When evaluating ideas exposes the evaluator: leader impostor thoughts and the obstruction of employee creativity

Purpose Leaders’ evaluation and development of employee ideas shape employee creativity. Yet how leaders respond to employee ideas when they perceive others to evaluate their professional competence more favorably than they evaluate it themselves, and how these responses are subsequently associated with employee creativity, remain largely underexplored. Grounded in self-presentation theory, this study examines how leader impostor thoughts are associated with different responses to employee ideas, identifies employee creative reputation as a boundary condition, and provides theoretical support and practical guidance for organizational idea management practices. Design/methodology/approach The hypothesized model was tested across two complementary studies: a three-wave multisource field study with 176 matched supervisor-employee dyads, and a 2 × 2 between-subjects scenario experiment involving 248 managers. Findings Consistent results were observed across both studies. Leader impostor thoughts were positively associated with leader idea rejection when employee creative reputation was low, but negatively associated with creative-idea developmental feedback when employee creative reputation was high. The field study further showed that both conditional pathways are linked to lower employee creativity, forming two distinct obstructive patterns: selection-based obstruction and development-based obstruction. Originality/value From a self-presentational perspective, this study develops a bidirectional account of leader idea gatekeeping by bringing the evaluator’s own professional image into explanations of gatekeeping and explaining why leader impostor thoughts may be associated with differentiated rather than uniform responses to employee ideas. It also extends the creative reputation literature by identifying creative reputation as a social-evaluative cue that structures the meaning of leaders’ gatekeeping responses. Furthermore, by distinguishing the selection function of idea rejection from the developmental function of creative-idea developmental feedback, it offers implications for organizational idea management and leadership development.