The effects of ethical leadership, voice behavior and climates for innovation on creativity: A moderated mediation examination

The study of ethical leadership has emerged as an important topic in relation to understanding the effects of leadership within organizations. We propose that the voice behavior of employees serves as a mechanism reflecting how ethical leadership affects individual creativity. We develop a moderated-mediation model of the psychological processes linking perceptions of ethical leadership and creativity. We further argue that these relationships are moderated by a climate for innovation. Using three-phase multilevel data from multiple sources, we collected data from 291 employees and 58 workgroups from R&D institutions in Taiwan. The HLM results suggest that (1) there is a positive relationship between employee perceptions of ethical leadership and employees' voice behavior, (2) voice behavior is positively related to individual creativity, and (3) the indirect effect of ethical leadership on individual creativity (via voice behavior) is stronger when the employee works in a more innovative climate. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are also discussed.