and
Conlon’s (1991) seminal study illustrates the basic features of creative leader-
ship in Integrating contexts. Like creative leaders in Directing contexts, creative
leaders in Integrating contexts are primary creators who have a personal crea-
tive vision and need other professionals to help them materialize it. In the Inte-
grating context, however, the creative contributions of other professionals are
essential and heterogeneous (Jones, 1996), and they are not blended into a final
product, but rather, they remain discernible. For example, while it is difficult to
separate the individual contributions of the 30 violinists of an orchestra, one
can easily discern the distinct contributions that actors, composers, and photo-
graphers make in a film (Simonton, 2004a). While in Directing contexts the
creative leader usually gets most or all of the credit for the creative work, in
the Integrating context different collaborators can receive individual credit
for their distinct creative contributions. This is the case, for example, with
the cinematic awards for directors, writers, costume designers, and so forth
(Simonton, 2004a). Finally, while in Directing contexts the leader can strongly
dictate and control the creative interpretation of the work, in Integrating con-
texts the creative character of the work is open to various interpretations and
often debates among the collaborators throughout the evolution of the work
(Lampel & Shamsie, 2003). For instance, a cinematic or theatrical director
may envision and have a clear idea about how an actor should embody and
enact a role, but the actor inevitably has a considerable say about his or her per-
formance (Dunham & Freeman, 2000). Furthermore, in some Integrative con-
texts there is no single creative leader, but rather, creative leadership is shared
among multiple creative contributors.
The key aspect of Integrative creative leadership is the synthesis of the creative
vision and inputs of the leader (or multiple leaders) with the heterogeneous crea-
tive inputs of other team members. Attaining higher degrees of personal and col-
lective creativity in such contexts usually relies on higher levels of creative synergy.
The Integrating collaborative context appears in the extant literature in three var-
iants that we present below: the film or theatrical director who works intensively
and closely with a team; the creative broker who synthesizes creative inputs whose
production is often dispersed in time and space; and work contexts where Inte-
gration is not achieved by a single leader but by shared forms of leadership.
Table 6 summarizes the main themes in these strands of research.
Cinematic, Theatrical, and Television Directors

Film directors can contribute more to the creative product than other pro-
fessionals (Allen & Lincoln, 2004), but at the same time, the realization and
success of their films depends on their ability to inspire and elicit high-magni-
tude creative contributions from other professionals, such as writers, actors,
and so forth (Faulkner & Anderson, 1987; Ferriani et al., 2005). Simonton
(2002, 2004a, 2004b) analyzed over 1000 U.S. films and found that filmmaking
is a truly collaborative process, where various professionals make distinct creative
contributions, but the latter are not equal: Directors exert the greatest creative
influence on films. This is embedded, in part, in the social structure of the film-
making industry in which roles are more important than positions (Baker &
Faulkner, 1991). In an ethnographic study of four film projects in Hollywood,
Bechky (2006) found that the coordination of work in temporary film organiz-
ations is made possible by role structure and role enactment that permeate the
entire film industry. Roles are portable capsules of social and cultural capital
and they signal hierarchical structure (Baker & Faulkner, 1991). For example,
Bechky (2006) found that a role hierarchy is always clear in the minds of Holly-
wood professionals and directors and producers are at the top of it.
Film and theatrical directors start making creative contributions in the pre-
production phase when other professionals have not yet joined the project.
Directors read and interpret the script; develop their creative interpretation;
select actors and crew; and then plan various aspects and phases of the pro-
duction (Dunhman & Freeman, 2000). Their creative thinking and planning
abilities play an important role in that process. Directors have to select and
recombine various professionals in order to satisfy external demands for
novelty in the final product as well as their own needs for creative renewal
(Lampel et al., 2000; Menger, 1999). Lampel and Shamsie (2003) found that
the success of films in the U.S. film industry is directly related to the mobiliz-
ation and transformation of talent. Delmestri et al. (2005) found that the direc-
tors’ reputation, which allows them to attract talent, influences the success of
Italian films. In an analysis of over 6000 U.S. films, Perretti and Negro
(2007) found that the combination of “newcomers” and “old-timers” was pre-
dictive of the creativity of films. Newcomers contribute new ideas and insights
to the collective creative endeavor, while old-timers contribute a sense of fam-
iliarity and predictability.
Filmmaking unfolds in three phases (preproduction, production, and post-
production) and the director, producer, and script writer are the only people
who are involved in all three phases (Morley & Silver, 1977). The three sequen-
tial phases involve two distinct teams, the artistic and the technical, which
operate in different times and communicate to each other through the director
(Perretti & Negro, 2007). The director, thus, has to generate and communicate
a creative vision to the team; to elicit creative contributions from all people
Table 6 Integrative Creative Leadership: Themes and Contributions

Role structure Allen and Lincoln (2004), Baker and Faulkner
(1991), Bechky (2006)
Creative vision Dunham and Freeman (2000), Litchfield and
Gilson (2013), Mainemelis and Epitropaki (2013),
Murphy and Ensher (2008), Simonton (2004a,
2004b), Obstfeld (2012)
Team selection and attraction Delmestri, Montanari, and Usai (2005), Lampel
and Shamsie (2003), Mainemelis, Nolas, and
Tsirogianni (2008), Perretti and Negro (2007),
Obstfeld (2012)
Ability to inspire and elicit Dunham and Freeman (2000), Faulkner and
creative performances Anderson (1987), Ibbotson and Darsø (2010),
Morley and Silver (1977), Murphy and Ensher
(2008)
Communication and involvement Dunham and Freeman (2000), Ibbotson and Darsø
(2010), Morley and Silver (1977), Murphy and
Ensher (2008), Perretti and Negro (2007),
Obstfeld (2012)
Charismatic leadership Dunham and Freeman (2000), Mainemelis and
Epitropaki (2013), Murphy and Ensher (2008)
Social, symbolic, and technical Delmestri et al. (2005), Ferriani, Corrado and
capital Boschetti (2005), Litchfield and Gilson (2013)
Social, political, and emotional Coget, Haag, and Gibson (2011), Kramer and
skills Crespy (2011), Lingo and O’Mahony (2010),
Murnighan and Conlon (1991), Murphy and
Ensher (2008), Obstfeld (2012)
Creative freedom Alvarez, Mazza, Pedersen, and Svejenova (2005),
Alvarez and Svejenova (2002), Baker and
Faulkner (1991), Mainemelis et al. (2008)
Flexibility Dunham and Freeman (2000), Lingo and
O’Mahony (2010), Obstfeld (2012)
Collective leadership Contractor, DeChurch, Carson, Carter, and
Keegan (2012), Denis, Lamothe, and Langley
(2001), Hargadon and Bechky (2006), Harvey
(2014), Harvey and Kou (2013), Nicolaides et al.
(2014), Wang, Waldman, and Zhang (2014)
Rotating leadership Davis and Eisenhardt (2011)
Improvisation Barrett (1998), Vera and Crossan (2004)
Dual leadership Hunter et al. (2012), Sicca (1997), Reid and
Karambayya (2009)
involved; and to actively synthesize a wide range of heterogeneous creative

inputs. Because the key aspect of their work is integration, directors need to
be “hands-on” and involved in all aspects of the project, whether they direct
in cinema (Mainemelis & Epitropaki, 2013; Svejenova, 2005), television
(Murphy & Ensher, 2008), or theatre (Dunham & Freeman, 2000; Ibbotson
& Darsø, 2010). Directors must achieve creative synthesis at multiple levels:
integrating their creative vision with the creative work of the other pro-
fessionals; integrating the heterogeneous creative inputs of the team
members; and given that temporary film, television, or theatrical projects
usually take place within a permanent organizational structure, the director
has to also integrate and balance competing demands among writers, actors,
cinematographers, editors, composers, studio or TV executives, sponsors,
and others.
The difference between an orchestra conductor and a film director is that
the latter expects from others not only technically impeccable execution but
also a highly creative contribution. Directors vary in terms of how “autocratic”
or “democratic” they are, but all directors have to facilitate some exploration,
experimentation, and improvisation in the filmmaking process (Ibbotson &
Darsø, 2010; Morley & Silver, 1977). The ability of the director to elicit creative
performances from others is essential in cinematic, television, and theatrical
settings. In such contexts, creative work is highly personal and highly collective
at the same team. Dunham and Freeman (2000) found that “best-in-class”
theatrical directors were able to clearly articulate a unifying creative vision
and pull “together a cohesive whole whereas encouraging an explosion of indi-
vidual and idiosyncratic activity” (p. 108). In a study of 21 television directors,
Murphy and Ensher (2008) observed creative vision, sensitivity to members’
needs, and other charismatic behaviors in some directors’ behavior. Overall,
the extant literature suggests that in order to lead creatively, directors need sub-
stantial social, symbolic, and technical capital (Cattani & Ferriani, 2008; Del-
mestri et al., 2005; Ferriani et al., 2005); cognitive and behavioral flexibility
(Dunham & Freeman, 2000); and social and emotional skills (Coget et al.,
2011; Murphy & Ensher, 2008).
Kramer and Crespy (2011) used an ethnographic methodology to examine
how the director of an educational theater production and group members
worked to create a collaborative culture for the production. Their study
unveiled five layers/actions that can lead to collaborative culture: collaborative
philosophy, recruiting for collaboration, creating a collaborative climate, com-
municating a collaborative philosophy (to designers, crew members, actor and
assistants), and directing collaborative communication (through character
development discussions and collaboration on moments in the play). They
also highlighted collaborative tensions that took place mainly when the Direc-
tor read a line to get across his idea of how he wanted something to be per-
formed. He always ended this line reading with something like “Don’t do it
like I did. Do it better”, but his later actions did not match these words (i.e. he
was expecting lines to be read in his own way). We note earlier that in their
study of string quartets, Murnighan and Conlon (1993) made a similar obser-
vation about the first violinists who acted as decisive leaders while simul-
taneously advocating democracy.
A promising direction for future research is the examination of the tem-
poral skills that foster effective creative leadership in Integrating contexts.
The temporal complexity model of Halbesleben et al. (2003), which we
discuss earlier in the article, can guide such investigations as it is both inclusive
and detailed. Although temporal skills likely generalize in all three contexts, it
is possible that some temporal complexity skills, such as sequencing and flex-
ibly switching behavioral orientations during the creative process, are more
important or critical in the Integrating context.
Lampel and Shamsie (2003) noted that filmmaking involves intense and
simultaneously interconnected bargaining among various actors. Bechky’s
(2006) study recorded social tensions at different levels of film projects. In a
case study analysis of Francis Ford Coppola’s direction of The Godfather,
Mainemelis and Epitropaki (2013) observed that one of the most successful
films of all time (in critical acclaim, financial performance, and lasting cultural
impact) was marked by extreme conflicts among Coppola, the crew, and the
studio during preproduction, production, and postproduction. They suggested
that the creative heights of the film were substantially influenced by Coppola’s
charismatic leadership (e.g. clear artistic vision, risk-taking, and unconven-
tional behaviors) and overt creative deviance (Mainemelis, 2010). Mainemelis
and Epitropaki argued that creative leadership is likely to trigger extreme social
tensions and possibly radical creativity when the leader is an artist who pursues
an intimately personal creative vision; the team consists of creative pro-
fessionals who want to leave their own mark on the creative product; the crea-
tivity of the product is central to its success; and the temporary collaboration
unfolds within a permanent organizational structure that has to balance artistic
creativity with commercial imperatives.
Alvarez et al. (2005) noted that art puts pressures on directors to develop
idiosyncratic styles, while business exerts on them pressures to attract audi-
ences and generate profits (see also Glynn, 2000; Lampel et al., 2000).
Alvarez et al. suggested that some directors become assimilated and trade idio-
syncracy in order to secure inclusion; some “mavericks” protect their idiosyn-
cracy but risk losing access to resources and audiences; while “optimally
distinctive” directors strike a balance between these competing dynamics. In
their study of Pedro Almodovar, Nanni Moretti, and Lars von Trier, Alvarez
et al. found that these European directors were able to shield their idiosyncracy
in three ways: by consolidating artistic and business roles; by forming their own
production companies; or/and by maintaining long-term relationships with
trusted producers. These practices for protecting one’s creative freedom have
been observed in studies of Hollywood directors as well (e.g. Baker & Faulkner,
1991). In particular, the consolidation of the director – writer roles gives to
directors ultimate creative control of the film, while the consolidation of the
director – writer – producer roles gives them dual artistic and business control
(Alvarez et al., 2005; Baker & Faulkner, 1991; Mainemelis et al., 2008; Sveje-
nova, 2005).
Alvarez and Svejenova (2002) found that the cinematic accomplishments of
Pedro Almodovar are related not only to his creative genius, but also to his
brother and executive producer Augustin Almodovar who over the years has
been committed to managing the “dirty part of business” (p. 184). Alvarez
and Svejenova (2002) argued that directors develop “symbiotic careers” with
a trusted person, usually a producer, or a friend or relative who becomes
their producer. This provides them with a permanent supportive structure
and a heighten ability to tackle competing artistic and business demands.
Alvarez et al. (2005) observed the symbiotic pattern in the cases of Moretti
and von Trier as well. In a biographical study of 12 Oscar-nominated Holly-
wood directors, Mainemelis et al. (2008) found that they all maintained a
small group of trusted people with whom they worked time and again. Consid-
ering that past research has shown that “cliques” can both foster and hinder
creativity (Uzzi & Spiro, 2005), and that the combination of old-timers and
newcomers fosters cinematic creativity (Perretti & Negro, 2007), future
studies can examine in greater detail how the stable presence of a closely
knit group around a creative leader influences his or her creative work and
creative collaboration in the long run.
Creative Brokers
Many recent studies have examined the link between brokerage and creativity
at the individual (e.g. Fleming, Mingo, & Chen, 2007; Obstfeld, 2005), organ-
izational (e.g. Starkey, Barnatt, & Tempest, 2000), inter-organizational (e.g.
Dodgson, Gann, & Salter, 2007), and network (e.g. Uzzi & Spiro, 2005)
levels. While some studies in this research stream view brokers as tastemakers
or selectors of creative work, other studies view brokers as creative leaders who
coproduce a creative work (cf. Foster, Borgatti, & Jones, 2011).
Thomson et al. (2007) noted that musicians produce music but music com-
panies produce records, and that it is only through the latter that the former
can enter the market. The producer plays a pivotal role in the conception, pro-
duction, and success of a record. Thomson et al. argued that the selection of the
producer is the most direct intervention a music company makes in the exer-
cise of creative labor. Producers do not compose music and do not write the
lyrics for the creative product that is known as “the song”. However, producers
are co-creators of the creative product that is known as “the record”. Producers
develop a creative vision for the record; search, select, and connect creative
contributors, such as composers, lyricists, and musicians; and they also actively
manage the creative collaboration among multiple constituencies as the crea-
tive process unfolds.
In an ethnographic study of 23 independent music producers in the Nash-
ville music industry, Lingo and O’Mahony (2010) observed that as the produ-
cers move across four phases of the process (resource gathering, project
boundary definition, creative production, and final synthesis), they encounter
three sources of ambiguity related to definitions of quality (i.e. what makes a
hit), occupational jurisdictions (i.e. who’s expertise should control the
process), and the transformation process (i.e. how the work should be done).
Lingo and O’Mahony found that producers made use of a nexus of practices
by acting at times as tertius iungens brokers (by bringing certain collaborators
together) and at other times as tertius gaudens brokers (by keeping certain
people apart). The music producers who were more successful in promoting
collaborative creativity were those who made broader and more timely use
of nexus work practices in order to tackle effectively the ambiguity, multiple
interests, and tensions inherent in the collaborative creative process. Lingo
and O’Mahony’s study is important because it clarifies specific nexus practices
and illustrates vividly the predominantly integrative nature of creative leader-
ship in such work contexts.
In an ethnographic study in an automotive design facility, Obstfeld (2012)
followed two managers who were convinced that the firm’s prototype-parts-
purchasing routine was flawed. In order to trigger the redesign of the
routine, they had to make the transition from problem-finding to articulating
to others a vision for exploring a creative solution, and then to forming a “de
novo” creative project by attracting a core group of individuals from different
specialties, ranks, and divisions. As the two projects grew, participants engaged
in deliberations about how to combine in novel ways various problems, sol-
utions, choices, people, and resources in order to move the creative project
forward and establish its legitimacy in the organization. Obstfeld concluded
that “Such combinatorial work is fundamentally triadic in the sense that one
entity coordinates, links, or mobilizes two other actors, groups, or divisions”
(p. 1585); and that brokers’ nexus work involves both knowledge articulation
and social action toward fostering new linkages and attracting more
participants.
Anand et al. (2007) found that while the emergence of bottom-up creative
practices requires individual socialized agency, their embedding also depends
on an appropriately sequenced combination of differentiated expertise, turf
delineation, and organizational support. Future research on creative brokerage
should shed more light on the differences among the key individual actors,
their motives, their specific location in the collaborative context, and the
motives and objectives of the larger collective. Lingo and O’Mahoney’s
(2010) study sheds light on the creative broker as an independent producer
who leads a formal temporary project which seeks to produce a creative

product for the organization. Obstfeld’s (2012) study sheds light on the creative
broker as an organizational member who leads an informal temporary project
which seeks to make a lasting creative intervention in an organizational prac-
tice. Given that the projects in Obstfled’s (2012) study initially pursued creative
action “underground” or hidden from senior management, future research
could also examine brokerage in relation to recent conceptualizations of crea-
tive action as creative deviance (Mainemelis, 2010) and bootlegging (Criscuolo
et al., 2014).
Moreover, Litchfield and Gilson (2013) suggested that curators are
responsible for shaping, maintaining, and finding uses for art collections.
Their analysis sheds light on the role idea generation, idea evaluation, and
idea-implementation processes play in a curator’s work. In terms of idea gen-
eration, curators are not the creators of any item in the collection, but they are
the creators of the synthesis that becomes an exhibition. It is their creative
vision, aesthetic sensibility, and ability to synthesize different art works into
a novel coherent whole that shapes the character, quality, and appeal of exhibi-
tions. Put another way, curators are primary coauthors of the story that each
exhibition tells. In terms of idea evaluation, curators decide which items in
the collection are put in display, which remain in the backstage, and which
become dismissed. In addition, like music producers (Lingo & O’ Mahony,
2010), curators have to make tough and risky judgments about the merit of
the work of new artists. In terms of idea implementation, curators use their
social capital to acquire resources and bridge museums, artists, collections,
and the public. Litchfield and Gilson’s (2013) article offers another vivid illus-
tration of Integrative creative leadership, as well as several insights for treating
top leaders in other organizational contexts as curators of collections of ideas.
Multiple Leaders: Collective Leadership

Although the idea of collective leadership can be traced back in the 1920s when
scholars such as Follett (1924) suggested that leadership emerges from dynamic
interactions among organizational actors, it is only recently that systematic
empirical attention has been paid on collective leadership forms (Denis
et al., 2001; Denis, Langley, & Sergi, 2012; Friedrich, Vessey, Schuelke,
Ruark, & Mumford, 2009; Nicolaides et al., 2014; Pearce & Conger, 2003; Yam-
marino, Salas, Serban, Shirreffs, & Shuffler, 2012). A number of different
models of collectivistic leadership has emerged over the years, such as team lea-
dership (e.g. Burke et al., 2006; Day, Gronn, & Salas, 2004; Morgeson, DeRue, &
Karam, 2010), network leadership (e.g. Balkundi & Harrison, 2006), shared lea-
dership (e.g. Carson, Tesluk, & Marrone, 2007; Pearce & Conger, 2003), com-
plexity leadership theory (e.g. Marion & Uhl-Bien, 2001), pooling leadership
(e.g. Denis et al., 2012), and collective leadership (e.g. Friedrich et al., 2009;
Yammarino et al., 2012).
Over the years, different definitions of the various collectivistic leadership con-
structs have been formulated. For example, Pearce and Conger (2003, p. 1)
defined shared leadership as “ . . . a dynamic, interactive influence process
among individuals in groups for which the objective is to lead one another to
the achievement of group or organizational goals or both”. They further observed
that shared leadership is “broadly distributed . . . instead of centralized in the
hands of a single individual” (2003, p. 1). Mehra, Smith, Dixon, and Robertson
(2006) distinguished among four patterns of leadership: leader-centered, distrib-
uted, distributed-coordinated, and distributed-fragmented, whereas Friedrich
et al. (2009, p. 933) defined collective leadership as: “ . . . a dynamic leadership
process in which a defined leader, or set of leaders, selectively utilize skills and
expertise within a network, effectively distributing elements of the leadership
role as the situation or problem at hand requires”.
Despite the differences in construct definitions, there are three important
characteristics that overlap: first, multiplicity of leaders, second, multiplicity
of leadership roles, functions and relationships, and third, leadership as a
dynamic process that unfolds over time through the interactions among
actors. These three characteristics are well described by Contractor et al.
(2012) in the context of collective leadership: (a) it involves multiple leaders
enacting leadership; (b) it serves multiple collective functions or roles; and
(c) it develops over time as certain individuals rise to the occasion to exhibit
leadership roles and then step back to allow others to lead. Hiller, Day, and
Vance (2006) proposed a four-dimensional typology of roles, that is, planning
and organizing, problem-solving, support and consideration, developing and
mentoring. Carson and Tesluk (2007) also indicated four distinct roles of
team leadership: navigator, engineer, social integrator, and liaison. In addition
to the multiplexity of roles, Contractor et al. (2012) also highlight the multi-
plexity of relationships in collective leadership which has specific implications
for creativity. For example, Albrecht and Hall (1991) found that mutliplexity in
relationships, that is, relations involving more than one type of relationships,
led to more creative outcomes.
Two recent meta-analyses (Nicolaides et al., 2014; Wang et al., 2014) have
attempted to integrate studies on various collective leadership forms under the
common umbrella of “shared leadership in teams” and further examined its
relationship to team effectiveness. Both studies revealed an overall positive
relationship (r ¼ .35 in Nicolaides et al. and r ¼ .34 in Wang et al.). Nico-
laides et al. (2014) further showed that shared leadership had important
effects on team performance over and above the effects of vertical leadership.
On the other hand, in the creativity literature, there has been recently sub-
stantial work on collective creativity that has revealed that creativity occurs
through a dialectic negotiation and integration of group members’ perspectives
(e.g. Hargadon & Bechky, 2006; Harvey, 2014; Harvey & Kou, 2013). Specifi-
cally, Hargadon and Bechky (2006) suggested that collective creativity rep-
resents specific moments when individual members’ experiences,
perspectives and ideas are brought together to create new solutions on
problem. They further identified four types of social interaction that facilitate
collective creativity: help seeking, help giving, reflective reframing, and reinfor-
cing. Taylor and Greve (2006) analyzed innovations in the comic book industry
and showed that multimember teams and teams with experience working
together produced innovations with great variation in value. Nevertheless,
they found individuals to be able to combine knowledge diversity more effec-
tively. Recently, Harvey (2014) presented a dialectical model in which creative
synthesis (the integration of group member perspectives) produces extraordi-
nary group creativity. Using Pixar as an exemplar, she argued that “the critical
creative moment at Pixar comes not when group members diverge but when
they synthesize diverse ideas” (p. 328).
Interestingly, the number of studies that have simultaneously examined col-
lective leadership and collective creativity is still small. Two studies on R&D
teams indicated the benefits of shared leadership and multiple leaders.
Hauschildt and Kirchmann (2001) evaluated 133 innovations and found that
having a set of individuals taking different leadership or championing roles
(e.g. “power promoter”, “technology promoter”, and “process promoter”)
increased team performance by 30 – 50%. Howell and Boies (2004) also
found that project performance in an R&D context was positively influenced
by the participation of multiple leaders that brought unique skills and expertise
in the team. In another study in one of the largest video game studios in the
world, Cohendet and Simon (2007) examined communities of specialists and
showed that the integration forces implemented by the leaders of the firm to
bind the creative forces together led to a hybrid form of project management
that balanced between decentralized platforms and strict time constraints.
They argued that these integration forces generated creative slacks for
further expansion of creativity.
Davis and Eisenhardt (2011), in a recent inductive study of 8 technology
collaborations between 10 organizations in the global computing and com-
munications industries, examined the dynamic organizational processes
associated with the leadership roles assumed by collaboration partners in
order to solve critical innovation problems. They found three leadership pro-
cesses that partners used in these collaborations: (a) Dominating leadership,
wherein a single partner controlled decision-making, determined innovation
objectives and mobilized participants; (b) Consensus leadership, wherein they
shared decision-making, had common objectives, and mobilized participants
together; and (c) Rotating leadership that involved three components: alternat-
ing decision control between partners to access their complimentary capabili-
ties; zigzagging objectives to develop deep and broad innovation search
trajectories; and fluctuating network cascades to mobilize diverse participants

over time. They further developed their theoretical logic linking rotating lea-
dership and collaborative innovation.
Each component of rotating leadership activates one major mechanism
related to recombination of knowledge, technologies, and other resources
across boundaries. Alternating activates the assessment of complementary
capabilities and resources from both organizations. Zigzagging is linked with
deep and broad trajectories searching for potential innovations. On the other
hand, fluctuating mobilizes diverse participants who have difference knowl-
edge and other resource inputs. Davis and Eisenhardt (2011) further proposed
that rotating leadership may be the answer to the question of “How do organ-
izations develop symbiotic relationships that combine longevity and adap-
tation?” through its capacity to facilitate innovative development over a
series of collaborative alliances. Finally, they note two key boundary con-
ditions. Rotating leadership is likely to be particularly relevant in (a) interde-
pendent environments (e.g. the computer industry) and (b) dynamic
environments in which collaborations are highly unpredictable.
In improvisational organizational contexts, Barrett (1998) studied jazz
bands and found leadership to be rotated within the band. Players took
turns soloing and supporting others by providing rhythmic and harmonic
background. Vera and Crossan (2004) used the improvisational theater meta-
phor to inform organizational practice. They defined improvisation as a latent
construct with two dimensions, spontaneity and creativity; and viewed impro-
visational theory as one pole on the continuum that theater can occupy, from
the scripted which is led by a single leader/director to the experimental/impro-
visational that relies on shared/improvised roles. In relation to leadership, they
clearly state that
improvisational theatre has a radically egalitarian ethic: there is no group
leader . . . Actors learn to “rotate leadership” and to “share responsibil-
ity”, which means that they take the lead at different times, depending
on the needs of the situation, and that every member of the group is
responsible for every other. (p. 743)
Emphasis has also been given on dual leadership in various other work con-
texts. In one sense, dual leadership may refer to dual creative leadership in the
context of a temporary creative project, such as the production of an opera per-
formance. In a study of Italian operas, Sicca (1997) observed that the pro-
duction of any given opera entails dual creative leadership: Like orchestras,
operas have a music conductor who manages the orchestra; and like theatres,
they have a director who manages the acting performances. Sicca observed that
the conductor and the director take turns in rehearsing with the musicians,
actors, and singers, and then a full rehearsal is staged so as to bring together
all “cells” of the production. In this sense, operas may be thought of as exem-
plifying dual creative leadership in an Integrative context.
In a second sense, dual leadership may refer to a symbiosis between a crea-
tive leader and an administrative leader whose role is primarily supportive,
albeit not less important. Sicca (1997) pointed out that any temporary opera
production is nested within a larger and permanent organizational structure
(the opera house), which has dual leadership as well: the artistic director,
who oversees the artistic program, the choice of conductors and directors,
and so forth; and the superintendent who functions as the managing director
in charge of the opera’s administrative leadership. Sicca (1997) argued that at
this level dual artistic and administrative leadership is necessary for an effective
production process.
Moreover, Hunter et al. (2012) proposed a partnership model of leading for
innovation and used as examples supportive of their model a series of innova-
tive leadership dyads such as Steve Jobs and Tim Cook, Robert Oppenheimer
and Leslie Groves. In another study of eight performing arts organizations in
Canada, Reid and Karambayya (2009) highlighted the need for dual executive
leadership in creative organizations to balance contradictory forces and make
trade-offs between artistic excellent and financial viability. In addition, we note
earlier that Alvarez and Svejenova (2002) found that Pedro Almodovar main-
tained a symbiotic career with his brother Augustin, who over the years has
been committed to managing the “dirty part of business” (p. 184) in order
to help Perdo’s creativity flourish. Overall, these studies draw attention to
the increased likelihood of multiple and often competing institutional logics
existing in collaborative, innovative contexts (e.g. Reay & Hinings, 2009)
which inevitably pose high demands for organizational leaders and ask for
dual leadership solutions.
Sicca’s (1997) analysis of Italian operas is rare and instructive because it
focuses simultaneously on two coexisting configurations of leadership at two
different levels of organizations. His study serves as a reminder that in the
future, researchers should make clear whether their use of the term “dual lea-
dership” refers to a temporary creative project (e.g. an opera performance, a
concert, a film, and a music record), to the more permanent level of organiz-
ational management wherein the temporary project takes place, or/and to the
link between the leadership of the temporary creative project and the more per-
manent or less temporary leadership of the organization. In addition, in the
future, researchers should also make clear whether the use of the term “dual
leadership” refers to dual creative leadership or to a symbiosis between a crea-
tive leader and an administrative leader whose role is primarily supportive,
albeit not less important.
In general terms, Integrative leaders have to be more facilitative than Direc-
tive leaders and more directive than Facilitating leaders. This does not imply,
however, that Integrative creative leadership is an additive function of the other
two manifestations. For example, Integrative creative leaders cannot abstain

from proposing creative ideas in order to motivate followers, as Facilitative
creative leaders often do (Basadur, 2004), nor can they elicit supportive contri-
butions by using processes such as codification and teachability that Directive
creative leaders often use (Slavich et al., 2014). In addition, Integrative creative
leaders have little choice but to share with followers the “authorship” of a crea-
tive work in a way that neither Directive nor Facilitative leaders can do. Fur-
thermore, integrating heterogeneous creative ideas is different from
generating creative ideas (Lingo & O’Mahony, 2010). Therefore, Integrating
should be thought of as a unique manifestation of creative leadership that is
qualitatively distinct from the other two manifestations.
Discussion
In this article, we have reviewed a large body of research on creative leadership
in organizational settings. While previous reviews focused sharply on social –
psychological studies conducted in Facilitating contexts (e.g. Mumford &
Licuanan, 2004; Tierney, 2008), the single criterion for inclusion in our
review was that a conceptual or empirical paper offers insights about the
relationship between leadership and creativity regardless of the paper’s intellec-
tual underpinnings, theoretical orientation, and methodological choices. This
inclusive selection criterion enabled us to reach out to multiple strands of
research and synthesize a rich and pluralistic body of knowledge that has
remained dispersed and fragmented, to date. Throughout the article, we
sought to highlight, rather than suppress, the theoretical and methodological
differences among these research strands. We also adjusted our writing style
across different sections of the article in order to match as much as possible
the diverse “languages” of social – psychological quantitative studies, neo-insti-
tutional case studies, and sociologically driven ethnographies. While such
differences exist among various research strands, our review points to three
general conclusions.
First, across all strands of research, creative leadership refers to leading
others toward the attainment of a creative outcome. Because this definition is
broad enough to encompass the diverse foci of all research strands, it can
stimulate a long overdue cross-fertilization of knowledge among clusters of
researchers who have studied different aspects or contexts of creative leader-
ship but have rarely exchanged insights, to date.
Second, different research strands tend to give different meanings to what it
actually means to lead others toward the attainment of a creative outcome. Our
analysis showed that there are three different conceptualizations of creative lea-
dership, which we designated as Facilitating, Directing, and Integrating. These
three more specific and narrow conceptualizations can be accommodated
under the conceptual umbrella of the general definition of creative leadership
mentioned above. This implies that there is not one but three different ways for
exercising creative leadership, a fact that may help explain why in the past it has
proven difficult to develop a unitary, context-general theory of creative
leadership.
Third, the three conceptualizations are not mere artifacts of diverse meth-
odological choices, but they reflect actual differences in the enactment of creative
leadership across contexts. By posing different research questions about creative
leadership, different research strands seem to be attracted to different work
contexts that favor one of the three manifestations. For instance, it is not sur-
prising that social psychologically driven researchers interested in how leaders
influence employee creativity select research sites like the steel company
studied by Frese et al. (1999), where the very idea of the company’s idea-sug-
gestion scheme was to facilitate employee creativity. It is not surprising either
that neo-institutional researchers interested in cultural entrepreneurs choose to
study chefs like Adria (Svejenova et al., 2007) and Passard (Gomez & Bouty,
2011), considering that haute cuisine is a highly institutionalized field where
the creative identity and creative output of top chefs are at the epicenter of
all other elements and developments in the field. Similarly, it is not surprising
that sociologically driven researchers interested in networked forms of creativ-
ity select research contexts such as the music record projects studied by Lingo
and O’Mahony (2010), considering that the creation of a music record requires
the producer to creatively synthesize the essential and heterogeneous creative
contributions of various collaborators.
Elaborating on these conclusions, we suggest that by adopting a general
definition which encompasses three more specific manifestations of creative
leadership, future research can tackle simultaneously the dual challenge of inte-
grating and differentiating the findings of various research streams, without
compromising either the generality or the specificity of the construct, and
most importantly, without compromising its contextual sensitivity. We note
in the introduction that in the last 20 years, many authors have repeatedly
questioned whether the findings of some studies of creative leadership can gen-
eralize in contexts or situations that are different from those in which these
studies were conducted (e.g. Ford, 1995; George, 2007; Hunter et al., 2011;
Mumford & Licuanan, 2004; Vessey et al., 2014). By adopting a common defi-
nition that encompasses three distinct manifestations of creative leadership,
future research can engage more frequently and more mindfully in a systematic
contrast, comparison, and integration of the findings of various research
streams. This is likely to reduce the tendency of over-generalizing the findings
of any given subset of studies, and to strengthen the ability of all research
strands to develop more nuanced, more accurately bounded, and more syn-
thetic perspectives about creative leadership.
A Multi-Context Framework of Creative Leadership

In this article, we developed the framework of Facilitating, Directing, and Inte-
grating as a conceptual tool for organizing and synthesizing the extant body of
research on creative leadership. We started with the observation that in the
multidisciplinary creativity literature there is substantial agreement that,
unlike solitary creativity, creativity in collaborative contexts depends not
only on creative contributions but also on supportive contributions (e.g.
Amabile, 1988; Amabile et al., 1996; Ford, 1996; Madjar et al., 2002; Oldham
& Cummings, 1996; Simonton, 2002, 2004a, 2004b). Our framework suggests
that the three manifestations of creative leadership differ in terms of the ratio of
leader/follower creative contributions, and also in terms of the corresponding
ratio of leader/follower supportive contributors. Following Amabile’s (1988)
componential theory of creativity, we suggest that in the Facilitating context,
the variable levels of follower creative contributions are influenced not only
by their expertise, creative abilities, and motivation, but also by variable
levels of leader supportive contributions. Conversely, in the Directing
context, the variable levels of leader creative contributions are influenced not
only by his or her expertise, creative abilities, and motivation, but also by vari-
able levels of follower supportive contributions. More often than not, the latter
are not mundane contributions of unskilled workers but high-quality contri-
butions of highly competent professionals (e.g. orchestra musicians, second
chefs, R&D scientists, etc.) The probability and magnitude of creative out-
comes in the Integrating context tend to be more sensitive to variable levels
of leader –follower creative synergy.
We believe that the tripartite framework of creative leadership shown in
Figure 1 can help future research move beyond the mere acknowledgement
that creativity is rarely the act of a lone genius, as well as beyond the mere rec-
ognition that creative contributions require supportive contributions. Future
research can draw on our framework to develop novel investigations that
focus on the dynamic interplay between leader and follower creative and sup-
portive contributions, as well as on leader – follower creative synergy, across the
three manifestations of creative leadership and across various work contexts.
Throughout our review, we designated the three manifestations as “colla-
borative contexts” in order to signal that they are not leadership styles or indus-
try contexts. Because of variable personal characteristics, individual leaders and
followers may show variable levels of affinity for the three manifestations.
Because of variable operational exigencies and cultural mindsets, different
industry contexts may exhibit variable preferences for the three manifestations.
Our review implies, however, that whether creative leadership will be mani-
fested in the form of Facilitating, Directing, or Integrating ultimately
depends on a dynamic confluence of cultural, industry, organizational, pro-
fessional, personal, and task characteristics.
In epistemological terms, we view creative leadership as residing not within

leaders, followers, or industries, but rather, within the dynamic interplay
among all constituting players and factors. This epistemological orientation
is consistent with recent developments in the strands of research that we
have reviewed. For example, Garud et al. (2014, p. 1177) noted that while
past research on creative entrepreneurs was preoccupied with the micro –
macro dichotomy and with differences associated with single or multiple
levels of analysis, in recent years the field has moved toward a “constitutive”
orientation which focuses on the actual dynamics whereby innovation
emerges, “drawing attention to how actors and contexts are co-created
through an interactive and emergent process”. For example, the field of
haute cuisine exerts a definitive pressure upon young chefs to limit their crea-
tive voice in order to remain loyal to their mentors, then to abandon their
mentors in order to grow creatively, and then to become themselves mentors
of young chefs in order to help the latter grow creatively. Haute cuisine
exerts a pressure upon chefs to be Directive creative leaders, but by acting as
Directive creative leaders, some chefs innovate and change the very field of
haute cuisine.
In addition, Thomson et al. (2007, p. 636) criticized severely the tendency to
treat the creative industries as a single type of work context, and they noted that
“the distinctive characteristics of creative labor are best understood within par-
ticular sector and market contexts”. Our review showed, in fact, that the crea-
tive industries are not associated with any specific manifestation of creative
leadership, but rather, different sectors of the creative economy (e.g. advertis-
ing, orchestras, and filmmaking) tend to favor different manifestations of crea-
tive leadership. We stress that this does not imply that we see any given sector
as being automatically associated with a specific manifestation of creative lea-
dership. Some sectors do in fact favor specific manifestations of creative leader-
ship, but they do not fully determine them. For example, the prestige that film
directors enjoy today as the “principal artists of filmmaking” (Simonton, 2002,
2004a, 2004b) is not an inevitable reality of filmmaking, but rather, the histori-
cal product of a collective bargaining which took place in Hollywood in the late
1960s and succeeded in securing for the directors more creative freedom and
power (Allen & Lincoln, 2004; Baker & Faulkner, 1991; Mainemelis et al.,
2008). This implies that individuals (leader and/or followers) may take
action to alter the distribution of the opportunities for creative contributions
in any give sector or work context (Glynn, 2000).
Moreover, some sectors consist of multiple structural elements that are
recombined to produce different structural configurations which tend to
favor different manifestations of creative leadership within the same sector.
For example, Moedas and Benghozi (2012) recently studied 31 triads of
fashion designers, manufacturers, and retailers in the fashion industry. They
identified five industry architectures (designer-led, manufacturer-led,
supplier-led, and two hybrid forms) which were largely determined by three
design architecture choices (efficiency, level of fashion innovativeness, and
innovation type). Moedas and Benghozi (2012, p. 405) concluded that “the
broad range of design situation can designate designers as anything from mys-
tified magicians to mere employees”. Our preceding review of research on
symphony orchestras, string quartets, and jazz bands points to a similar con-
clusion: the broad range of music assembly contexts influences the degree of
creative freedom that professional musicians have, the variable manifestations
of creative leadership across various music assembly contexts, and the identity,
relational, and career tensions experienced by leaders and followers across
various music assembly contexts. It is quite likely that a similar set of
dynamic takes place in many other sectors or industries besides fashion and
music (e.g. technology, software, and industrial design). We discuss below
implications and suggestions for future research on the emergence of the
three collaborative contexts of creative leadership.
Implications for Research on the Emergence of Creative Leadership Contexts

Perhaps the most important direction for future research is the exploration of
the factors that influence the emergence of three collaborative contexts of crea-
tive leadership. Taking stock of our preceding review, we propose that colla-
borative contexts can be thought of as falling on a continuum from weakly
to strongly structured in terms of how the opportunities for making creative
contributions are distributed among the members of the collaborative
context. In “weak” contexts, leaders (and at times followers) have relatively
higher degrees of freedom to determine whether creative leadership will take
the form of Facilitating, Directing, or Integrating, whereas in “strong” contexts,
the distribution of opportunities for creative contributions often commences
long before leaders and followers start collaborating.
For instance, symphony orchestras do not ask musicians to brainstorm
about the creative interpretation of a score: they are structured in such a
way so that all parties involved know in advance that the creative interpretation
of a score is the responsibility and “right” of the conductor. Similarly, filmmak-
ing crews do not gather to brainstorm about task allocation because they know
in advance that directors, scriptwriters, actors, and other cinematic pro-
fessionals have the responsibility and professional “right” to make distinctive
creative contributions in their respective areas of expertise. This does not
imply that “strong” contexts are free of tensions or negotiations about the dis-
tribution of creative contributions, but that such tensions and negotiations are
embedded in and often perpetuated by their very structure.
Reflecting on our review, we further propose below that the position of any
given collaborative context on the “weak-strong” continuum is influenced by
the dynamic interplay among at least five categories of factors: social structure;
the nature of work; the nature of creativity; organizational characteristics; and

follower characteristics.
Social structure. Future research can investigate a wide range of

elements of social structure, such as stratification, institutionalization, profes-
sionalization, roles, and normative expectations. Our review suggests that
Directing contexts tend to entail high degrees of stratification (e.g. orchestras)
or institutionalization (e.g. haute-cuisine restaurants), while some improvisa-
tional Integrative contexts (e.g. jazz bands and improvisational theatre)
entail low degrees of stratification. Another observation we submit to future
research is that Facilitating contexts tend to revolve more around jobs or pos-
itions (e.g. creative director in advertising, managers in product development
and R&D units), while Integrating contexts tend to revolve more around pro-
fessional roles (e.g. directors, writers, actors in filmmaking). Professional roles
are not located in any specific organization, but rather, they permeate the entire
industry or field (Baker & Faulkner, 1991). As a result, roles facilitate role-
based coordination in temporary creative projects and they are often attached
to specific normative expectations for creative performance (Bechky, 2006).
The larger issue is whether the social structure behind any given work
context imposes upon creative leaders ex-ante normative expectations for
making high personal creative contributions, a fact which should generally
increase the likelihood of either Directive (e.g. orchestra conductors and top
chefs) or Integrative (e.g. film, theatrical, and television directors) creative lea-
dership. Conversely, social structures that impose upon followers ex-ante nor-
mative expectations for making high creative contributions (e.g. advertising
agencies, industrial design firms, and filmmaking projects) should generally
decrease the likelihood of Directive creative leadership and (depending on
other factors that we discuss below) increase the likelihood of either Facilitative
or Integrative creative leadership. Last but not least, some work contexts (e.g.
newly formed cross-functional teams or newly founded firms) may not entail
strong or clearly defined social structures, a fact which should generally provide
to leaders (and possibly to followers) higher degrees of freedom in selecting the
form of creative leadership.
Nature of work. Another interesting direction for future research is the

examination of the relationship between the manifestations of creative leader-
ship and structural dimensions of work. For example, in a seminal comparison
of the internal structuring of projects in the software and advertising industries,
Grabher (2004) found that their respective focus on, respectively, cumulative
and disruptive learning leads to patterned differences. Advertising projects
tend to preserve the cognitive distance among members and to maintain
fixed roles and stable teams; whereas software projects tend to reduce the cog-
nitive distance among members and to promote switching in terms of both
roles and teams. Grabher (2004) argued that while both advertising and soft-
ware projects benefit from economies of repetition, only software projects
can benefit substantially from economies of recombination.
Reflecting on our review, we submit to future research the possibility that
higher degrees of recombination are more likely to be associated with Integra-
tive creative leadership (e.g. see our previous discussion on filmmaking, televi-
sion, theatre, music production, jazz, and operas), while lower degrees of
recombination are more likely to be associated with more stable (in terms of
membership) contexts that tend to favor Facilitative creative leadership (e.g.
see our previous discussion on advertising and more traditional industry
environments). Note that high degrees of creativity in the final product may
be achieved in both cases but through different pathways. For example, the
originality of films is primarily achieved by recombining professionals to
form a new film crew, who work intensively for a short period of time
usually under an Integrative creative leader. In sharp contrast, advertising
firms employ on a stable basis a number of advertising designers, who at
any given time work separately on different client assignments. As a result,
the originality of ad campaigns seems to be better served by not integrating
the creative outputs of various designers, but by providing designers with gen-
erous degrees of creative autonomy, a fact which tends to favor the manifes-
tation of Facilitative creative leadership (see also Table 1).
Another interesting observation regards the studies that have examined
symphony orchestras, string quartets, jazz bands, and theatres. We found that
these forms of work tend to be associated with a single Integrative creative
leader in their more scripted forms, and with multiple Integrative creative
leaders in their more improvisational forms. This implies that the “scripted-
improvisational” continuum is associated with the presence of a single or mul-
tiple creative leaders in Integrating contexts. It is beyond our purpose in the
present paper to present a complete list of structural elements of work that
might influence the manifestations of creative leadership. We note, however,
that this is another promising direction for future research on creative leadership.
Nature of creativity. In our review, we were not able to discern any direct
association between the magnitude of creativity and the presence of Facilitat-
ing, Directing, or Integrating creative leadership. Put another way, it seems that
creativity can range from incremental to radical in all three collaborative con-
texts. The issue, therefore, is not which manifestation of creative leadership is
associated with incremental or radical levels of creativity, but rather, by whom
and how these levels of creativity can be obtained given the social structure and
nature of work in the collaborative context.
On the other hand, there seems to be a connection between the three mani-
festations of creative leadership and the four types of employee creativity pro-
posed by Unsworth (2001). Unsworth’s matrix is based on two dimensions:
problem type (close to open) and driver of engagement (external or internal).

Although we expect that all four types of employee creativity proposed by Uns-
worth (2001) manifest themselves in all three contexts of creative leadership,
we submit to future research the following possibilities for investigation.
First, due to the fact that in Directing contexts the leader has more oppor-
tunities to select and frame problems, and to make more and more important
creative contributions, Directive creative leadership is likely to be associated
strongly with the two closed-problem types of follower creativity (responsive
and contributory). Second, we expect that Facilitative creative leadership is
generally associated with all four types of follower creativity but not simul-
taneously or not within the same project or task. Instead, we expect that Facil-
itative creative leadership interacts with the intended magnitude of creativity
(incremental – radical) to elicit different types of employee creativity. Specifi-
cally, we expect that Facilitative leaders interested in incremental forms of crea-
tivity are more likely to elicit responsive and contributory creativity from
followers; while Facilitative leaders interested in radical forms of creativity
are more likely to elicit expected and especially proactive employee creativity
(the latter entails open problems and internal engagement). Finally, we
submit the possibility that, due to its reliance on leader – follower creative
synergy, Integrative creative leadership is the only manifestation that is likely
to activate simultaneously and within the same project all four types of follower
creativity. We hope that future research will develop conceptually and investi-
gate empirically these three possibilities.
Furthermore, future research should pay more attention to the temporal
dimensions of creative leadership. Most studies that we reviewed measured crea-
tive outcomes at the individual and team levels and in short time frames. We
need more longitudinal research in order to better understand the long-term
effects of creative leadership. This is particularly important in Facilitative creative
leadership which seeks to foster consistently (rather than episodically) the crea-
tivity of followers in stable, permanent organizations. Paradoxically, most studies
in Facilitating contexts have been conducted in laboratory settings and cross-sec-
tional field studies. Innovation research pays more attention to the unfolding of
innovation over time, owing to the fact that innovation takes place in longer time
frames. Unfortunately, however, many studies in the innovation literature are
not concerned with leadership, evident in the smaller number of innovation
studies that we reviewed in this article.
A promising direction for future research is to examine systematically and
longitudinally the short-term and long-term effects of the three creative leader-
ship contexts on individual and team creativity and organizational innovation.
This will allow us to reach more informed conclusions about the comparative
advantages and variables levels of contextual fit of the three manifestations of
creative leadership. In addition, among the studies we have reviewed only eth-
nographic research conducted in Integrating contexts has shown consistent
interest in examining longitudinally the role creative leadership plays in the

transformation of creative ideas into organizational innovations. In the
future, we need much more longitudinal work on the unfolding of this trans-
formation process in Directing and especially in Facilitating contexts.
Organizational characteristics. Another interesting observation in our

review is that Facilitative creative leadership seems to be associated with
more traditional or permanent organizational forms, while Integrative creative
leadership seems to be associated with temporary (e.g. film project) and net-
worked (e.g. music record project) forms of organizations. One possible expla-
nation is that in temporary and networked organizational forms creativity is
primarily achieved through the recombination of various heterogenous crea-
tive inputs, a fact which is more likely to favor the manifestation of Integrative
creative leadership. A related observation is that nearly all studies on Integra-
tive creative leadership were conducted either in small organizations or in
small (in terms of number of members) projects within large organizations.
This suggests that Integrative creative leadership may be associated with
smaller and less permanent forms of organizations or projects, whereas Facil-
itative creative leadership appears to be viable in organizations of any size and
both at the level of temporary projects or at the level of regular collaboration.
This further implies that these two manifestations of creative leadership may
coexist at different levels of the same large organization, one at the top level
of the permanent organization (Facilitating) and one at the level of leading
temporary creative projects (Integrating).
Directive creative leadership seems to be related more to the close associ-
ation between the organization and the creative identity of the leader, and
less to the size or form of the organization. That said, our review of research
on orchestras, chefs, and top business leaders suggests that Directive creative
leadership may be more likely in smaller organizations and relatively harder
to sustain in growing and in larger organizations. In addition, we observed
that Facilitating contexts may focus more on promoting more creativity,
more frequently, by more organizational members, whereas Directing contexts
tend to focus more on the crafting and maintenance of a unique, authentic
creative identity.
Follower characteristics. Follower characteristics, such as domain exper-

tise, creativity skills, and motivation (Amabile, 1988), as well as creative
personality (Kirton, 1976) and creative identity (e.g. Farmer, Tierney, &
Kung-McIntyre, 2003) can also manifest themselves differently in the three
collaborative contexts. Whereas we expect the “creativity intersection”
(Amabile, 1988) of followers’ expertise, creative thinking skills, and intrinsic
interests to be vital in order for creative outcomes to be achieved in all three
contexts, the leadership route through which such intersection will be
unleashed may be different. For example, whereas in orchestras musicians can

reach high levels of artistic performance following a Directive creative leader
(Hunt et al., 2004; Marotto et al., 2007), in the jazz improvisational context
musicians can achieve high levels of creative performance only through Inte-
grative creative leadership. In this case, the follower characteristics can be
the same (expertise, skills, motivation, and creative identity) but the context
totally changes the requirement for the creative leader.
In summary, we have made three broad suggestions: first, work contexts can
be thought of as falling on a continuum from “weakly” to “strongly” structured
in terms of how the opportunities for making creative contributions are distrib-
uted among the members of the collaborative context; second, “stronger” con-
texts exert more ex-ante influences on the three manifestations of creative
leadership; and, third, the position of any give work context on the continuum
is influenced by the dynamic interplay among (at least) five categories of
factors: social structure, the nature of work, the nature of creativity, as well
as organizational and follower characteristics. In addition, we have discussed
other opportunities related to using and developing our tripartite framework
of creative leadership in the future. In the remainder of the article, we
discuss more general implications for future research on creative leadership.
Implications for Research on Leadership Schemas, Social Identity, and Creativity

Socio-cognitive approaches to leadership (e.g. Epitropaki & Martin, 2004,
2005; Epitropaki et al., 2013; Lord & Maher, 1991; Shondrick, Dinh, & Lord,
2010; Shondrick & Lord, 2010) and creativity (e.g. Christensen, Drewsen, &
Maaløe, 2014; Hass, 2014; Sternberg, 1985) open up exciting possibilities for
creative leadership and may help resolve the paradox indicated in our intro-
duction. On the one hand, prior studies (e.g. Mumford et al., 2002) highlighted
the importance of creative thinking skills for creative leadership; on the other
hand, studies of ILTs and Implicit Followership Theories (IFTs) have revealed
a striking absence of the trait “creative” from existing lists of ILTs and IFTs (e.g.
Offermann et al., 1994; Sy, 2010). As a matter of fact, in Lord, Foti and De
Vader’s (1984) list, the trait “creative” was included in the non-leader attributes
list which clearly implies that creativity is not perceived as a core characteristic
of leadership (Epitropaki et al., 2013).
Mueller et al. (2011) took this idea further and reported a negative associ-
ation between expressing creative ideas and assessment of leadership potential.
They theorized that the expression of creative ideas may diminish judgments of
leadership potential unless the charismatic leadership prototype is activated in
the minds of social perceivers. Their first study showed that creative idea
expression was negatively related to perceptions of leadership potential in a
sample of employees working in jobs that required creative problem-solving.
Study 2 showed that participants randomly instructed to express creative
solutions during an interaction were viewed as having lower leadership poten-

tial. A third scenario study replicated this finding showing that participants
attributed less leadership potential to targets expressing creative ideas, except
when the “charismatic” leader prototype was activated. In this situation, obser-
vers may view the idea espoused by the “charismatic” leader as more creative
than an idea espoused by the “average leader”. Mueller et al. (2011) further
suggested that it is possible that people under-estimate the leadership potential
of creative individuals, but over-estimate the creative potential of charismatic
leaders.
Their findings point toward a possible augmentation effect of creative lea-
dership over charismatic/transformational leadership (Epitropaki, 2012), or
given the severe criticism of charismatic/transformational models (van Knip-
penberg & Sitkin, 2013) toward the need for going “back to the drawing
board” to clearly conceptualize and measure creative leadership. As Mueller
et al. have identified a potential bias against selecting creative leaders, they
suggested that this might have repercussions for how creative leadership is
studied. For example, studying creative leadership by examining the behaviors
and attributes of the average leader or even of successful leaders may yield a
rather restricted range of behaviors—as the average leader may tend not to
have or engage in creative thinking skills.
Future research can thus examine creative leadership through the lens of
schemas and implicit theories of leadership and creativity. One explanation
for the paradox noted above could, for example, be the fact that when one care-
fully examines the traits included in existing ILTs lists and those of Implicit
Theories of Creativity, they are clearly antithetical. Nonentrenchment, aes-
thetic taste, and imagination are usually found to strongly distinguish creative
from non-creative people across domains, whereas traits such as responsible,
sincere, reliable, understanding, and logical (that are often linked with a leader-
ship prototype) are associated with non-creative individuals (e.g. Hass, 2014;
Sternberg, 1985).
Another explanation for the paradox can be the dynamic nature of schemas
and Implicit Theories as recent advances in socio-cognitive psychology indi-
cate. For example, connectionist models of leadership perception (e.g. Brown
& Lord, 2001; Hanges, Lord, & Dickson, 2000; Lord, Brown & Harvey, 2001)
emphasize the role of contextual constraints in ILTs and suggest that proto-
types are likely to exhibit variations across (as well as within) individuals as
a function of different contexts. Similarly, in creativity research, although
there may be general consensus for a general implicit theory of creativity,
there is evidence for domain variation and context-sensitivity (e.g. Hass,
2014; Paletz & Peng, 2008). For example, Hass (2014) found differences in
creativity trait profiles among artists and scientists, whereas Paletz and Peng
(2008) in a study conducted in China, Japan, and the U.S.A. found evidence
for country variations.
On a similar note on schema context-sensitivity and its implications for

creative leadership, DeRue and Ashford’s (2010) work on leadership structure
schemas (LSS) can be of interest. DeRue and Ashford argued that LSS can
range from a hierarchical conception of leadership structure and leadership
exhibited by only a single individual (a hierarchical LSS) to a flatter conception
of leadership structure (a shared LSS). Drawing on our tripartite framework,
we can, thus, argue that collaborative innovation contexts (e.g. computing
industry and jazz bands) call for shared LSS that can make Integrating creative
leadership emergence possible. Furthermore, the social identity theory of lea-
dership (De Cremer, van Dijke, & Mayer, 2010; Hogg, 2001; Hogg & van Knip-
penberg, 2003; Van Knippenberg, Van Knippenberg, De Cremer, & Hogg,
2004) taps upon the importance of context by emphasizing that leadership
effectiveness depends on the leader’s similarity to the group prototype. Proto-
typical leaders embody group norms, are more central and important to self-
definition, and are perceived as more desirable and effective than non-proto-
typical leaders (for a recent review, see Hogg, van Knippenberg, & Rast, 2012).
Hogg and van Knippenberg (2003) have commented on a “prototypicality
paradox” resulting from a stable and highly consensual group prototype of a
leader. Whereas in the beginning a leader’s prototypicality is associated with
status, charisma, and influence, over time all these elements might have the
opposite effect. The leader may gradually be perceived as distant or might
become reluctant to initiate changes and be creative out of fear of loss of pro-
totypicality. Van Knippenberg (2011) challenged the notion that group proto-
typicality and an emphasis on social identity would discourage creativity,
innovation, and change. He suggested that this is a misconception for two
reasons. First, social identity and the group norms embedded in the identity
may actually embrace and emphasize creativity and innovation. For
example, some teams and organizations are in a sense defined by their focus
on creativity and innovation, such as those active in R&D. It is thus possible
that in contexts where creativity is the desired outcome (e.g. creative indus-
tries), a different (to the general) prototype prevails that includes more creativ-
ity-related traits. In our preceding review, this appears to be the case with
several creative leaders including orchestra conductors, haute-cuisine chefs,
film, theatrical, and television directors, creative brokers, curators, and so
forth. Traditional organizational contexts (e.g. banking and manufacturing)
are likely to adhere to the general prototype and see creativity as counter-nor-
mative of the leadership role. As a result, we expect to find more Facilitating
(rather than Directive or Integrating) creative leaders to be more effective in
producing creative outcomes in such settings.
Second, social identities are not static and unchanging, but develop and
change over time just like individual identities. What people seek via their identi-
fication with a group or organization is not unchanging identity, but continuity
of identity—the sense of a clear connection between past, present, and future
identity. Where it concerns innovation as change to the collective, people can be

quite accepting and supportive of the pursuit of such change/innovation as long
as they have a clear sense of continuity of identity.
Thus far, a limited number of studies have examined creative outcomes
through a social identity lens. Hirst, Van Dick, and Van Knippenberg (2009)
found that leader team prototypicality and intrinsic motivation moderated
the relationship between team identification and creative effort. Yoshida, Send-
jaya, Hirst, and Cooper (2014) also found that servant leadership promoted
individual relational identification and collective prototypicality with the
leader which, in turn, enhanced employee creativity and team innovation.
Therefore, the social identity theory of leadership opens interesting paths for
future research with regard to creative leadership and the pursuit of creative
outcomes in organizational settings.
Implications for Research on Paradoxes of Creative Leadership

The paradox literature has long recognized the existence of competing
demands, including tensions between novelty and usefulness, idea generation
and implementation, cooperation versus competition, and exploration versus
exploitation. There has been extensive work on paradoxical and hybrid
frames showing that the ability to embrace multiple orientations at the same
time is a core feature of effectively managing creativity and innovation (e.g.
Garud, Gehman, & Kumaraswamy, 2011; Kark, Karazi-Praisler, & Tubi, in
press); and that a dynamic equilibrium model can explain the ways in which
seemingly contradictory elements can coexist within organizations over time
(Smith, 2014; Smith & Lewis, 2011). These works highlight the need for leader-
ship that can effectively attend to competing expectations and manage tensions
and complex organizational structures (e.g. Dacin et al., 2011; Diefenbach &
Sillince, 2011; Smith, 2014). The tripartite framework that we suggest in the
article can be useful for re-thinking the documented paradoxes of creative
leadership.
According to the “creative personality cohesion paradox” (Hunter et al.,
2011), creative individuals possess traits of autonomy, need for achievement
and self-expression, and at times they can be loners, hostile, and dominant
(Feist, 1998). Leaders need to encourage these creative followers’ personal
initiative and their unique needs for self-expression, while also nurturing
their creative identity and stimulating diversity in their thinking. This encour-
agement is likely to energize their creative efforts (Gotsi, Andriopoulos, Lewis,
& Ingram, 2010). At the same time, the leader must develop cohesion among
team members, maintain a shared vision, and enhance commitment and effec-
tive team work (Andriopoulos, 2003; Hunter et al., 2011). Central to this lea-
dership paradox is that too much cohesion can harm creativity. To spark and
maintain creativity within a team some form of conflict and idea-challenging is
required (Hunter et al., 2011; Nemeth, 1997). Facilitative creative leadership is

influenced by this paradox because it seeks to stimulate and strengthen the
creative contributions of the team members. Creative leaders may face an
even bigger challenge in actively managing the “creative personality cohesion
paradox” in Integrative contexts, where both the leader and the followers
have creative aspirations and the need for leader –follower creative synergy
is critical. Directive creative leaders may experience the paradox in yet
another way: by aligning team members around the implementation of the
leader’s creative vision, leaders may often encounter the tensions associated
with followers’ feelings of “entrapment” (Faulkner, 1973b).
Another major challenge faced by creative leaders is the “intrinsic-extrin-
sic paradox”, which posits that leaders must instill intrinsic motivation
among followers when extrinsic tools are most readily available (Hunter
et al., 2011). Research has shown that while at times extrinsic motivators
may harm creative behaviors and performance (e.g. Amabile, 1985; Kru-
glanski, Friedman, & Zeeyi, 1971), in some situations, extrinsic motivators
can play a role in fostering creative performance (e.g. Mumford & Hunter,
2005). Intrinsic motivation, on the other hand, has been found to have a
major and consistent positive role in creative performance (Amabile,
1996). While leaders can at times control external resources and enhance
external motivation, it is more difficult for them to affect intrinsic motivation
that is derived from the individual and his or her internal emotions, experi-
ences, and hopes. We suggest that in Facilitative contexts (where followers
are expected to make the primary creative contributions), the key challenge
for leaders is to arouse high levels of follower intrinsic motivation while at
the same time effectively managing the use of external cues of rewards and
punishments. In contrast, in Directing contexts, leaders may be able to rely
more, on balance, on external rewards to reinforce the implementation of
their ideas by followers. In the Integrative context, the creative synergy
between leaders and followers likely enhances the passion of both the
leader and followers and contributes to higher levels of mutual intrinsic
motivation, possibly limiting the need for external rewards.
A last example is that of the paradox of the “dual expertise”: Leaders must
acquire domain expertise while also gaining necessary leadership skills (Hunter
et al., 2011). Various studies have shown that leaders’ technical expertise is a
strong predictor of team innovative performance (e.g. Barnowe, 1975;
Mumford, Eubanks, & Murphy, 2007). Developing and cultivating expertise
takes many years and focused efforts (Ericsson & Lehmann, 1996). Individuals
who lead creative efforts, however, must also master leadership skills (Hunter
et al., 2011). We suggest that in order to stimulate and support follower crea-
tivity in Facilitative contexts, leaders must possess strong leadership
skills, while their domain expertise may be (on balance) relatively less impor-
tant. In contrast, Directive creative leaders have to possess very strong
domain expertise in order to act as the “primary creators”, while their leader-
ship skills may be (on balance) relatively less important. Finally, in Integrating
creative leadership contexts, where creative synergy is key, we expect that
leaders will experience most sharply the need to be strong both in terms of
domain expertise and in terms of leadership skills. Another option that we
note in our earlier review of Integrative creative leadership is to apply different
forms of shared or collective leadership in order to tackle this paradoxical
tension.
It is beyond our purpose in the present article to discuss all paradoxes of
creative leadership documented in the extant literature. We note, instead,
that future research can use our tripartite framework in order to identify
important differences in the way that these paradoxes are manifested, experi-
enced, and managed across the three collaborative contexts.
Conclusion
Although the concept of creative leadership can be traced back to the 1950s
(e.g. Selznick, 1984; Stark, 1963), in recent years, it has received unprece-
dented degrees of attention both in the academic literature (e.g. Dinh et al,
2014; Mumford et al., 2014; Vessey et al., 2014) and in the practitioner com-
munity (e.g. Nikravan, 2012). There appears to be a growing realization that
creative leadership is probably more important today than it has ever been
before (Sternberg, 2007). In the past, various streams of organizational
research examined the relationship between creativity and leadership, albeit
using slightly different names such as “creative leadership”, “leading for crea-
tivity and innovation”, and “managing creatives”. In this article, we syn-
thesized this dispersed body of knowledge under a global construct of
creative leadership, which refers to leading others toward the attainment of
a creative outcome. We also proposed an integrative tripartite framework
which suggests that creative leadership can be manifested in the forms of
Facilitating, Directing, or Integrating.
Our integrative review brings together multiple and distant research strands
that have rarely exchanged insights, to date. This article offers to these research
strands a common conceptual platform for connecting and cross-fertilizing
their perspectives. In addition, our multi-context framework offers to future
research a conceptual tool for strengthening its contextual sensitivity and for
shedding new light on the paradoxes of creative leadership. We hope that
the integrative review and the tripartite framework that we presented in this
article will serve in the future as springboards for developing novel empirical
investigations, more nuanced theories, and more synthetic portrayals of crea-
tive leadership in organizations.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Associate Editor David de Cremer and Editor Sim
Sitkin for their thoughtful comments and suggestions during the preparation
of this article.
ORCID
Charalampos Mainemelis http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1081-5898
Olga Epitropaki http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0683-5143
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The Academy of Management Annals, 2015

Vol. 9, No. 1, 393– 482, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19416520.2015.1024502

# 2015 Academy of Management

observe in the literature: facilitating employee creativity; directing the materia-

manifestations vary according to the context wherein it is enacted, we should

Three Conceptualizations of Creative Leadership in the Organizational Literature

enterprise. This conceptualization of creative leadership is evident in three

conducted in Facilitating contexts, but paid little attention to sociologically

A Multi-Context Framework of Creative Leadership

Figure 1 A Multi-Context Framework of Creative Leadership.

followers’ creative contributions, increases in follower supportive contributions

The Academy of Management Annals

Thomson et al., 2007). Throughout our review, we pay close attention to

intrinsic motivation and commitment (Amabile, 1988). As Basadur (2004,

Table 4 Facilitative Creative Leadership: Themes and Contributions

regular contact), and recognizing leader behaviors lead to perceptions of leader

received considerable leader support. In a study of 226 ad designers in China,

Assigned goals. There is considerable agreement in the literature that crea-

tailoring expectations for idea generation to the creative context. He suggested

Monitoring. Because autonomy plays a central role in most creativity the-

Expected evaluation. Shalley (1995) found in a laboratory setting that

Feedback. Zhou (2008) suggested that leader feedback fosters employee

Empowerment. Zhang and Bartol (2010) deﬁned empowering leadership

structural and psychological empowerment were mediators of the relationship

Authentic leader behaviors. Authentic leadership is another construct that

behavioral integrity positively predicted their intention to think creatively and

Networks. Creative leaders in the Facilitating context also need to connect

innovations. Future research should play close attention to this possibility

Individual-level studies. Various studies found support for the hypoth-

Other studies explored interpersonal variables linked to the self as

Organization-level studies. Ling et al. (2008) found that CEOs’ transfor-

leaders. Although the implementation of such innovations involves the entire

Table 5 Directive Creative Leadership: Themes and Contributions

reconstruction, or reinitiation), and to synthesizing existing paradigms to

context of creative leadership is in sharp contrast with the Facilitating context

conductor is “charismatic”, “brilliant”, “second rate”, “poseur”, “fake”, or

recipes, but a question of doing so in a way that leads up to the formation of an

be understood as “individual business models” which create and capture value

Cinematic, Theatrical, and Television Directors

Table 6 Integrative Creative Leadership: Themes and Contributions

involved; and to actively synthesize a wide range of heterogeneous creative

who leads a formal temporary project which seeks to produce a creative

Multiple Leaders: Collective Leadership

trajectories; and ﬂuctuating network cascades to mobilize diverse participants

two manifestations. For example, Integrative creative leaders cannot abstain

A Multi-Context Framework of Creative Leadership

In epistemological terms, we view creative leadership as residing not within

Implications for Research on the Emergence of Creative Leadership Contexts

the nature of work; the nature of creativity; organizational characteristics; and

Social structure. Future research can investigate a wide range of

Nature of work. Another interesting direction for future research is the

problem type (close to open) and driver of engagement (external or internal).

interest in examining longitudinally the role creative leadership plays in the

Organizational characteristics. Another interesting observation in our

Follower characteristics. Follower characteristics, such as domain exper-

unleashed may be different. For example, whereas in orchestras musicians can

Implications for Research on Leadership Schemas, Social Identity, and Creativity

solutions during an interaction were viewed as having lower leadership poten-

On a similar note on schema context-sensitivity and its implications for