Unlocking employee creativity through digital leadership: a moderated mediation model of task innovation behavior and team collaboration climate

Purpose: Prior research has linked digital leadership to employee creativity, but the task-level behavioral process underlying this relationship and the role of the surrounding team context have received less attention. Drawing on social cognitive theory, this study examines task innovation behavior as a mediator and tests whether team collaboration climate moderates its association with employee creativity. Design/methodology/approach: We collected data from 335 employee-supervisor dyads in China and tested the proposed model using hierarchical regression and bias-corrected bootstrapping. Findings: We found that digital leadership was positively associated with task innovation behavior, which in turn was positively related to employee creativity. The indirect association between digital leadership and employee creativity through task innovation behavior was significant. Team collaboration climate modestly strengthened the association between task innovation behavior and employee creativity, and the conditional indirect effect was stronger at higher levels of team collaboration climate. Practical implications: Organizations can support employee creativity by strengthening managers' digital leadership capabilities. They should also encourage employees to experiment with work methods and develop task-specific solutions. A collaborative team climate can further help translate these task-level efforts into creative outcomes. Originality/value: The study extends current understanding of digital leadership and employee creativity by showing that task innovation behavior represents a proximal, task-level pathway. It further identifies team collaboration climate as a boundary condition for the relationship between task innovation behavior and employee creativity.