The Role of Charismatic Leadership in Enhancing Organizational Creativity: Emotional Contagion as a Mediating Variable

Abstract: Creativity in organizations is developing as a strategy of primary concern to the institutions found to be working in the context of uncertainty and intense competition. Emotional expressiveness and visionary style of communication characterizing leadership succession has displayed enormous potential of evoking creative behaviours of employees. In this paper, the connection between charismatic leadership and organization creativity contains the mediating know how of the emotional contagion. Based on leadership theories and theories of affect, this paper aims at arriving at an answer regarding the influence of emotional displays of the leaders on the creativity of the followers. In the study, questionnaires were used to gather information on the concepts of charismatic leadership, emotional contagion and organizational creativity on three hundred and ten employees in the Muthanna Electricity Directorate. It utilized structural equation modeling (SEM) in order to test the hypothesized mediation model. It is established in the study that emotional contagion is a formidable way through which the influence of transformational leadership on creativity is mediated to give an insight into the psychological process through which leaders decipher the effectiveness of an organization. These conclusions expand the knowledge regarding emotional aspect of leading and a gives several hints on how to promote innovation in regard to emotionally intelligent public service leadership.