The relationship between leadership and team creativity: a meta-analysis

Purpose To clarify the relationship between different types of leadership and team creativity, and to examine the moderating effects of organizational type, country development level, and national culture on this relationship. Design/methodology/approach This study conducted a meta-analysis of 232 papers containing 246 independent samples, 282 effect sizes, and 98,769 participants. Findings Strategic, shared, charismatic, transformational, empowering, inclusive, transactional, ethical, and participative leadership were significantly positively correlated with team creativity, while abusive leadership was significantly negatively correlated with team creativity. Among these, strategic leadership had a significantly stronger effect on team creativity than participative and abusive leadership. The correlations of transformational, transactional, and charismatic leadership with team creativity were stronger in university teams than in enterprise teams. The correlations of inclusive and transformational leadership with team creativity were stronger in developing countries than in developed countries. Power distance, in-group collectivism, performance orientation, future orientation, and uncertainty avoidance moderated the relationship between partial leadership and team creativity. Originality/value First, it clarifies the relationship between different types of leadership and team creativity to overcome the limitations of previous studies that focus only on a single leadership style and deepen the understanding of the effects of different types of leadership. Second, it explores the moderating effects of organizational type, country development level and national culture on the relationship between leadership and team creativity to reveal the variations and differences in the relationship between different types of leadership and team creativity in different contexts.