Driving creativity in the AI-enhanced workplace: roles of self-efficacy and transformational leadership

The rapid integration of artificial intelligence (AI) within organizational processes has profound implications for employee creativity and organizational innovation. This study examines how AI adoption influences employee creativity through the mediating role of creative self-efficacy, and how transformational leadership moderates this relationship. By integrating social cognitive theory and social exchange theory, we hypothesize that AI adoption enhances employee creativity, primarily through increased creative self-efficacy. Furthermore, we posit that transformational leadership strengthens the positive impact of AI adoption on creative self-efficacy, thereby amplifying its effect on creativity. By collecting three-wave time-lagged data from a final sample of 236 full-time working adults in South Korea, our findings provide robust support for the proposed hypotheses. AI adoption was positively associated with employee creativity and creative self-efficacy. Creative self-efficacy, in turn, significantly predicted employee creativity and mediated the relationship between AI adoption and creativity. Additionally, transformational leadership moderated the relationship between AI adoption and creative self-efficacy, with stronger effects observed under high transformational leadership conditions. These results offer significant theoretical and practical contributions by integrating AI adoption with creativity and leadership research, highlighting the crucial roles of psychological mechanisms and leadership dynamics in fostering innovation.