Benevolent leadership and staff’s creative work behavior: the mediating role of an innovative climate and fear of failure

Purpose Based on integrating social exchange theory and input-mediator-output-input model, the current study proposes a model to explore the relationship between benevolent leadership and creative work behavior of Vietnamese university staffs. Design/methodology/approach A printed questionnaire was developed and directly distributed to 503 Vietnamese university staffs from 1st to 27th October in 2023 using the quota sampling method. After removing 61 missing data and outlier cases, a total of 442 valuable cases were used for further investigation. SPSS 22 and SMARTPLS version 3.2.2 was employed for data analysis. Findings Our study found the positive relationship between benevolent leadership and creative work behavior through the mediation of innovative climate and fear of failure. The findings also indicated that benevolent leadership fosters an innovative climate and reduces subordinates’ fear of failure, then increases subordinates’ creative work behavior. Originality/value The present study explored mechanisms of benevolent leadership effect on creative work behavior of university staff. From that, contributing several practical implications for university leaders and educators in fostering university staff’s creative work behavior. This research contributed to the knowledge domain of leadership and creative work behavior of employees in higher education.