Abstract

Encouraging employees to share their creative ideas has been widely acknowledged as a crucial factor in enhancing organizational effectiveness. This research examines whether employees’ idea sharing depends on leadership behavior and how organizational identification and culture explain the variations in creative ideas sharing among employees. Building on social learning theory, this research postulates a positive relationship between responsible leadership and creative idea sharing directly and indirectly by the development of organizational identification; additionally, a conditional indirect effect was also proposed for this research data was collected from the nurses, medical support staffs, heads of departments, and administrative personnel from primary and secondary health care units in South-Punjab. Data from 387 subordinates and their respective 67 supervisors was collected and analyzed with partial least squares (PLS) for moderated mediation, direct effects, indirect effects, conditional indirect effects, and CFA. The results indicated that responsible leadership is positively and significantly related to employees’ creative idea-sharing directly and indirectly through the mediation of organizational identification. Organizational culture positively moderated the relationship between responsible leadership and creative idea sharing and between responsible leadership and organizational identification. Responsible leadership was positively related to organizational identification and creative idea sharing only when the organization has a highly supportive culture and negative otherwise. The relevant sections also discuss research contributions, limitations, and future research directions.

Introduction

The idea of responsible leadership has been gaining substantial prominence in emerging management studies (Siegel, 2014; Greige Frangieh & Khayr Yaacoub, 2017). Leadership possessing traits as responsibility and workers possessing traits as knowledge and experience are crucial resources for firms (Haque et al., 2019; Ur Rehman et al., 2023; Adeel et al., 2023). Responsible leaders are essential as mentors for motivating employees (for instance, through job involvement) (Rehman et al., 2020). Proficient members are crucial in sharing ideas, leading to mutually supporting one another in achieving organizational/ proficiency objectives (for example, with helping measures) (Cujean, 2020). A limited focus is laid on “leadership” and “idea sharing” in response to the initiatives of responsible leaders along with workers’ realization (Starratt, 2005; Adeel et al., 2022). The ability of a leader to inspire subordinates within a work environment to increase desirable inducement (also known as top-down influence) is referred to as Responsible leadership. On the contrary, idea sharing refers to how colleagues inspire each other in an effort to define their respective inducement (also known as horizontal influence) (Paulus & Yang, 2000). The ethical act of a leader engaging, communicating, enabling, and motivating staff to take part in responsible advancement and positive transformation is known as responsible leadership (Liu & Lin, 2018). Idea sharing describes the extent to which employees are enthusiastic about sharing their ideas mutually, in addition to a measure of positivity of perspectives (Cujean, 2020).

Discussion

This study examined the effect of responsible leadership on creative idea sharing, including the intermediary function of organizational identification. Further focus was laid on the extent of to which organizational culture and responsible leadership affected idea sharing. The overall findings on the effect of responsible leadership on idea sharing turned out to be positive and substantial, supporting the first hypothesis, or H1. The outcome of this hypothesis was consistent with some earlier research that produced a comparable conclusion in diverse circumstances (Bavik et al., 2017). Therefore, empirical research has demonstrated that in professional healthcare organizations, responsible leaders inspire their workforce to spread their expertise. The healthcare team can help junior staff members acquire the necessary information and expertise for accomplishing the organization’s objectives by spreading their creative ideas to their peers. H2 was also confirmed, which examined how responsible leadership affects organizational identification, as were the findings of other such studies (Abdelmotaleb et al., 2022). It indicates that responsible leaders create an atmosphere in which people feel comfortable so that they can live on their principles. This study also supported H3, which dealt with the influence of organizational identification on creative idea sharing. The outcome of H3 is consistent with previous research in addition to the investigations that produced comparable results in other circumstances (Conroy et al., 2017; Liu et al., 2021; Abdelmotaleb et al., 2022). Workers are encouraged to offer their expertise due to organizational identification, and this behavior may be crucial in attaining the organization’s objectives. Individuals are driven to exhibit creative idea-sharing behavior because their values are seen as being comparable to those of the company, giving them the respect they deserve and appreciation at the workplace. This research also corroborated H4, which proposed the mediating effect of organizational identification. As there had been no prior investigations on the subject matter, the intermediary effect of organizational identification concerning the influence of responsible leadership on creative idea sharing, the finding of H4 is a novel addition to current work. Nevertheless, the organization identification has been identified as a mediator in other research in diverse situations, and the intermediary outcome reported in this investigation also presents empirical confirmation that the fit between the two might operate as a mediator (Liu et al., 2021; Liu et al., 2016; Zhao et al., 2019; Abdelmotaleb et al., 2022).