Understanding the mechanisms underlying the relationship between empowering leadership and team creativity in customer contact services.

Creativity is critical to the growth of service organisations. Yet, the question of how service organisations promote creativity remains unanswered. Prior research has highlighted the importance of team empowerment in frontline service and found that being empowered leads to greater performance; this raises the question of whether empowering leadership can bring up team creativity in a frontline service context. Thus, the purpose of this research is to investigate the relationship between empowering leadership and team creativity in a frontline service context. To do so, a theoretical-driven model was developed wherein empowering leadership could influence team creativity through team identification - knowledge sharing; relationship conflict – knowledge sharing, respectively. Based on a sample of 51 frontline service teams from China’s banking sector, this study found that empowering leadership can facilitate knowledge sharing by enhancing team identification and reducing relationship conflict. The presence of a high level of team efficacy magnified the positive effect of empowering leadership on knowledge sharing through team identification but was not significant through relationship conflict. More importantly, the results support the proposed sequential mediation model in which empowering leadership influences team creativity through the two parallel mechanisms: team identification–knowledge sharing and intragroup relationship conflict–knowledge sharing. Based on these findings, this research revealed the mechanisms by which empowering team leaders may elevate team creativity. By doing so, this research provides some theoretical suggestions for future research and practical implications for service organisations and managers.