Collective aspirations: collective regulatory focus as a mediator between transformational and transactional leadership and team creativity

This paper examines the mediating role of two emergent team states—collective regulatory focus (CRF) and team initiative—for transmitting the effects of transformational and transactional leadership and team members’ chronic-regulatory focus on team creative performance. We conducted two studies. An experimental team-level study of 54 teams (n = 157) and a survey study conducted among employees who work in teams (n = 141). Team-level analysis of study 1 reveals that CRF and team initiative mediate the effect of leadership and team members’ chronic regulatory focus on creative performance. In addition, collective promotion moderates the negative effects of collective prevention on both team initiative and creativity. Study 2 confirms the relationships between leadership styles, team CRF, and team initiative with employees at the individual level. Understanding the collective mechanisms that enable transformational leadership to foster team creativity contributes to the ability of organizations and managers to increase the creativity of team production by influencing team dynamics. This study expands our knowledge on leader–follower dynamics at the team level and on the ability of these dynamics to shape team creativity. It also expands our knowledge on the emergence of regulatory focus at the team-level and its potential antecedents.