The purpose of this study is to verify not only the impact of servant leadership affecting creativity and innovational behavior but the mediating effect of empowerment.
Considerable evidence indicates that employee creativity can fundamentally contribute to organizational innovation, effectiveness, and survival(Amabile, 1996, Shalley, Zhou, & Oldham, 2004). Creativity refers to the production of novel and useful ideas by an individual or by a group of individuals working together(Aambile, 1988; Madjar, Oldham, & Pratt, 2002; Shalley, Gilson, & Blum, 2000; Zhou & Shalley, 2003). For creativity to occur in organizations, managers need to support and promote it, as they are the individuals who are most knowledgeable about which creativity can occur(Shalley & Gilson, 2004).
A survey was conducted to examine the mediating effect of empowerment on the relation among servant leadership and creativity and innovational behavior on the responses of 301 employees. Sex, age, education, position, type and career were chosen as control variable, and the structure equation model which treated the servant leadership as independent variable and creativity and innovational behaviors as criterion variables were set. Empowerment was supposed as mediating variable of the these relationships.
we divided into 2 models which one contains servant leadership as a independent variable, creativity as a dependent variable and empowerment as a mediating role(model1), the other contains servant leadership as a independent variable, innovational variable as a dependent variable and empowerment as a mediating role(model2).
The results of these studies confirm underneath the followings.
For model1, servant leadership have a direct influence on creativity at first. but It doesn't direct influence on creativity when it was controlled. This means that servant leadership directly met empowerment and empowerment also met creativity. These mean empowerment as mediator is complete mediation variable that servant leadership as independent variable no longer affects creativity as criterion variable after empowerment has been controlled. These results are different from the prior researches which had treated servant leadership as independent variable and creativity as criterion variable.
For model2, servant leadership have a direct influence on innovational behavior at first. Then, It directly have an influence on innovational behavior when it was controlled. This means that servant leadership and empowerment met innovational behavior as well as servant leadership directly met empowerment. These mean empowerment as mediator is partial mediation variable that servant leadership as independent variable indirectly affects creativity as criterion variable after empowerment has been controlled. These results are different from the prior researches which had treated servant leadership as independent variable and creativity as criterion variable.
In short, it will be positive effects for firms that servant leader who belongs to organization not only supports employee to make creativity and do innovational behavior but gives intrinsic motivation to employee.
If this thesis got the survey from R&D researcher, It would be better. The future study should consider the properties of these variables and other a variables.