Global competition, new production techniques, and rapid technological change have placed a premium on creativity and innovation. Although many variables influence creativity and innovation in organizational settings, there is reason to suspect that leaders and their behavior represent a particularly powerful influence. In the present article, we review the available literature examining leadership behaviors contributing to creativity and innovation in organizational settings. Based on the findings obtained in these studies, we argue that the leadership of creative people requires expertise. Moreover, the successful leader must employ a number of direct and indirect influence tactics—tactics consistent with the needs of creative people working in an organizational environment. The implications of these observations for theory and practice are discussed.

Leading creative people: Orchestrating expertise and relationships

We extend research on the diffusion of corporate practices by providing a framework for studying practice variation during diffusion processes. Specifically, we theorize about how population-level mechanisms of diffusion link with organization-level mechanisms of implementation that lead to the adaptation of practices. We also identify technical, cultural, and political elements of fit (or misfit) between diffusing practices and adopters and analyze how the process of attaining fit across these elements can trigger different patterns of adaptation.

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Made to Fit: How Practices Vary As They Diffuse

This 4-wave longitudinal study of newcomers in 7 organizations examined preentry knowledge, proactive personality, and socialization influences as antecedents of both proximal (task mastery, role clarity, work group integration, and political knowledge) and distal (organizational commitment, work withdrawal, and turnover) indicators of newcomer adjustment. Results suggest that preentry knowledge, proactive personality, and socialization influences from the organization, supervisors, and coworkers are independently related to proximal adjustment outcomes, consistent with a theoretical framework highlighting distinct dimensions of organizational and work task adjustment. The proximal adjustment outcomes partially mediated most of the relationships between the antecedents of adjustment and organizational commitment, work withdrawal, and turnover.

Unwrapping the organizational entry process: disentangling multiple antecedents and their pathways to adjustment.

A Multi-Level Review of Impression Management Motives and Behaviors

The current study tested a model that links perceptions of organizational politics to job performance and “turnover intentions” (intentions to quit). Meta-analytic evidence supported significant, b...

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Robert A. Baron

Papers

Organizational politics: The state of the field, links to related processes, and an agenda for future research.