Abstract
In the context of the retail business, rarely studied the impact of top transformation leaders on middle management personnel creativity. In this study, the middle management personnel of 258 retail enterprises were discussed, explored the impact of top transformation leaders on the double-dimensional creativity of middle management personnel, and analyzed individual psychological security. Results show that transformational leadership (morale modeling, visionary motivation, individualized consideration, and charisma) has a significant positive impact on the progressive creativity and breakthrough creativity of middle managers. Transformational leadership (Same as the above four dimensions) has a significant positive impact on the psychological security of middle managers. Psychological security has a significant positive impact on the progressive creativity and breakthrough creativity of middle managers. Psychological security plays a partially mediating role between transformational leadership and the creativity of middle managers. Among which, it plays a partially mediating role between morale modeling and progressive creativity, visionary motivation and progressive creativity, individualized consideration and progressive creativity, charisma and progressive creativity, morale modeling and breakthrough creativity, and charisma and breakthrough creativity, while it plays a fully mediating role between visionary motivation and breakthrough creativity, individualized consideration and breakthrough creativity. This study expanded the study of psychological security as an intermediary variable and deepened the study of dual-dimensional creativity. Based on the above conclusions, this paper puts forward relevant suggestions to promote the development of progressive creativity and breakthrough creativity of middle-level managers, to provide a reference for enterprises to maintain talent advantages and for managers to enhance development potential.
Introduction
The promising development of the retail industry is attributed to innovation and transformation (Marín-García et al., 2021). Retail enterprises are vigorously developing new retail by developing new business models and actively connecting online and offline consumption and upstream and downstream of the supply chain (Liu & Liu, 2023). In the background of the knowledge era, managers are the key for retail enterprises to get long-term development and enhance their core competitiveness (Bunjak et al., 2022). To make themselves and their enterprises achieve the expected performance in the dynamic and changing environment, top managers need to improve their changeability, develop employees’ thinking through effective management, and then promote the innovative development of enterprises (Yin et al., 2022). The creative behaviors of middle managers are currently overlooked by academics and considered resisters to corporate innovation strategies (Harding et al., 2014). However, more studies have found that middle managers are the key to implementing corporate innovation creation strategies. On the one hand, they are the executors of top managers’ innovation strategies. On the other hand, they are the developers and leaders of lower managers’ innovation strategies, playing an essential role in carrying the top and bottom. The middle managers’ enthusiasm for innovation and the integration and allocation of corporate resources not only help to improve personal innovation performance but also increase the innovation potential of the enterprise (H. Lu & Zhao, 2022). This requires us to dig deeper into the antecedent variables of middle managers’ innovation behavior and the inner mechanism of action and to open up the enterprise innovation blockage.
Leadership style and behavior have an important impact on the innovation and creation of enterprises (Birasnav et al., 2013). For enterprises, the biggest challenge of innovation is not lack of funds, but from the existing organizational model and culture of enterprises and the behavior of their leaders (Minh et al., 2017). Analyzed from the theoretical level, employees’ innovation is influenced by individual characteristics on the one hand and external factors on the other, among which leadership is an essential external environmental variable. Excellent leaders can stimulate employees’ independent innovation, and then inject inexhaustible power for enterprise development. Analyzed from the practical level, at present, with the rapid development of the online retail industry and the difficulties of the traditional retail industry, the online dividend declines and the offline retail value highlights, accelerate the retail industry to transform into a new retail industry: cloud computing and Internet of things provide cheap and available hardware foundation, big data and artificial intelligence provide reliable and efficient software foundation, and jointly subvert the business form of the retail industry. Facing this situation, transformational leadership, which is considered the most valuable leadership behavior in academic and industrial circles, plays a prominent role in the creativity of retail enterprise managers (Eisenbeiß & Boerner, 2013). Organizational behavior studies show that transformational leadership can effectively drive the development of employee creativity (Cui et al., 2023). Through communication, transformational leaders make subordinates understand the vision of the enterprise, realize the importance of the task, deeply understand the needs of employees, stimulate intrinsic motivation, encourage employees to combine personal goals with enterprise goals, stimulate development potential, and improve employees’ creativity (Sidney et al., 2022).
There is currently a large body of academic research on each of the three variables (transformational leadership, psychological security, and creativity). Although representative perspectives and scales have been generated for each variable, there is no unified opinion and less research on the relationships among the three variables. First, transformational leadership is divided into different dimensions in different contexts and geographies. Due to the differences between specific organizational situations and sample objects, it presents different research results (Gumusluoglu & Ilsev, 2009; Qu et al., 2015; S. Z. Shin, 2003; P. Wang & Rode, 2010). Second, the definition and measurement of psychological security are controversial. In terms of definition, the research division of individual, team, and organization is not clear (Andersson et al., 2020). In terms of measurement, due to the great differences in environment and region, scholars need to carry out pioneering research on the measurement of psychological security at different levels (Edmondson, 1999; Jaussi & Dionne, 2003). Third, the measurement of creativity mostly adopts the single-dimension scale. Due to the different perceptions and cognition at the individual level, will strongly affect the production of different dimensions of creativity, and the behavior of leaders at the organizational level will affect the improvement of creativity, which leads to great differences in the research conclusions of creativity in different cultural situations (J. Zhou & George, 2001). Fourth, the research conclusions on the relationship between transformational leadership and employee creativity are not consistent, including positive, unrelated, and negative effects (Basu, 1997; Eisenbeiß & Boerner, 2013); most scholars focus on technical staff and researchers from the organizational level and team level, while the research on other levels and industries needs to be further explored.
In summary, based on the collection of 286 questionnaires from middle managers of retail enterprises, this paper constructs the influence mechanism of transformational leadership on middle managers’ creativity in retail enterprises based on social exchange theory and motivational information processing theory and analyzes the mediating role played by individual psychological security. This study provides a reference for enhancing the transformational leadership of top managers in retail enterprises, creating a sense of psychological security, stimulating the creativity of middle managers, and thus promoting the innovative development of retail enterprises.
Research Hypotheses and Theoretical Model
Research Hypotheses
The Impact of Transformational Leadership on the Two-Dimensional Creativity of Middle Managers
Social exchange theory is used in most leaders’ and employees’ research, which shows that when one party gains from the other, it will give back and form a reciprocal social exchange relationship. Transformational leadership treats employees fairly, cares about their work and life, and is conducive to the development of high-quality social relations between the two sides. Employees will learn from leaders to repay them. Many scholars believe that transformational leadership can help to improve employees’ creativity (Eisenbeiß & Boerner, 2013; Henker et al., 2015; Koh et al., 2019). Transformational leadership includes four aspects: individualized consideration, morale modeling, vision motivation, and charismatic leadership (Koh et al., 2019).
First, morale modeling and creativity. Under the influence of ideology and culture, employees will follow the leaders’ behavior because of their character. Leaders with good morality and practice show their example and dedication in their work, and create a good working environment for the employees, thus mobilizing the initiative and enthusiasm of the staff, which is conducive to the cultivation of innovation of the employees (Shafique et al., 2020; Tu & Lu, 2013; Tu et al., 2019).
Second, vision motivation, and creativity. Incentives are important and effective for employees. The leaders of vision motivation are shown as constructing and conveying the vision of a good development of the enterprise, so that employees can realize the importance and challenge of creative work to the enterprise and individual development, which is conducive to improving the enthusiasm and initiative of employees’ innovation, to improve employees’ creativity (Hon, 2012; Mascareo et al., 2020; L. Zhou et al., 2018).
Third, individualized consideration and creativity. Individualized consideration is shown as regular communication with employees, timely understanding of the current situation and work problems, giving certain direction suggestions, promoting employees to change the status quo, improving the investment and completion of innovative work, and then improving the income of enterprises and individuals, including improving the creativity of employees (Ng, 2017; Qu et al., 2015; Zhu et al., 2009).
Fourth, charismatic leadership and creativity. Leaders with personal charm easily make employees follow, become their learning model, improve their requirements to be close to the leaders, and then promote potential innovation (Luu et al., 2019). Charismatic Leaders are good at grasping environmental changes, can respond to the needs of employees, and make behaviors to break the enterprise routine for the enterprise, which can easily cause the attention and study of employees and further enhance the potential creativity (Eisenbeiß & Boerner, 2013; Luo et al., 2014).
Based on the above analysis, the following assumptions are proposed in this paper:
H1. Transformational leadership has a significant positive effect on the gradual creativity of middle-level managers;
H1-1. The morale modeling has a significant positive effect on the gradual creativity of middle-level managers;
H1-2. Vision motivation has a significant positive effect on the gradual creativity of middle-level managers;
H1-3. Individualized consideration has a significant positive effect on the gradual creativity of middle-level managers;
H1-4. Charismatic leadership has a significant positive effect on the gradual creativity of middle-level managers;
H2. Transformational leadership has a significant positive effect on the breakthrough creativity of middle-level managers;
H2-1. The morale modeling has a significant positive effect on the breakthrough creativity of middle-level managers;
H2-2. Vision motivation has a significant positive effect on the breakthrough creativity of middle-level managers;
H2-3. Individualized consideration has a significant positive effect on the breakthrough creativity of middle-level managers;
H2-4. Charismatic Leadership has a significant positive impact on the breakthrough creativity of middle-level managers.
Influence of Transformational Leadership on Mental Security
The theory of leadership attribution holds that the communication and interaction between leaders and employees is a process of mutual attribution. The attribution of employees to transformational leadership behavior will affect their different psychological states (Martinko & Gardner, 1987). Transformational leaders can improve their psychological security by supporting employees to express their views actively.
First, morale modeling, charismatic leadership, and psychological security. Specifically, the leaders with both virtue and charm, besides the high level of business, work attitude is positive. Noble morality reduces the psychological distance between employees and leaders, and excellent business quality improves the employees’ trust in leadership (Cheng et al., 2004). The employees take transformational leadership as a learning example, close to noble morality and behavior, and learn business knowledge, further enhancing the psychological security of employees. Charismatic leaders can have a demonstration effect on subordinates. The unconventional behaviors of charismatic leaders have an important influence on the formation of risk preference of employees, promote positive psychological state of employees, and help to improve employees’ psychological security (Edmondson, 1999).
Second, vision motivation and psychological security. Specifically, transformational leaders clarify their vision to employees and form detailed objectives recognized by both parties through the communication process of leadership attribution. Although they encounter setbacks in completing the task, they can also clarify the right direction of work in the next step, encourage employees to grow up with standards, reduce the possibility of negative emotions, and then improve individual psychological security. Leaders communicate the enterprise vision through communication with employees, let employees understand the expectations of the enterprise and their superiors, reduce the anxiety and worry brought by uncertainty, and then improve the psychological security of employees (Edmondson, 1999).
Third, individualized consideration and psychological security. Specifically, the individualized consideration of transformational leadership for employees can be divided into two aspects: one is that the work care for employees is conducive to understanding the short board of their workability, and then improving the business level of employees through training and guidance to solve the work problems; the other is that the care for employees’ life is conducive to alleviate the negative emotions and worries brought by families, reduce pressure and close the staff and leaders Psychological distance (Martinko & Gardner, 1987), from the perspective of the interaction of leadership attribution theory, the individualized consideration of transformational leadership strengthens the psychological quality of employees, and then improves the psychological safety perception of employees (Hood et al., 2016; Martinko & Gardner, 1987).
Based on the above analysis, the following assumptions are proposed in this paper:
H3. Transformational leadership has a significant positive effect on the psychological safety of middle-level managers;
H3-1. Morale modeling has a significant positive effect on the psychological safety of middle-level managers;
H3-2. Vision motivation has a significant positive effect on the psychological security of middle-level managers;
H3-3. Individualized consideration has a significant positive effect on the psychological security of middle-level managers;
H3-4. Charismatic leadership has a significant positive effect on the psychological security of middle-level managers.
The Influence of Psychological Security on the Two-Dimensional Creativity of Middle-Level Managers
According to motivational information processing theory, employees’ perception of the organizational environment will affect their reactions, attitudes, and behavior (Dreu et al., 2000). Among them, employees with a high level of cognitive motivation (high psychological security perception) are willing to actively search for information to make efforts for work tasks; employees with prosocial motivation (high psychological security perception) pay attention to collective interests and are willing to share new and useful ideas (De La Rosa et al., 2016); employees with a high level of cognitive motivation and prosocial motivation contribute to the formation of breakthrough creativity. However, employees with low-level cognitive motivation (low psychological security perception) are less engaged in their work and satisfied with the status quo; employees with high self-interest motivation (low psychological security perception) pay attention to individual interests, have low willingness to cooperate and share, and tend to develop steadily; employees with low-level cognitive motivation and high self-interest motivation are more likely to form progressive creativity (J. Shin et al., 2012). In recent years, many scholars have proved that high psychological security can help enhance employee creativity (Martinko & Gardner, 1987).
Based on the above analysis, this paper puts forward the following assumptions
H4. Psychological security has a significant positive impact on the creativity of middle-level managers;
H4-1. Psychological security has a significant positive impact on the progressive creativity of middle-level managers;
H4-2. Psychological security has a significant positive impact on the breakthrough creativity of middle-level managers.
The Mediating Role of Psychological Security
According to the motivational information processing theory, employees can change their attitude, ability, and behavior according to the relevant information about the working environment they get (Dreu et al., 2000). Specifically, the work environment will affect employees’ psychological safety perception, and then affect their creative intention, ability, and behavior. Employees’ perception of the safety of interpersonal relationships in the working environment and their judgment of innovation risks and benefits will affect the improvement of employees’ innovative ideas and creativity, among which leader behavior plays an important role in the risk assessment of employees’ innovation and creation (Y. Zhang et al., 2010). When the superior shows transformational leadership behavior, the employees process the leadership behavior through the information obtained from the working environment. If the leader has strong working ability, considers the interests of the employees, is willing to provide help for the employees, and dares to innovate and change, the employees will have compliance psychology and imitation behavior to the leaders, and are willing to take risk-taking behavior to achieve the goal, to enhance the psychological safety perception (Kark & Carmeli, 2009). If the psychological safety perception of transformational leadership is low, the upper limit value of risk judgment is low, and the employees are more willing to carry out progressive innovation and creation within the scope of their existing work; if the psychological safety perception of transformational leadership is high, that is, the leaders have a high tolerance for innovation and creation, and the leaders dare to break the rules, to provide guarantee for the employees to take high-risk creation, then the employees will be better Workers will raise their risk limit and focus on creative work, which is conducive to the stimulation of employees’ creative potential (X. Zhang & Bartol, 2010).
Based on the above analysis, this paper puts forward the following assumptions
H5. Psychological security plays a mediating role between transformational leadership and middle-level managers’ creativity;
H5-1. Psychological security plays a mediating role between morale modeling and middle managers’ breakthrough creativity;
H5-2. Psychological security plays a mediating role between vision motivation and breakthrough creativity of middle-level managers;
H5-3. Psychological security plays a mediating role between individualized consideration and the breakthrough creativity of middle-level managers;
H5-4. Psychological security plays a mediating role between leadership charisma and the breakthrough creativity of middle-level managers;
H5-5. Psychological security plays a mediating role between morale modeling and middle-level managers’ progressive creativity;
H5-6. Psychological security plays a mediating role between vision motivation and middle-level managers’ progressive creativity;
H5-7. Psychological security plays a mediating role between individualized consideration and middle-level managers’ progressive creativity;
H5-8. Psychological security plays a mediating role between leadership charisma and middle-level managers’ progressive creativity.
Theoretical Model
Applying social exchange theory to the field of organizational behavior has produced several exchange relationships such as employee-leader, employee-employee, and employee-organization. Among them, leaders’ support, recognition, and care for their subordinates help to enhance employees’ sense of loyalty and organizational identity, which in turn leads to employees’ rewarding feedback behaviors to the leaders and the organization (Zhong et al., 2019). Motivational information processing theory has been applied mainly to the negotiation domain, the team effectiveness domain, and the creativity domain. Among them, studies in the creativity domain have concluded that leaders giving more initiative and information to employees helps to increase their pro-social motivation and cognitive motivation, and the increase in pro-social motivation helps employees to switch their way of thinking, and the increase in cognitive motivation helps employees to proactively and efficiently process information, which in turn increases their creativity (De Dreu et al., 2011; Tu & Lu, 2013).
Social exchange theory and motivational information processing theory show the interplay between traits, attitudes, motivation, cognition, and behavioral outcomes among individuals in the work environment, in which leadership traits, attitudes, and behaviors constitute the independent variables, employees’ attitudes and motivations constitute the mediating variables, and employees’ cognition and behavioral outcomes constitute the dependent variables, which provide the basis for the selection of variables in this paper.
Among them, social exchange embodies the mechanism of interchange of social interests between leadership behavior and employee behavior and provides a theoretical explanation and path of action for the relationship between transformational leadership behavior and employee creativity. Motivational information processing theory embodies the mechanism of the role of individual attitudes, and motivation, as behavioral outcomes, and provides a theoretical explanation and path for the relationship between employees’ psychological security and their creativity.
Based on the above hypothetical reasoning and theoretical derivation, the theoretical model of transformational leadership and creativity in this paper is constructed, as shown in Figure 1.
Theoretical model of transformational leadership and two-dimensional creativity of middle managers.
Research Methodology and Research Design
Questionnaire Design
The questionnaire was divided into three parts in total. The first part is the introduction of the questionnaire, which briefly introduces the purpose of the study and dispels the respondents’ doubts. The second part is the main part of the questionnaire, which mainly involves the measurement of three variables: transformational leadership, psychological security, and creativity (Shown in Table 1). To reduce possible errors, this paper adopts a mature scale with a high acceptance rate, which is combined with the special characteristics of the survey respondents. A five-point Likert scale was adopted to measure each question item of the scale, from the number 1 (totally disagree) to 5 (totally agree). The third part is the basic information of the respondents, including four question items such as gender, age, education, years of working experience, etc. The purpose is to provide data support for analyzing whether there is an influence of demographic characteristics variables on the creativity of middle managers.
Measurement.
Sample and Procedures
This paper takes the middle-level managers of the retail industry in Fujian Province as the research object and uses the online questionnaire and offline paper questionnaire. In the first round, 300 questionnaires were sent out, including 163 online questionnaires, 137 offline questionnaires, and 286 returned questionnaires. In the second round, 28 questionnaires with regular, incomplete, and contradictory answers were deleted. Two hundred fifty-eight valid questionnaires were obtained, with an effective rate of 90.21%. The samples come from many retail enterprises (NEW HUADU SUPERCENTER, YONGHUI SUPERSTORE, GuanPark, MINTIAN Industrial Co., Ltd., SUNING e-buy Trading Co., Ltd., MEIYIJIA, PUPU MALL, FUJIAN DONGBAI GROUP COMPANY, etc.) in various formats (department stores, supermarkets, supermarkets, convenience stores, warehouse stores, shopping centers, furniture, and building materials stores, etc.).
In this paper, 44.2% of the managers are male and 55.8% are female. The distribution is uniform, and there is little difference. Female managers are slightly more than male managers. From the age level, the distribution is concentrated in 25 to 35 years old, 36 to 45 years old, and over 45 years old, accounting for 22.5%, 527%, and 24% respectively. It shows that the proportion of “65,”“75,” and “85” managers in the sample is the highest, which is in line with the requirements In this paper, the requirements for the research group of middle-level managers are as follows: from the perspective of academic level, 29.8% of the middle-level managers are junior college or below, 49.2% are undergraduates, 17.8% are masters, and 3.1% are doctors or above, which indicates that the middle-level managers in retail enterprises are highly educated; from the perspective of working years, the sample distribution is more than 9 years, which corresponds to the position level.
Data Analysis
SPSS17.0 software is used to analyze the data of the respondents in retail enterprises by descriptive statistics, reliability and validity analysis of the scale, and the hierarchical regression analysis and stepwise regression analysis of variables. Amos26.0 was used to analyze the variables’ confirmatory factor and the correlation between variables.
Results
Reliability and Validity Tests
Reliability test is the test of the reliability and stability of the questionnaire, which refers to the consistency of repeated measurement of the same object by the same method. The Cronbach’s alpha was used to test the reliability of the scale. The closer the Cronbach’s alpha value is to 1, the more reliable the scale is. When the reliability coefficient is in the range of 0.65 to 0.70, it is the minimum acceptable value, in the range of 0.70 to 0.80, it is quite good, in the range of 0.80 to 0.90, it is very good. As shown in Table 2, all variables passed the reliability test of internal consistency.
Reliability of the Scale.
Validity refers to the degree to which the scale can truly and accurately measure the actual situation of variables, including content validity and construct validity. Content validity refers to whether the items of the scale can comprehensively measure the variable content and whether the scale is included in the variable subject. Because the scales used in this paper are all based on the mature scales of predecessors, the content validity is good, so it is not tested. Construct validity refers to the degree of correspondence between the results of the scale and the content to be measured.
In this paper, amos26.0 was used for confirmatory factor analysis, including structural validity analysis, convergent validity analysis, and discriminant validity analysis.
The structural validity of the model is tested, and the results are shown in Table 3 with χ2/df = 1.611, IFI = 0.954, TLI = 0.947, CFI = 0.954, and RMSEA = 0.049. The results show that the model has good structure validity.
Overall Fitting Coefficient Table.
The results are shown in Table 4. The factor load of each latent variable >0.6, which indicates that each item is highly representative; The combination reliability CR of each latent variable > the critical value of 0.7, and the average variance variation ave > the critical value of 0.5, which indicated that the latent variable had good convergent validity.
Factor Loads.
The results of the analysis of the validity of each potential variable are shown in Table 5. The absolute value of the correlation coefficient among potential variables is less than the .5 critical value and less than the square root of Ave. The correlation between potential variables is significant, which shows that there is both differentiation and correlation among potential variables, and the validity of scale data differentiation is good.
Discriminant Validity.
Note. Diagonal is the extraction amount of ave evaluation variance variation.
Common Method Variance
In this paper, the Harman single-factor test is used to detect whether there is a common method deviation. Using SPSS17.0 software to carry out an exploratory factor analysis on the total table, extract the factors with an eigenvalue greater than 1, and eliminate the items with factor load less than 0.5. The results are shown in Table 6. Firstly, the seven components extracted from the scale correspond to four dimensions of transformational leadership, one dimension of psychological security, and two dimensions of creativity respectively, which shows that the dimension design of the scale is reasonable; Second, the cumulative variance of the first common factor was 36.506%, which was less than 40%, and the cumulative variance contribution rate was 74.463%, which was more than 60%, indicating that there was no significant common method deviation.
Total Variance.
Correlation Analysis Results
In this paper, SPSS17.0 software is used to analyze the correlation between the latent variables. The results are shown in Table 7. Most of the variable’s p-values are less than .01, and most of the correlation coefficients are greater than .3, indicating that there is a significant positive correlation between the latent variables. Firstly, the morale modeling and charisma of transformational leadership have a strong effect on the psychological security of middle-level managers. Secondly, the effect of psychological security on progressive creativity is greater than that of breakthrough creativity. Third, the effect of visionary motivation, morale modeling, and individualized consideration on the progressive creativity of middle-level managers is greater than that of breakthrough creativity.
Results of Correlation Analysis of Variables.
Represents p-value less than .05.
Represents p-value less than .01.
Hypothesis Test
The Influence of Transformational Leadership on the Progressive Creativity of Middle Managers
The results in Table 8 show that: first, transformational leadership can better explain the change of progressive creativity (B = 0.546, p < .001), and the regression coefficient of transformational leadership is significant at the level of 0.001, assuming that H1 is verified. Secondly, morale modeling (B = 0.540, p < .001), vision motivation (B = 0.267, p < .001), individualized consideration (B = 0.343, p < .001) and charisma (B = 0.461, p < .001) can better explain the change of progressive creativity, and the regression coefficients of the four independent variables are significant at the level of .001. Hypothesis H1-1, H1-2, H1-3, and H1-4 are verified.
Regression Analysis Results of Transformational Leadership and Progressive Creativity of Middle Managers.
Note. The figures in the table are the coefficients of each variable.
p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
The Impact of Transformational Leadership on the Breakthrough Creativity of Middle Managers
It can be seen from the results in Table 9: firstly, transformational leadership can better explain the change of breakthrough creativity (B = 0.393, p < .001), and the regression coefficient of transformational leadership is significant at the level of .001, which is verified by hypothesis H2. Secondly, the change of breakthrough creativity can be well explained by virtue model (B = 0.320, p < .001), vision motivation (B = 0.171, p < .01), individualized consideration (B = 0.231, p < .001) and leadership charisma (B = 0.463, p < .001), and the regression coefficients of the four independent variables are significant at the level of .01. Hypothesis H2-1, H2-2, H2-3, and H2-4 are verified.
Regression Analysis Results of Transformational Leadership and Breakthrough Creativity of Middle Managers.
Note. The figures in the table are the coefficients of each variable.
p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
The Influence of Transformational Leadership on the Psychological Security of Middle Managers
The results in Table 10 show that: first, transformational leadership can better explain the change of psychological security (B = 0.609, p < .001), and the regression coefficient of transformational leadership is significant at the level of .001, assuming H3 is verified. Secondly, morale modeling (B = 0.500, p < .001), vision motivation (B = 0.384, p < .001), individualized consideration (b = 0.426, p < .001) and charisma (B = 0.504, p < .001) can better explain the change of breakthrough creativity, and the regression coefficients of the four independent variables are significant at the level of .001, and H3-1, H3-2, H3-3, and H3-4 are verified.
Regression Analysis Results of Transformational Leadership and Middle Managers’ Psychological Security.
Note. The figures in the table are the coefficients of each variable.
p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
The Influence of Psychological Security on the Creativity of Middle Managers
The results in Table 11 show that: first, psychological security can better explain the creativity change (B = 0.477, p < .001), and the regression coefficient of psychological security is significant at the level of .001, assuming that H4 is verified. Secondly, psychological security can better explain the change of progressive creativity (B = 0.424, p < .001), and the regression coefficient of psychological security is significant at the level of .001. Thirdly, psychological security can explain the change of breakthrough creativity (B = 0.380, p < .001), and the regression coefficient of psychological security is significant at the level of .001, assuming that H4-2 is verified.
Regression Analysis Results of Psychological Security and Creativity of Middle Managers.
Note. The figures in the table are the coefficients of each variable.
p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
The Mediating Role of Psychological Security Between Transformational Leadership and Middle Managers’ Creativity
The mediating effect can test the action mechanism of independent variables on dependent variables. The stepwise regression proposed by Baron and Kenny (1986) is one of the most commonly used methods to test the mediating effect. The conditions of this method are: first, the independent variables have a significant impact on the dependent variables. Second, independent variables have a significant impact on mediating variables. Thirdly, the independent variable and the intermediary variable are put into the regression model at the same time. If the regression coefficient of the independent variable is still significant, the intermediary variable plays a partial mediating role; If the regression coefficient of the independent variable is not significant, the mediating variable plays a complete mediating role. This paper uses the stepwise regression method to test the mediating effect of psychological security (Baron & Kenny, 1986).
It can be seen from the previous paper that the relationship between the variables is significant, both of which meet the first and second conditions of stepwise regression, so only the third condition is tested.
(1) The mediating role of psychological security between transformational leadership and middle managers’ creativity
The results in Table 12 show that: under the influence of psychological security, the influence of transformational leadership on creativity decreases, and the regression coefficient of transformational leadership decreases from 0.615 to 0.416, that is, because of the addition of psychological security, although the regression coefficient of transformational leadership on creativity decreases, it remains significant at the level of .001, and the third condition of stepwise regression is tested. Psychological security plays a mediating role between transformational leadership and creativity. Hypothesis H5 is verified.
The Mediating Role of Psychological Security Between Transformational Leadership and Middle Managers’ Creativity.
Note. The figures in the table are the coefficients of each variable.
p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
(2) The mediating role of psychological security between the dimension of transformational leadership segmentation and the progressive creativity of middle managers
(1) The mediating role of psychological security in the relationship between moral modeling and middle managers’ progressive creativity
The results in Table 13 show that: under the influence of psychological security, the influence of morale modeling on progressive creativity decreases, and the regression coefficient decreases from 0.540 to 0.433. That is to say, with the addition of psychological security. However, the regression coefficient of morale modeling on progressive creativity decreases, it remains significant at the level of .001, and the third condition of stepwise regression is tested. In conclusion, psychological security plays a partial mediating role between morale modeling and progressive creativity. Hypothesis H5-5 is verified.
The Mediating Role of Psychological Security in the Relationship Between Morale Modeling and Middle Managers’ Progressive Creativity.
p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
(2) The mediating role of psychological security between visionary motivation and middle managers’ progressive creativity
The results in Table 14 show that: under the influence of psychological security, the influence of visionary motivation on progressive creativity decreases, and the regression coefficient decreases from 0.266 to 0.122. That is to say, with the addition of psychological security. However, the regression coefficient of visionary motivation on progressive creativity decreases, it remains significant at the level of .05, and the third condition of stepwise regression is tested. In conclusion, psychological security plays a partial mediating role between visionary motivation and progressive creativity, which is verified by hypothesis H5-6.
The Mediating Role of Psychological Security Between Visionary Motivation and Progressive Creativity of Middle Managers.
p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
(3) The mediating role of psychological security in the relationship between individualized consideration and middle managers’ progressive creativity
It can be seen from the results in Table 15 that: under the influence of psychological security, the influence of individualized consideration on progressive creativity decreased, and the regression coefficient decreased from 0.353 to 0.205, that is, because of the addition of psychological security, although the regression coefficient of individualized consideration on progressive creativity decreased, it remained significant at the level of .01, and the third condition of stepwise regression was tested. In conclusion, psychological security plays a partial mediating role between individualized consideration and progressive creativity, which is verified by hypothesis H5-7.
The Mediating Role of Psychological Security in the Relationship Between Individualized Consideration and Middle Managers’ Progressive Creativity.
p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
(4) The mediating role of psychological security between charisma and middle managers’ progressive creativity
The results in Table 16 show that: under the influence of psychological security, the influence of charisma on progressive creativity decreases, and the regression coefficient decreases from 0.455 to 0.320. That is to say, with the addition of psychological security. However, the regression coefficient of charisma on progressive creativity decreases, it remains significant at the level of .001, and the third condition of stepwise regression is tested. In conclusion, psychological security plays a partial mediating role between charisma and progressive creativity, which is verified by hypotheses H5-8.
The Mediating Role of Psychological Security Between Charisma and Middle Managers’ Progressive Creativity.
p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
(3) The intermediary role of psychological security between the dimension of transformational leadership segmentation and the breakthrough creativity of middle managers
(1) The mediating role of psychological security between morale modeling and middle managers’ breakthrough creativity
According to the results in Table 17, the influence of morale modeling on breakthrough creativity is reduced under the influence of psychological security, and the regression coefficient is reduced from 0.312 to 0.175, that is, because of the addition of psychological security, although the regression coefficient of morale modeling to breakthrough creativity is reduced, it remains significant at .01 level, and the third condition is tested gradually. In conclusion, psychological security plays a part in the mediating role between morale modeling and breakthrough creativity, assuming H5-1 verification is passed.
The Mediating Role of Psychological Security Between Morale Modeling and Middle Managers’ Breakthrough Creativity.
p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
(2) The mediating role of psychological security between visionary motivation and breakthrough creativity of middle managers
The results in Table 18 show that: under the influence of psychological security, the influence of visionary motivation on breakthrough creativity decreases, and the regression coefficient becomes not significant, and the third condition of stepwise regression is tested. In conclusion, psychological security plays a complete mediating role between visionary motivation and breakthrough creativity, and hypothesis H5-2 is verified.
The Mediating Role of Psychological Security Between Visionary Motivation and Breakthrough Creativity of Middle Managers.
p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
(3) The mediating role of psychological security between Individualized consideration and breakthrough creativity of middle managers
The results in Table 19 show that: under the influence of psychological security, the influence of individualized consideration on breakthrough creativity decreases, the regression coefficient becomes not significant, and the third condition of stepwise regression is tested. In conclusion, psychological security plays a complete mediating role between individualized consideration and breakthrough creativity, and hypothesis H5-3 is verified.
The Mediating Role of Psychological Security Between Individualized Consideration and Breakthrough Creativity of Middle Managers.
p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
(4) The mediating role of psychological security between Charisma and breakthrough creativity of middle managers
The results in Table 20 show that: under the influence of psychological security, the influence of charisma on breakthrough creativity decreases, and the regression coefficient decreases from 0.457 to 0.369. That is to say, with the addition of psychological security. However, the regression coefficient of charisma on breakthrough creativity decreases, it remains significant at the level of .001, and the third condition of gradual regression is tested. In conclusion, psychological security plays a mediating role between charisma and breakthrough creativity. Hypothesis H5-4 is verified.
The Mediating Role of Psychological Security Between Charisma and Breakthrough Creativity of Middle Managers.
p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
Research Conclusions and Implications
Based on social exchange theory and motivational information processing theory, this paper provides insight into the mechanism of the effect of transformational leadership of top managers of retail enterprises at the individual level on the bi-dimensional creativity of middle managers. Based on the analysis of 286 managers’ data, the research hypothesis of this paper is verified, which is important for expanding the research on two-dimensional managers’ creativity.
Research Findings and Discussion
First, the four sub-dimensions of transformational leadership significantly and positively influence middle managers’ creativity. The dimensions of transformational leadership (morale modeling, visionary motivation, individualized consideration, and charisma) have a significant positive effect on both progressive creativity and breakthrough creativity of middle managers in retail firms. The finding that transformational leadership significantly affects middle managers’ progressive and breakthrough creativity is not consistent with the findings of Basu (1997), Eisenbeiß, and Boerner (2013) for employees, which may be influenced by different scenarios and different industries. The finding that transformational leadership as a whole has a significant positive effect on the creativity of managers in middle-level retail firms is consistent with the findings of C. Lu et al. (2016) scholars’ study on the creativity of top management teams, although this study viewed transformational leadership as a higher-order variable and did not analyze the relationship between each component of transformational leadership and the unidimensional creativity at the top management team level in terms of its. Therefore, this paper attempts to explore in depth the relationship between the four dimensions of transformational leadership and the bi-dimensional creativity at the individual level of middle managers in retail companies.
Second, transformational leadership as a whole has a significant positive impact on middle managers’ psychological security in retail firms. Analyzed from the perspective of leadership attribution theory, transformational leadership as situational factors can provide a positive psychological influence on middle managers, stimulate the internal motivation of middle managers, and thus improve their psychological security (Shao et al., 2022). This finding is similar to the finding of Dong (2013) on transformational leadership and team psychological security, but the existing studies only explored transformational leadership as a higher-order variable and lacked specific analysis of the relationship between the dimensions of transformational leadership and psychological security; moreover, team psychological security differs from individual psychological security in that team psychological security is different from individual psychological security in that team psychological security emphasizes that team members share a common philosophy, which affects the identification of relationships between variables. Therefore, this paper is of academic value as an in-depth study of the related field.
Third, psychological security has a significant positive effect on the progressive and breakthrough creativity of middle managers in retail enterprises. This finding is in line with the findings of the studies by scholars Maireba and Li (2018), Y. Wang and Zhang (2018) on the positive influence of psychological security on the creativity of knowledge-based employees, indicating that middle managers possess the characteristics of knowledge-based employees. Specifically, middle managers with high perceptions of psychological security encounter difficulties in carrying out innovative attempts and do not worry about their impact on career development; whether they succeed or fail they will fully learn from their experiences, apply their knowledge, and develop more creative work ideas. Although there are few studies on employees’ psychological security and creativity, the findings of this paper suggest that there is value in conducting relevant research work and in subdividing the types of creativity.
Fourth, psychological security partially mediates between transformational leadership and middle managers’ creativity; psychological security fully mediates between two sub-dimensions of transformational leadership (visionary motivation and individualized consideration) and breakthrough creativity, and partially mediates between two sub-dimensions of transformational leadership (morale modeling and charisma) and breakthrough creativity; psychological security partially mediates between four sub-dimensions of transformational leadership (visionary motivation, individualized consideration, morale modeling, and charisma) and breakthrough creativity. Psychological security partially mediates between the four sub-dimensions of transformational leadership (visionary motivation, individualized consideration, morale modeling, and charisma) and progressive creativity. This finding expands the research on the mediating variables of transformational leadership and individual creativity. Studies conducted on psychology include trust, emotions, and psychological empowerment, and perceptions of psychological safety, while intersecting with the definitions of these variables, differ specifically (Maireba & Li, 2018). Psychological security perceptions are built based on trust. Psychological empowerment is the employee’s psychological perception of the application of leadership power and emphasizes the psychological impact of leadership empowerment behaviors on the employee, while psychological security perception includes the perception of leadership empowerment behaviors and emphasizes the perceived safety of interpersonal relationships. There are many reasons for positive and negative emotions to arise, while the level of psychological security focuses on employees’ perceptions of safety in the interpersonal process. Therefore, it is academically valuable to study the mechanism of the role of transformational leadership and individual creativity using perceived psychological security as a mediating variable.
Theoretical Contribution
First, to broaden the scope of application of transformational leadership theory. The research objects of recent literature on transformational leadership are mainly merchant ship captains, scientific researchers, university teachers, civil servants, and employees of science and technology enterprises, and their research results cannot be generally extended to other industries for application (Lyubykh et al., 2022; Shao et al., 2022). Therefore, this paper focuses on four dimensions of transformational leadership in retail enterprises to clarify the impact of each dimension on the creativity of middle managers and to broaden the use of transformational leadership theory in different contexts.
Second, deepen the research on the mechanism of the role of employee creativity. First of all, scholars’ research on the mediating variables of transformational leadership on employee creativity is mainly conducted from the factors of organizational innovation climate, creativity, and self-innovation efficacy (Saad Alessa, 2021), and less research is conducted from the perspective of psychology. This paper takes psychological security as a mediating variable to further improve the mechanism of action of employee creativity. Next, most of the research objects of creativity are grassroots employees (Messmann et al., 2022; Sudibjo & Prameswari, 2021), and this paper starts the research with middle management creativity as the outcome variable, and the results obtained are more representative. Finally, the research results on the impact of transformational leadership on employee creativity are inconsistent, and the segmentation of industries and employment levels will be more relevant. To a certain extent, it reveals the inner mechanism or black box of transformational leadership affecting managers’ creativity, which helps to clarify the mechanism of managers’ creativity and lays the theoretical foundation for the subsequent research.
Managerial Implications
First, establish a self-management mechanism to serve as a role model. Senior management can form written norms of transformational leadership for senior management by referring to the transformational leadership competency model, setting up a typical example, and enhancing self-monitoring, analysis, correction, and other series of self-management awareness. To begin with, top management should be strict with themselves at work, set an example in business, and bring positive influence to subordinates in moral and ethical aspects in life, to enhance middle management’s identification and loyalty to top management and the company. Next, the top management can, on the one hand, show their noble and upright character at work, enhance the work commitment of middle management through emotion, stimulate their enthusiasm for work, and then enhance creativity; on the other hand, they can improve the middle management ability and business level through training and other means, enhance the keen insight into environmental changes, break the routine to strengthen the sense of innovation, and then fully enhance and realize their change-oriented leadership.
Second, a mechanism of self-achievement-oriented career development planning and personalized care for subordinates is established to play a guiding role. Top management can increase development care and life care for middle managers. On the one hand, through the establishment of self-achievement-oriented career development planning and a flexible welfare system, top management can provide targeted guidance for middle managers’ work development, and adopt motivational strategies to inspire them to explore and innovate, get out of their comfort zone, challenge difficult work and improve work execution according to their preferences. On the other hand, by establishing a long-term mechanism of life care, senior management can provide targeted assistance to subordinates in their daily lives, thus enhancing their sense of belonging.
Third, enhance the awareness of information sharing and benefit sharing, and play the role of a visionary incentive. Senior management should enhance the awareness of information sharing and benefit sharing, and cooperate with subordinates for mutual benefit and a win-win situation. To begin with, do a good job of information (vision) sharing, on the one hand, you can share the opportunities involving the career development of subordinates and the expectations of enterprises for subordinates; on the other hand, you can share the management knowledge and innovation knowledge learned from your training to your subordinates, which is conducive to reducing the psychological defense of middle managers and improving the completion of work tasks. Next, do a good job of benefit sharing, on the one hand, you can share the fruits of your labor with your subordinates, you can extract part of your salary or the profit of your team as incentive money for outstanding employees; on the other hand, provide additional rest rewards, travel rewards and other flexible benefits for outstanding employees to stimulate subordinates’ career and enterprising spirit and enhance their creative ability. Furthermore, through the display of corporate culture walls and corporate culture training, middle managers’ vision consciousness is strengthened. Through positive reinforcement such as reward, promotion, and praise, middle managers are motivated to form behaviors in line with the vision, and through negative reinforcement such as no reward, demotion, and criticism, middle managers are inhibited from acting against the vision. Lastly, according to the development of the times and the progress of technology to integrate enterprise resources, through the principle of things and people, moderate authorization to middle managers, so that middle managers participate in the dynamic adjustment of the vision content and vision-making methods, correspondingly adjust the middle managers’ career development plans and work goals, and then reach a consensus to stimulate the growth of middle managers.
Limitations and Future Research
Limitations
On the one hand, due to resource and time constraints, the questionnaire was distributed to retail companies and only 258 questionnaires were returned, which is limited in terms of the geographic and quantitative sample. On the other hand, the influence of transformational leadership on managers’ creativity through psychological security requires a certain process, but the respondents in this paper filled out the questionnaire at the same point in time, which may lead to some bias in the measurement of the relationship between variables. And the self-assessment of the creativity of middle managers may have some bias due to the lack of their perception.
Future Research
First, in the future, we will expand the research territory and collect research questionnaires from managers of retail enterprises in different provinces extensively to enhance the representativeness of the sample. Second, in the future, multiple time points will be used to measure the survey respondents and carry out longitudinal tracking surveys to reduce the influence of the time period on the sample. Third, in the future, other mediating and moderating variables can be introduced one after another to explore in depth the mechanism of the effect of transformational leadership on retail managers, and strive to obtain more reasonable and effective conclusions.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This paper is supported by an Educational research project for young and middle-aged teachers of Fujian Provincial Department of Education: “Research on Supermarket Performance Evaluation under Amoeba Management Mode” (JAS180098).
