Introduction

Martha, Carolina, Joseph, Niels, and Pei-Chuan (2002) advocated that organisational culture (OC) is “the pattern of variations within a society, or, more specifically, as the pattern of deep-level values and assumptions associated with societal effectiveness, shared by an interacting group of people” (p. 276). Organisations across several countries have experienced diverse challenges as a result of applying an OC that is not supportive of the kind of values they require to engender employee creativity (Dong, 2002; Huston & Sakkab, 2006; Peterson, 2005). Several Nigerian manufacturing organisations are known to employ a predominant hierarchical OC (Gabriel & Kpakol, 2014), and studies (Gupta, 2011; Naranjo-Valencia, Jiménez-Jiménez, & SanzValle, 2016) lament that this has a negative impact on employee creativity. The Nigerian manufacturing industry is an integral part of the country’s economic development – a catalyst for modernisation with propensities of creating multiplier effects (Akume & Abdullahi, 2013). However, some studies (Dimnwobi, Ekesiobi, & Mgbemena, 2016; Emeka, Ifeoma, & Emmanuel, 2015) have identified a growing deterioration in its innovation capabilities. This reflects a lack of an engendered employee creativity workforce, and the application of an unsupportive OC. Employee creativity in general feeds off of creative ideas (Bai, Lin, & Li, 2016; Gilson & Litchfield, 2017). Nevertheless, creative ideas repeatedly get lost or repressed in Nigerian manufacturing organisations, as they sometimes appear to be unwelcomed by managers (Akume & Abdullahi, 2013). A parallel case is when top management leaders exhibit unreceptive attitudes to creative ideas employees share by exhibiting questionable, unkind or malevolent behaviours within Nigerian manufacturing organisations (Gabriel & Kpakol, 2014; John, 2011). Hence, there is need for top management leaders to consider becoming more benevolent, since it could have a rather positive effect on employee creativity (Zhou & George, 2003). Employee creativity is an individual level phenomenon that mirrors the production of creative ideas, builds uniquely upon existing ideologies, and suggests novel approaches to create new solutions (Amabile & Pillemer, 2012; Ogbeibu, Senadjki, & Luen Peng, 2017). In order to engender employee creativity, top management leaders ought to recognise the role of organisational benevolence. The extent to which an individual is perceived to possess and display good intentions towards another is denoted as benevolence (Mayer, Davis, & Schoorman, 1995). By becoming more benevolent, organisations may be able to build strong resilience against a future of constant change (Castro, Gomes, & de Sousa, 2012). The need to have a benevolent top management leader who strongly expresses emotions that reflect goodwill, compassion, care, altruism and kindness towards employees in order to engender employee creativity; is becoming a necessity for achieving successful innovative outcomes at the organisational level (Wang & Jap, 2017). Through the demonstration of benevolence by top management leaders, a work environment characterised as humane, supportive, comfortable, trusting, and respectful could be created, and this likewise incites observable benefits for the common good of organisational members (Karakas & Sarigollu, 2012).