Supporting Creativity or Creative Unethicality? Empowering Leadership and the Role of Performance Pressure

Ke Michael Mai, David T. Welsh, Fuxi Wang, John Bush, Kaifeng Jiang

Journal of Business Ethics · 2022 · Volume 179 · Issue 1

Abstract

Organizational leaders are eager to unlock the creative potential of followers. Yet, there is growing evidence that creativity can also have a dark side within organizations. Building on research linking creativity and unethical behavior, we develop the construct of creative unethicality—behavior that is both unethicalandnovel. We draw on social exchange theory to develop a model that identifies bothwhyandwhencreative unethicality emerges within organizations. Specifically, we investigate the exchange dynamics through which creative support provided by empowering leaders facilitates creative unethicality under conditions of high performance pressure. Across two multi-wave, multi-source field studies with employee-coworker and leader-subordinate dyads and an experimental study with a novel unethicality measure in a business simulation, we find convergent support for our theoretical model. These findings have important theoretical and practical implications for fostering creativity in organizations without simultaneously facilitating creative unethicality.

Keywords

Behavioral ethics, Creative unethicality, Creativity, Performance pressure, Empowering leadership, Unethical behavior

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