A job demands-resources perspective on servant leadership and employee creativity

Based on job demands-resources theory, this study intends to investigate how and when servant leadership influences employee creativity by considering work engagement as a key mediator and two kinds of team conflict (i.e. relationship and task conflict) as moderators. Data was collected from 83 teams consisting of 466 employees from 11 banks in China. The results indicated that servant leadership is positively related to employee creativity. Moreover, this study found that work engagement partially mediates the positive relationship between servant leadership and employee creativity. Further, the results demonstrated that task conflict decrease the effect of servant leadership on work engagement. However, the moderating effect of relationship conflict is nonsignificant. Overall, the findings emphasize the value of considering the mediating role of work engagement and the moderating role of team conflict in a JD-R research model, which may further explain the association between servant leadership and employee creativity and guide future study.