Participative Leadership and Employee Creativity: Examining the Mediating Role of Psychological Safety

Abstract

Employee creativity plays an important role in the success of organizations in a competitive and quickly changing environment. The paper examines the impact of participative leadership on employee’s creativity and the mediating role of psychological safety among employees in Lebanon. Data were collected from100 employees of public and private organizations using standardized questionnaires, with a quantitative correlational design. Data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics via descriptive statistics, correlation, regression and mediation analysis. The results showed that participatory leadership exerted a very significant positive effect on employee creativity and psychological safety. And psychological safety made positive contribution to employee creativity as well. Also, psychological safety played a partial mediating role between participative leadership and employee creativity, meaning that participative leadership promotes creativity both directly and indirectly through providing a safe climate. The study aimed to explore the effect of participative leadership on innovation, organizational adaptability and long-term organizational performance by a psychological safety mediator.