Authentic leadership and its impact on creativity of nursing staff: A cross sectional questionnaire survey of Indian nurses and their supervisors.

BACKGROUND Nurses play a dominant role in the healthcare sector. However, the working condition of nurses in India is far from satisfactory due to a variety of factors. This is further compounded by the lack of respect for nurses and their profession. Therefore, there is a need to examine factors that could mitigate this situation. OBJECTIVE The objective of this paper is to examine the relationship between authentic leadership and employee creativity, while determining the mediating effect of knowledge sharing behaviour and moderating effect of use of information technology on this association. DESIGN A questionnaire-based survey was used to collect the data. Macro process (Hayes) was used to examine the mediating role of knowledge sharing behaviour and the moderating role of use of information technology in the relationship between authentic leadership and employee creativity. SETTINGS Data was collected from 43 small- and medium-sized hospitals in the state of Uttarakhand, India. PARTICIPANTS The participants in the present study were 405 nurses and their 81 supervisors from the above hospitals. RESULTS Results indicate that authentic leadership is positively linked to the creativity of employees. Further, knowledge sharing behaviour is found to mediate the relationship between authentic leadership and employee creativity, while use of information technology acts as a moderator between knowledge sharing behaviour and employee creativity. The findings of this investigation can help healthcare managers understand the importance of knowledge creation and knowledge sharing among healthcare workers. This paper draws attention to the need for hospital administrators to establish an appropriate information technology infrastructure to effectively manage the knowledge pool of the organization. This study also highlights the importance of effective leadership style, namely authentic leadership, in positively influencing employee creativity in healthcare institutions, a service oriented industry. CONCLUSION This study contributes to existing research on authentic leadership and employee creativity by showing that knowledge sharing behaviour and use of information technology are important and relevant variables that affect the degree of influence that authentic leadership has on employee creativity.

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