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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Performance Science
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1487886
The Effects of Charismatic Leadership on Performance: Exploring Key Boundary Conditions at Multilevel
Provisionally accepted- 1 Jeonbuk National University, Jeonju, Republic of Korea
- 2 Shandong Women's University, Jinan, Shandong, China
- 3 Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
- 4 Sejong University, Seoul, Seoul, Republic of Korea
We establish a multilevel model that posits the moderated mediation effect of charismatic leadership (CL) on task performance through creativity at both individual and group levels, considering the contextual conditions of high-performance work system (HPWS) at the individual level and group performance orientation (GPO) at the group level. Our analysis of field data collected from members comprising work groups provides empirical support for our multilevel framework. Specifically, CL exhibits higher creativity at the individual level when HPWS is low compared to high (compensatory effect). In contrast, CL produces higher group creativity at the group level when GPO is high rather than low (additive effect). Additionally, individual-level creativity mediates the relationship between the interaction of CL and HPWS at an individual level and task performance. The influence of the interactive effect of CL and GPO on performance at the group level is mediated by group-level creativity. This study emphasizes the significance of adopting a multilevel interactive perspective on creativity and performance while providing evidence for how leadership and its boundary conditions affect creativity and performance.
Keywords: charismatic leadership (CL), high-performance work system (HPWS), group performance orientation (GPO), creativity, performance
Received: 28 Aug 2024; Accepted: 17 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Seong, Zhang, Hong and Yoon. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Jee Young Seong, Jeonbuk National University, Jeonju, Republic of Korea
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