Role modeling effects: how leader's job involvement affects follower creativity

Drawing on social learning theory, we explore how a leader's job involvement affects individual follower creativity in teams. Using a sample of 156 leaders with 1051 employees from knowledge‐based teams in China, we find that leader's job involvement has a cross‐level influence on follower creativity through the mediating role of follower's job involvement. In addition, leader's prosocial motivation and leader‐member exchange (LMX) could strengthen the positive relationship between leader's job involvement and follower's job involvement and also strengthen the indirect positive relationship between leader's job involvement and follower creativity via follower's job involvement. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.