Cool down emotion, don’t be fickle! The role of paradoxical leadership in the relationship between emotional stability and creativity

Research on the field of creativity currently lacks a cumulative investigation of how and why emotional stability affects individuals’ creative processes and performance in the workplace. The present study investigates the mediating and moderating processes through which emotional stability is linked with creativity. We examine the indirect effects of emotional stability on creativity through daily positive affect and daily work engagement, and further test whether paradoxical leadership moderates these relationships. Data were collected from 111 employees in Korea who took surveys in four different phases—Time 1, Time 2, Time 3 (i.e. daily surveys for 10 consecutive workdays), and Time 4. The results show that daily work engagement mediates the relationship between emotional stability and creativity, while the direct effect of emotional stability on creativity and the mediating role of daily positive affect in this relationship are not supported. Furthermore, paradoxical leadership was found to moderate the indirect effects of emotional stability on creativity via daily positive affect and daily work engagement, with significant indirect effects when paradoxical leadership was high but not when it was low. Important theoretical and practical implications to the extant literature on creativity and leadership are discussed.