IMPACT OF DIGITAL LEADERSHIP ON EMPLOYEE CREATIVITY THROUGH THE MODERATING ROLE OF JOB EMBEDDEDNESS: A STUDY ON APPAREL SECTOR EMPLOYEES IN SRI LANKA

Abstract

Creativity is the ability of an employee to generate new and useful ideas that are crucial for achieving effectiveness, innovation, and significant breakthroughs, which are considered mandatory elements in achieving competitive advantage in any organization. However, the extent to which employees have creative abilities remains a puzzle for top-notch companies. Therefore, this study aimed to identify the impact of digital leadership on employee creativity through the moderating effect of job embeddedness in Sri Lanka’s apparel sector. No evidence was found to study these impacts, and no studies have incorporated job embeddedness into digital leadership and employee creativity, with an emphasis on the conservation of resource theory. The study collected data through structured questionnaires from conveniently chosen 428 individual participants from the apparel sector in Sri Lanka. This study adopted a structural equation modeling technique for data analysis using Smart PLS 4.0. The results revealed that digital leadership negatively impacts employee creativity. The negative effect of digital leadership on employee creativity is lessened by job embeddedness. As a result, booming sections in apparel where less digitization would be beneficial to employees for having good connections, as most employees are unskilled workers and they expect social interactions. The current study advances research on job embeddedness by empirically examining the effects of digital leadership on employee creativity; in addition, it expands the nascent knowledge on digital leadership in apparel. The findings highlight the importance of job embeddedness in the workplace for reducing the negative outcomes of digital leadership in organizational settings.