Promoting Software Engineers’ Creativity: Understanding the Role of Leadership Humility

Abstract

Despite the immense literature on creativity, there is little known about how leaders’ humility and cohesion among employees influence their creativity. Using interactionist perspective, the study examines the relationship between leadership humility and individuals’ creativity. Perceived cohesion was also studied as a mediator between leadership humility and individuals’ creativity in addition to moderating role of trait mindfulness. Data were collected from 140 respondents from the engineers/developers working in various software houses in Pakistan that are registered with Pakistan Software Houses Association (P@SHA) by using questionnaire. To perform the analysis Partial least square based structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) has been used through WarpPLS 8.0. The results indicated that leadership humility has a significant and positive impact on individuals’ creativity. Findings confirm all the hypotheses relationships. Moreover, the study concludes with theoretical and practical implications as well as future research directions.