When and Why Do Leaders Endorse Radical Ideas? A Transactional Theory of Stress Perspective

Abstract

Extant research has focused on the strategies that employees use to obtain leaders' endorsement of creative ideas that vary in radicalness, overlooking the possibility that these employee‐centric factors may backfire by increasing leaders' sense of threat. Drawing on the transactional theory of stress, we offer a leader‐centric perspective by identifying leader creative personality as a resource that influences when creative ideas with varying radicalness levels are more or less likely to be endorsed. We predict that (1) idea radicalness will exhibit a negative indirect relationship with endorsement through increased leader threat appraisal when leader creative personality is low, and (2) idea radicalness will have a positive indirect relationship with endorsement through increased leader challenge appraisal when leader creative personality is high. Results from a three‐wave field study of 167 leader–employee dyads showed that the indirect relationship between idea radicalness and endorsement was negative via increased leader threat appraisal when leader creative personality was low, and the indirect relationship was positive via decreased leader threat appraisal when leader creative personality was high. A scenario‐based experiment with 300 leader participants replicated the negative indirect relationship between idea radicalness and endorsement via leader threat appraisal when leader creative personality was low. Our findings suggest the importance of addressing leaders' threat appraisals of radical ideas, and we provide insights into how organizations can effectively leverage employees' radical ideas by managing leaders' sense of threat.