The nexus of transformational leadership, self-efficacy, and employee creativity: a bibliometric investigation and partial least square structural equation modelling

Research on the nexus of transformational leadership style and employee creativity remains far less focused in developing country contexts, and the findings are fragmented. The overriding aim of this study is to critically investigate transformational leadership and employee creativity literature using bibliometric analysis. The bibliometric analysis reveals that the link between transformational leadership style, creative self-efficacy, and employee creativity is a black box and requires further quantitative investigations. A theoretical framework was established based on the bibliometric analysis of unstructured data from 162 journal articles. Additionally, using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM), the framework was tested using data from 121 firms in Sri Lanka. Results obtained from the proposed model showed that transformational leadership positively relates to employee creativity. Further, creative self-efficacy moderates the relationship between transformational leadership and employee creativity. Despite transformational leadership, creativity, and self-efficacy research having recently exposed notable growth, empirical research investigating the moderating effect of creative self-efficacy on the relationship between transformational leadership and creativity is scarce in developing country contexts. The present study fills the cavity by employing a multi-method approach and contributes to the extant human resource management and creativity literature.