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Working With Creative Leaders: Exploring The Relationship Between Supervisors' And Subordinates' Creativity, Gamze Koseoglu, Yi Liu, Christina E. Shalley

School of Business Faculty Research

We propose that supervisors' own level of creativity is a core component of effective leadership that can be associated with subordinates' self-concept and creativity. Specifically, drawing on the identity theory framework, and role identity theory in particular, we argue that subordinates' creative role identity is an important underlying mechanism in the relationship between supervisors' level of creativity and their subordinates' creativity. Using a sample of 443 employees working with 44 supervisors in an IT firm, we hypothesized and found support for a moderated mediation model. There was a positive indirect relationship between supervisors' creativity and their subordinates' creativity via the …