Title: Examining the relationship between transformational leadership and employee creativity: moderation and mediation across proactive personality and work engagement

Authors: Nejib Ben Moussa

Addresses: Human Resources Management Department, College of Business, University of Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Abstract: The objective of the article is to identify the effect of transformational leadership on employee creativity in Tunisian SMEs. We conducted a survey of 95 Tunisian SME employees. Smart PLS 3 software was used to test our research hypotheses. The results revealed that transformational leadership is strongly correlated with the employee's creativity. This relationship is reinforced by the effect of mediation of work engagement. The employee's proactive personality moderates the employee's work engagement and creativity. On the other hand, it does not moderate the relationship between transformational leadership and work engagement. Managers should be aware that improving employee creativity through transformational leadership is facilitated by the interaction between proactive personality and work engagement. The originality of our study is that it incorporates both the moderators and mediators who for the first time are studied together to explain the relationship transformational leadership and employee creativity.

Keywords: transformational leadership; employee creativity; work engagement; proactive personality.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBEX.2025.148514

International Journal of Business Excellence, 2025 Vol.37 No.1, pp.18 - 39

Received: 12 Feb 2021
Accepted: 07 Oct 2021
Published online: 10 Sep 2025 *

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