Ethical Leadership Backfires: Enhancing Subordinates Rule Conformity Yet Inhibiting Creativity.

Existing research found ethical leadership could bring a series of positive outcomes, including subordinate's creativity. Drawing on social learning theory, we proposed that ethical leadership was not all good for creativity as it promoted rule conformity rather than rule breaking, which is critical to creativity. In a study of 66 team leaders and their 265 subordinates, we found that ethical leadership was positively associated with subordinate's rule conformity which was negatively associated with their creativity. Moreover, this undesirable effect of ethical leadership on creativity was particularly likely to occur to employees who were highly risk-aversive. We discussed the theoretical contributions to the literatures on ethical leadership and creativity as well as the practical implications for managers.