The relationship between organizational climate, individual values & creativity: The mediating role of leadership

Organizational Creativity has become a relatively new and emerging research area within the field of organizational behavior (Shalley and Zhou, 2003). Hence, the aim of this study is to explore the organizational climate items and individual values that are related to the employee creative behavior and creative work involvement, and to examine the mediating role of leadership in the relationship between individual values and employee creative behavior. The sample used in the analysis (N=370) is composed of Turkish service sector employees. The results indicate that there is significant and moderately strong relationship between risk, freedom, decision making, nature of work items of organizational climate and the dependent variables which are employee creative behavior and creative work involvement. The dependent variables are also found to be strongly related with each other. The study showed that self direction, achievement, and universalism dimensions of individual values explain the majority of variance in employee creative behavior, while those values are self direction, security, and stimulation dimensions for creative work involvement. The results reveal that transformational leadership and contingent reward dimension of transactional leadership are positively related with employee creative behavior and creative work involvement. Furthermore, the relationship between individual values and employee creative behavior is partially mediated with the type of leadership. This study intends to provide further contribution to the business literature by pointing out managerial implications of the research concepts, and the relationships among them. In addition, as we know of, this is first research conducted on this topic in Turkey.