“Lubricant” or “Stumbling Block”?: The Paradoxical Association Between Team Authoritarian Leadership and Creative Deviance
Recently, creative deviance has been lauded to be an innovation-enhancing approach with applications in many new and high-tech domains. Previous study on antecedents to creative deviance remains scattered and vague. Our research conceptualizes creative deviance from the perspective of independent in...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2022-03-01
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| Series: | Frontiers in Psychology |
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| Online Access: | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.835970/full |
| _version_ | 1811272719518400512 |
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| author | Jing Xu Yong-Zhou Li De-Qun Zhu Jing-Zhi Li |
| author_facet | Jing Xu Yong-Zhou Li De-Qun Zhu Jing-Zhi Li |
| author_sort | Jing Xu |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Recently, creative deviance has been lauded to be an innovation-enhancing approach with applications in many new and high-tech domains. Previous study on antecedents to creative deviance remains scattered and vague. Our research conceptualizes creative deviance from the perspective of independent innovation and explores its antecedents, mechanisms, as well as conditions. Team authoritarian leadership is conceptualized as a contradictory unity as it mixes advantages and disadvantages. However, it is surprising to find that there are very few researches that have examined its relevant influence mechanisms and boundary conditions for authoritarian leadership. Contributing to an advanced understanding of authoritarian leadership in research and development teams, we investigated whether team authoritarian leadership is positively or negatively related to creative deviance. Drawing on social information processing theory and regulatory focus theory, we supposed that team authoritarian leadership facilitates creative deviance when the degree is low and inhibits it when the degree is high; dual occupational stress and prevention regulatory focus play mediation roles between team authoritarian leadership and creative deviance respectively, both variables play a chain mediation role in that relationship; and the mindfulness characteristic of an individual moderates the inverted-U team authoritarian leadership-creative deviance association, such that this association is weaker with low individual mindfulness. With two-phase questionnaire data collected from 433 members in 82 R&D teams of high-tech enterprises in electronic information technology, new material technology, new medical technology, resource and environment technology and advanced manufacturing technology randomly selected from five provinces in eastern China, these hypotheses are supported empirically. Overall, we find that, our study broadens antecedents and the relevant occurrence mechanisms of creative deviance when studied through a leadership management lens. Moreover, our research enriches the cognate studies on authoritarian leadership by empirically demonstrating that team authoritarian leadership may function as an double-edged sword of creative deviance in the R&D workplace. These above findings offer insightful thoughts to scholars in the field of authoritarian leadership and bring practical suggestions for team superiors who seek to implement best innovation practice. |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-12T22:45:23Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-ed5963b27233416eb97ab5ba6331ca55 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1664-1078 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-12T22:45:23Z |
| publishDate | 2022-03-01 |
| publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Frontiers in Psychology |
| spelling | doaj.art-ed5963b27233416eb97ab5ba6331ca552022-12-22T03:13:33ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Psychology1664-10782022-03-011310.3389/fpsyg.2022.835970835970“Lubricant” or “Stumbling Block”?: The Paradoxical Association Between Team Authoritarian Leadership and Creative DevianceJing Xu0Yong-Zhou Li1De-Qun Zhu2Jing-Zhi Li3Evergrande School of Management, Wuhan University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, ChinaEvergrande School of Management, Wuhan University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, ChinaSchool of Economics and Management, Shangrao Normal University, Shangrao, ChinaSchool of Labor Relations and Personnel, Renmin University of China, Beijing, ChinaRecently, creative deviance has been lauded to be an innovation-enhancing approach with applications in many new and high-tech domains. Previous study on antecedents to creative deviance remains scattered and vague. Our research conceptualizes creative deviance from the perspective of independent innovation and explores its antecedents, mechanisms, as well as conditions. Team authoritarian leadership is conceptualized as a contradictory unity as it mixes advantages and disadvantages. However, it is surprising to find that there are very few researches that have examined its relevant influence mechanisms and boundary conditions for authoritarian leadership. Contributing to an advanced understanding of authoritarian leadership in research and development teams, we investigated whether team authoritarian leadership is positively or negatively related to creative deviance. Drawing on social information processing theory and regulatory focus theory, we supposed that team authoritarian leadership facilitates creative deviance when the degree is low and inhibits it when the degree is high; dual occupational stress and prevention regulatory focus play mediation roles between team authoritarian leadership and creative deviance respectively, both variables play a chain mediation role in that relationship; and the mindfulness characteristic of an individual moderates the inverted-U team authoritarian leadership-creative deviance association, such that this association is weaker with low individual mindfulness. With two-phase questionnaire data collected from 433 members in 82 R&D teams of high-tech enterprises in electronic information technology, new material technology, new medical technology, resource and environment technology and advanced manufacturing technology randomly selected from five provinces in eastern China, these hypotheses are supported empirically. Overall, we find that, our study broadens antecedents and the relevant occurrence mechanisms of creative deviance when studied through a leadership management lens. Moreover, our research enriches the cognate studies on authoritarian leadership by empirically demonstrating that team authoritarian leadership may function as an double-edged sword of creative deviance in the R&D workplace. These above findings offer insightful thoughts to scholars in the field of authoritarian leadership and bring practical suggestions for team superiors who seek to implement best innovation practice.https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.835970/fullteam authoritarian leadershipcreative deviancedual occupational stressprevention regulatory focusindividual mindfulness |
| spellingShingle | Jing Xu Yong-Zhou Li De-Qun Zhu Jing-Zhi Li “Lubricant” or “Stumbling Block”?: The Paradoxical Association Between Team Authoritarian Leadership and Creative Deviance Frontiers in Psychology team authoritarian leadership creative deviance dual occupational stress prevention regulatory focus individual mindfulness |
| title | “Lubricant” or “Stumbling Block”?: The Paradoxical Association Between Team Authoritarian Leadership and Creative Deviance |
| title_full | “Lubricant” or “Stumbling Block”?: The Paradoxical Association Between Team Authoritarian Leadership and Creative Deviance |
| title_fullStr | “Lubricant” or “Stumbling Block”?: The Paradoxical Association Between Team Authoritarian Leadership and Creative Deviance |
| title_full_unstemmed | “Lubricant” or “Stumbling Block”?: The Paradoxical Association Between Team Authoritarian Leadership and Creative Deviance |
| title_short | “Lubricant” or “Stumbling Block”?: The Paradoxical Association Between Team Authoritarian Leadership and Creative Deviance |
| title_sort | lubricant or stumbling block the paradoxical association between team authoritarian leadership and creative deviance |
| topic | team authoritarian leadership creative deviance dual occupational stress prevention regulatory focus individual mindfulness |
| url | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.835970/full |
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