Investigating the Effect of Paradoxical Leadership on Employees' Creativity Given the Mediation of Identification with the Leader and Creative Self-efficacy, and Moderation of Workload Pressure and Employees' Need for Cognitive Stability

In the current era, where organizations face a globally competitive environment, the need for changes and innovative work is strongly felt in the workplace. Organizations should not insist on old methods that fail to respond to current organizational needs for survival in this competitive environment and should use new ones to perform their tasks. Paradoxical leadership is one of the new leadership styles that can affect the employees' creativity and is one of the challenges managers face in their work environment.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK:

Paradoxical leadership is defined as "seemingly competing, yet related, behaviors to meet structural and follower demands simultaneously and over time." Employees' need for cognitive stability is defined as a person's willingness to give a decisive answer on a given issue and avoid confusion and ambiguity. Identification with the leader means the employees' values are the same as their leaders, are proud to cooperate with their leader, and are upset if their leader is criticized. Workload pressure refers to the extent to which employees have to work quickly and have a lot to do. Self-efficacy is a constructive ability representing the employees' cognitive, social, emotional, and behavioral skills to achieve various goals effectively. Employees with high creative self-efficacy deal with issues and problems more effectively due to their confidence in their abilities. Creativity means using the capabilities of the mind to create a new thought. Few Persian researchers have investigated the concept of paradox in leadership and organization management and its possible outcomes, such as creativity.

This research is applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-analytical in terms of its nature and descriptive method. The data collection tool is a questionnaire, and the statistical population of the research is the employees of government organizations in Mashhad. To determine the sample size, ten questionnaires were considered for each item, and after removing the incomplete questionnaires, the required data were collected from 384 people by stratified random method. The appropriateness of the data was determined by checking its validity and reliability. Then, the structural equation modeling technique was used to test the research hypotheses.

All hypotheses were tested and confirmed, including the positive impact of Paradoxical leadership on identifying with the leader and creative self-efficacy, creative self-efficacy on employee creativity, and identifying :with the leader on employee creativity. The mediating roles of creative self-efficacy and identifying with the leader were also proven, and the positive moderation of work pressure and the negative moderation of employees' need for cognitive stability were also confirmed.

CONCLUSIONS & SUGGESTIONS:

Considering the significant impacts that creativity may have on the improvement of organizational processes, one of the most important points that should be considered is the development of a security culture in the workplace. To create this environment, managers can take actions, such as encouraging cooperation and interaction between employees, creating a safe space for expressing creative ideas, holding training courses to strengthen creativity, positive evaluation, and providing rewards for creative performance, etc. Considering that contradictory leadership can be effective on creative self-efficacy and identification with the leader, managers should be able to create a balance between conflicting behaviors and have sufficient expertise in achieving goals. Considering the positive relationship between paradoxical leadership and identification with the leader, organizations should prioritize strong relationships between leaders and employees by providing opportunities for employees to get to know their leaders and feel connected to them. Finally, it is suggested that the managers find out about the employees' need for cognitive closure and treat the employees accordingly.