The effect of team cultural tightness and transformational leadership on employee creative behavior: A cross‐level moderated mediation model

In recent years, "cultural tightness-looseness" refers to the strength of social norms and tolerance for deviant behaviors perceived by individuals in society, and team cultural tightness applied at the organizational level represents the strength of team norms. According to the cultural tightness-looseness theory, this study explores the influence of team cultural tightness on employee creative behavior, as well as the moderating role of transformational leadership and the mediating role of work engagement. A questionnaire method was used to survey five enterprise organizations in China through three stages, and 288 paired questionnaires were finally obtained from leaders and employees. The results found that team cultural tightness has a significant negative effect on employee creative behavior through the mediating effect of work engagement. In other words, the more the team culture in the workplace tends to be loose, the more it stimulates employee work engagement, which in turn promotes employee creative behavior. In addition, transformational leadership played a significant positive moderating role in the model. Under the influence of transformational leadership style, the negative impact of team cultural tightness on employee work engagement and creative behavior can be mitigated. The study enriches the understanding of the influence and action mechanism of the cultural tightness-looseness theory on employee creative behavior. In future research, the action mechanism of team cultural tightness interacting with different leadership styles to influence employee creative behavior will be explored more deeply.