Does servant leadership foster creativity and innovation? A multi-level mediation study of identification and prototypicality

The purpose of this multi-level study is to examine how servant leadership affects both employee creativity and team innovation. Drawing from social identity, in particular, relational identification theory, we found on the basis of a two-nation Asian sample of 154 teams that servant leadership promotes individual relational identification and collective prototypicality with the leader which, in turn, fosters employee creativity and team innovation. In addition, our study suggests that the mediated effect of leader identification is strongest when team climate for innovation is high.