Hope and positive affect mediating the authentic leadership and creativity relationship ☆ Arménio Rego a, b, ⁎, Filipa Sousa c, 1 , Carla Marques d, 2 , Miguel Pina e Cunha e, 3 a Departamento de Economia, Gestão e Engenharia Industrial, Universidade de Aveiro, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal b UNIDE, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Av.ª das Forças Armadas, 1649-026 Lisboa, Portugal c Escola Superior de Educação e Ciências Sociais, Instituto Politécnico de Leiria, Morro do Lena, Alto do Vieiro, 2411-901 Leiria, Portugal d Departamento de Economia, Sociologia e Gestão, Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Av. Almeida de Lucena, 1, 5000-660 Vila Real, Portugal e NOVA School of Business and Economics, Rua Marquês de Fronteira, 20, 1099-038 Lisboa, Portugal abstract article info Article history: Received 1 October 2010 Received in revised form 1 July 2011 Accepted 1 October 2012 Available online 7 November 2012 Keywords: Authentic leadership Positive affect Hope Creativity The study analyzes how authentic leadership (AL) predicts employees' creativity both directly and through the mediating role of employees' positive affect and hope. Two hundred and three employees working in Portuguese retail organizations participate in the research. Employees report their hope and positive affective states, as well as the AL of their supervisors. Supervisors report the employees' creativity. The main findings are: (a) AL predicts employees' creativity, both directly and through the mediating role of employees' hope; (b) AL also predicts employees' positive affect, which in turn predicts employees' hope and, thus, creativity. The study enriches the understanding of the processes through which AL improves employees' creativity, and provides valuable insights for both scholars and practitioners. By promoting AL, and employees' hope and positive affect, organizations may increase employees' creative performance, creativity being an important path to organizational performance. © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Global competition, economic uncertainty, and rapid technologi- cal change make creativity, the “cornerstone of innovation” (Klijn & Tomic, 2010, p. 322), a crucial organizational resource and a path to organizational performance and survival (Reiter-Palmon & Illies, 2004; Shalley & Gilson, 2004; Zhang & Bartol, 2010). Creativity in the workplace is the production of novel and useful ideas or solutions concerning products, services, processes, and procedures (Amabile, 1997; Oldham & Cummings, 1996; Zhou & George, 2001, 2003; Zhou & Ren, 2012). Zhou and Ren (2012) state: “from top executives to rank-and-file employees, and working in different functional areas, from research labs to the manufacturing floor, all have the potential to be creative.” By promoting their employees' creative performance, organizations are more able to solve problems and take advantage of business opportunities, to adapt to changing customer needs, to compet- itively innovate, and to improve organizational effectiveness (Amabile, 1997; Merlo, Bell, Mengüç, & Whitwell, 2006; Reiter-Palmon & Illies, 2004; Zhou & Ren, 2012). Thus, organizations need not only identify and select creative employees (i.e., individuals with personal attributes that make them more creative), but also create contextual conditions that facilitate or promote creativity. Leadership is one such condition. Several researchers focus on identifying the role of specific leadership behaviors and leader characteristics in supporting, suppress- ing, facilitating, or inhibiting creativity. These behaviors/characteristics include transformational leadership (Shin & Zhou, 2003), emotional in- telligence (Rego, Sousa, Cunha, Correia, & Saur, 2007), empowering leadership (Zhang & Bartol, 2010), benevolent leadership (Wang & Cheng, 2010), close monitoring (Zhou, 2003), developmental feedback (Zhou, 2003), supportive supervision (Oldham & Cummings, 1996), un- conventional leader behavior (Jaussi & Dionne, 2003), and noncontrolling supervision (Oldham & Cummings, 1996). This paper fo- cuses on authentic leadership (AL). AL is “a pattern of leader behavior that draws upon and promotes both positive psychological capacities and a positive ethical climate, to foster greater self-awareness, an inter- nalized moral perspective, balanced processing of information, and rela- tional transparency on the part of leaders working with followers, Journal of Business Research 67 (2014) 200–210 ☆ The authors are grateful to Bruce J. Avolio, William L. Gardner, and Fred O. Walumbwa for their permission to use the Authentic Leadership Questionnaire. They are also grateful to both reviewers for their helpful comments and recommendations. Miguel Cunha acknowledges support from Nova Forum. This paper is part of FCT project PT DC/ EGE-GES/109925/20. ⁎ Corresponding author at: Departamento de Economia, Gestão e Engenharia Industrial, Universidade de Aveiro, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal. Tel.: +351 234 370 024; fax: +351 234 370 215. E-mail addresses: armenio.rego@ua.pt (A. Rego), msousa@esel.ipleiria.pt (F. Sousa), smarques@utad.pt (C. Marques), mpc@novasbe.pt (M. Pina e Cunha). 1 Tel.: +351 244 820 300; fax: +351 244 820 310. 2 Tel.: +351 259 302 200; fax: +351 259 302 249. 3 Tel.: +351 212 822 725; fax: +351 213 873 973. 0148-2963/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2012.10.003 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Business Research