Will trust move mountains? Fostering radical ideas in public organizations

Abstract

Demands for greater quality of public services and enhanced efficiency have intensified changes in public organizations. Not surprisingly, these organizations are increasingly searching for new and useful ideas, including disruptive ones, to meet current demands. Whereas previous studies on team radical creativity (TRC) have focused on the influence that subordinates’ trust in the supervisor has on this type of creativity, this work innovates by testing the leader’s trust in the team as an antecedent. Drawing on Self-Determination Theory, we further add to knowledge by considering the mediating role of team-perceived organizational support for creativity and the moderating role of team collaborative climate (TCC). The research model was tested with a sample of 228 teams from public organizations with data collected from two sources at three moments in time. We found that the leader’s trust in the team has a direct positive relationship with TRC and an indirect positive relationship with creativity via team-perceived organizational support. We also observed that TCC positively moderates the relationship between the leader’s trust in the team and TRC. These results deliver meaningful theoretical and practical insights into how organizations, especially public ones, can improve team creativity and thus enhance organizational performance.

Introduction

Public sector creativity, defined as public servants coming up with novel and useful ideas through diverse practices (Houtgraaf, Kruyen, and van Thiel 2021), is increasingly recognized as vital for enhancing service quality and performance (Gieske, van Meerkerk, and van Buuren 2018; Salge and Vera 2012) and for meeting rapidly evolving and intense social needs (Houtgraaf 2023).

However, the bureaucratic and mechanistic nature of public organizations, characterized by hierarchy, silo structures, and closed processes (Bommert 2010), poses challenges and constraints to creative processes. These features, associated with centralization and formalization, are negatively related to aspects of creativity such as risk-taking and freedom (Ekvall 1996). Public organizations also have reduced incentives for creativity due to the lack of market competition, political interference (Chen and Bozeman 2014), red tape (Bozeman and Feeney 2011), severe punishments for unsuccessful ideas, and absence of venture capital to foster creativity (Borins 2001). These and other factors contribute to the dull and uncreative image associated with public organizations (Rangarajan 2008).

Despite these challenges, promoting creativity in public organizations became particularly relevant in the context of evolving public management paradigms, such as New Public Management (NPM) and New Public Governance (NPG). Both paradigms emphasize the need for innovation and responsiveness, albeit through different mechanisms. On the one hand, in the context of NPM, the aim is to create a stimulating environment, similar to the private sector, to encourage public organizations and their teams to perform better, take risks and innovate (Wynen et al. 2014). On the other hand, the NPG model suggests that the public sector should focus on civil society stimuli and opportunities, with greater involvement of users in the service development process (Scupola and Zanfei 2016). However, past empirical research on public administration has neglected the factors affecting employee creativity (Houtgraaf 2023; Houtgraaf, Kruyen, and van Thiel 2024), and this is even more notorious when it comes to radical creativity.

In line with this, it appears that the typical bureaucratic structures of public organizations prioritize administrative efficiency and adherence to procedures, creating an environment that tends to favor incremental creativity—improvements, additions, and adjustments to existing processes and products—over radical creativity, which involves substantial deviations from existing practices (Bommert 2010; Houtgraaf 2023). However, while incremental creativity is beneficial for optimization, it may not be sufficient to address the increasingly complex challenges faced by public organizations, which require radical creative approaches (Gieske, van Meerkerk, and van Buuren 2018; Torugsa and Arundel 2016). Accordingly, it is necessary for public organizations to find radically new ways to face today’s radical challenges (Bommert 2010).

In this context, this study examines how specific contextual factors affect team radical creativity (TRC) in the public sector. This is in line with the componential theory of creativity (Amabile 2013), which argues that contextual factors affect individuals’ creativity, with the intrinsic motivation principle explaining this relationship. Self-Determination Theory (SDT) postulates that intrinsic motivation can be achieved through the satisfaction of basic psychological needs—autonomy, competence, and relatedness (Deci and Ryan 2000). The bureaucratic constraints that are inherent to public sector organizations undermine the satisfaction of these needs, leading to reduced intrinsic motivation and, consequently, lower levels of creativity (Amabile 1996). Beyond restricting intrinsic motivation, the nature of public organizations also conditions other relevant predictors of creativity (Bozeman and Feeney 2011). As the commonly accepted Ability-Motivation-Opportunity (AMO) theory (Apelbaum, Bailey, and Berg 2000) establishes, individuals’ abilities, their levels of motivation, and the opportunities given provide a measure of an individual’s performance. Thus, the constraints imposed by the rigid regulations and procedures intrinsic to public organizations, apart from restricting motivation, also fail to deliver the contextual conditions (i.e., the opportunities) necessary for employees to use their abilities in creative endeavors (Bozeman and Feeney 2011).

In this scenario, trust in teams emerges as a potential solution to spur radical creativity. Trust, defined as a psychological state where an individual is willing to accept vulnerability based on positive expectations of others’ intentions or behaviors (Rousseau et al. 1998), plays a critical role in team dynamics and outcomes. Specifically, due to the leader’s centrality in satisfying the needs of employees within the organizational context (Deci, Connell, and Ryan 1989), leaders’ trust in their teams can significantly shape the team environment and influence interactions between team members, their motivation, and the overall team performance (Dirks and Ferrin 2001). Trust is critical in public organizations, as its lack increases the level of monitoring, and becomes “the cause of bureaucratic pathologies” (Cho and Poister 2013, p. 820). In particular, radical creativity involves higher degrees of experimentation (Gilson et al. 2012), and trust is key to this (cf. Ruppel and Harrington 2000). However, the impact of leaders’ trust on TRC, namely in the public sector, remains underexplored (Han, Harold, and Cheong 2019).

Accordingly, our study seeks to enlighten whether and how leaders’ trust in their teams affects TRC in public organizations. Drawing on the componential theory of creativity (Amabile 2013) and SDT, we propose that leaders’ trust in the team should directly influence creativity, but we also advance an indirect relationship. Specifically, given the close proximity between leaders and their subordinates, leaders end-up shaping the environment perceived by the latter (cf. Stoverink et al. 2014). Accordingly, we propose a mediating effect of team perceived organizational support for creativity (TPOSC), which reflects the extent to which team members believe their organization encourages and rewards creative efforts (Farmer, Tierney, and Kung-McIntyre 2003). This perceived support is crucial for satisfying employees’ needs for competence and autonomy, thereby fostering intrinsic motivation and promoting radical creativity (Amabile and Pillemer 2012).

Additionally, we suggest that the effects of leaders’ trust in the team should be contingent upon team characteristics, specifically team collaborative climate (TCC). This climate emphasizes peer support and learning (e.g., Ames 1992), which are key for creative endeavors (e.g., Gilson et al. 2012), and should thus influence the extent to which a leader’s trust and perceived support for creativity translate into a team’s radical creativity.

In summary, our study contributes to existing knowledge in three ways. Firstly, we propose that radical creativity in public sector teams is affected by leaders’ trust in their teams, a construct that has been neglected in past studies (Han, Harold, and Cheong 2019). Secondly, we enlighten the mechanisms through which leaders’ trust in their teams influences creativity by advancing that teams’ perceived support for creativity mediates such a relationship. Thirdly, we investigate the contextual conditions affecting the link between leader trust in teams and radical creativity. We propose that a team characteristic, specifically TCC, moderates the relationship between leader trust and TRC and between TPOSC and TRC. Hence, by investigating how specific contextual variables can enhance highly creative solutions in public organizations, this study helps to shed light on how to overcome the bureaucratic constraints that plague the public sector context. Our research model is illustrated in figure 1.

Figure 1.

Conceptual model.

Theoretical background

Team radical creativity

In the domain of creativity, it is crucial to distinguish between incremental and radical creativity (Gilson and Madjar 2011). Incremental creativity involves small improvements within existing structures and is common in stable environments. In contrast, radical creativity, which is critical in dynamic environments, entails significant deviations from established practices and integrates diverse knowledge components to generate revolutionary and high-risk ideas (Balau, van der Bij, and Faems 2020; Gilson and Madjar 2011). The complexity of radical creativity requires new knowledge and innovative working dynamics that emphasize experimentation and paradigm shifts (Gilson et al. 2012; Gong et al. 2017). The introduction of major innovations in the public sector appears to face more barriers, but also generates additional benefits (Torugsa and Arundel 2016), highlighting the importance of addressing the antecedents of radical creativity in the public sector. The few empirical studies on employee creativity in the public sector have identified a number of antecedents, such as the level of work demands, the dimensions of bureaucracy, the level of social contact, public servants’ realistic evaluations of ideas (Houtgraaf 2023), individual characteristics like perseverance, analytical, divergent and reflexive skills, and contextual factors like type of task, time pressure, and autonomy (Kruyen and van Genugten 2017).

Teams have become the primary working structure in modern organizations, leveraging synergistic combinations of ideas and knowledge (Mathieu et al. 2019). In this context, team creativity is acknowledged as crucial for the success of organizations (Zhao 2015). Research has, therefore, looked at the antecedents of team creativity, identifying factors such as knowledge utilization (Sung and Choi 2012), and leadership approaches such as empowering leadership (Li and Zhang 2016).

Team creativity has also been acknowledged as key for public organizations (Torugsa and Arundel 2016). However, these organizations are characterized by several specificities, which create unique challenges to the promotion of creative endeavors (Osborne and Brown 2013), especially radical ones. Our study seeks to address this gap by exploring the pivotal role of a leader’s trust in the team on TRC, shedding light on the mechanisms that shape this relationship, namely involving TPOSC and TCC. In doing so, the study is aligned with the intrinsic motivation principle of the componential theory of creativity (Amabile 2013). Intrinsic motivation concerns the extent to which individuals have enthusiasm for their work tasks, which stimulates cognitive flexibility and creative endeavors (Utman 1997). Such enthusiasm makes individuals focus on the internal nature of the tasks and work longer on problems, fueling the exploration of novel ideas (Oldham and Cummings 1996). Hence, work environment factors affect employees’ intrinsic motivation, which ends up influencing creativity. This follows SDT, which provides a framework for understanding the factors that affect intrinsic motivation. In summary, our research contributes to the literature on how public organizations can overcome bureaucratic constraints and promote major innovative solutions.

The leader’s trust in the team and TRC

Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman (1995) argue that trust can be seen as the willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party based on the expectation that the other will perform a certain important action for the trustee. In this context, it is important to note that trust is not limited to private sector organizations but is also critical in public organizations (Cho and Poister 2013). Thus, trust plays a crucial role in fostering successful interpersonal relationships within bureaucratic structures (Nyhan 2000), with many studies highlighting the benefits of mutual trust in exchange relationships (e.g., de Clercq et al. 2010).

The literature on trust has been more focused on employees’ trust in leaders than on leader’s trust in employees (Han, Harold, and Cheong 2019). Our focus, however, will be on the impact that leaders’ trust in their teams may have on team creativity. Considering that the leader is a critical source of social influence for his/her subordinates (Liu et al. 2016), a leader behaviors and beliefs can impact greatly the way the team works and achieves its objectives (Rousseau, Aube, and Tremblay 2013), particularly when we consider team creativity.

Based on SDT (Deci and Ryan 1985) and on the componential theory of creativity (Amabile 1996), we suggest that leaders’ trust in the team is associated with team creativity by increasing intrinsic motivation through need fulfillment. SDT considers the existence of three universal basic needs: autonomy (i.e., the need to self-organize one’s behavior), competence (i.e., the need to have the opportunity to use and develop one’s skills), and relatedness (i.e., the need to feel a sense of belonging and connection to others). Need satisfaction is dependent on the opportunities provided by the social environment. Due to leaders’ centrality in the organizational context, they are essential in creating the work conditions necessary to satisfy employees’ needs (Deci, Connell, and Ryan 1989; Kovjanic et al. 2012). When leaders trust their teams, they reduce monitoring and control, giving teams more freedom to participate and decide how to carry out job activities, which contributes to satisfying their need for autonomy, increasing intrinsic motivation, and, thereby, stimulating creative thinking (Amabile and Pillener 2012). Since risk is an essential component of a trust model (Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman 1995), a leader’s trust in his/her team should encourage team members to take risks and develop innovative behavior in order to overcome task demands. Team members are assured that there is no penalty for new ideas that may fail or that there is freedom to try out improvisations (cf. Ruppel and Harrington 2000). This context of experimentation will contribute to developing new skills and putting existing ones into practice, which contribute to satisfying the need for autonomy and competence. This creates the conditions for public servants to come up with novel and useful ideas (Houtgraaf, Kruyen, and van Thiel 2021) that deviate substantially from existing practices (Gilson and Madjar 2011). Moreover, the leader’s trust in the team can lead to high-quality interactions (satisfying, in turn, the need for relatedness) that convey a sense of empowerment, increasing the team’s motivation to exert greater effort within and beyond their prescribed roles (Brower et al. 2009). Therefore, the leader’s trust in the team can promote TRC through the intensification of team interactions, which sustains a continuous flow of creative thinking (Chen, Chang, and Hung 2008). Thus, we propose the following:

 

Hypothesis 1: The leader’s trust in the team is positively related to TRC.

TPOSC and TRC

TPOSC, which has also been designated as a climate for creativity (Scott and Bruce 1994), is defined as the perception of team members regarding the extent to which the organization they work for stimulates and rewards their creativity, fostering the belief that creative endeavors are welcome (Farmer, Tierney, and Kung-McIntyre 2003). This perception tends to reduce the perceived risk of trying out novel ideas, thus stimulating the team’s engagement in creative processes (Kwan et al. 2018; Zhou 1998). Hence, the perceived support for creativity signals individuals that they are free to try novel avenues, thus addressing the need for autonomy. In addition, it also helps fulfill the need for competence, by signaling that the organization believes in their capabilities, and by fostering experimentation, which results in learning and therefore, in competence improvements.

Related to this, the belief that a public organization is supportive increases engagement within the team, which is positive for relatedness needs, and makes its members willing to take more risks, persist more strongly in the face of difficulties, and seek more challenging tasks (Ntoumanis and Biddle 1999), implying the generation of more disruptive, radical ideas. Thus, we expect that when teams are convinced that their organization supports creativity, the ensuing intrinsic motivation will lead them to take more risks (de Stobbeleir, Ashford, and Buyens 2011; Zhou 1998), increasing, in turn, their ability to generate ideas that differ substantially from existing practices (Balau, van der Bij, and Faems 2020). We thus offer the following hypothesis:

 

Hypothesis 2: TPOSC is positively related to TRC.

The effects of the leader’s trust in the team on perceived organizational support for creativity

Trust in the team mirrors the socialized relationship between a leader and his/her team members, affecting the achievement of the team’s objectives (Joshi, Lazarova, and Liao 2009). Hence, trust can be a governance mechanism that facilitates social exchanges, leading to the development of relatively stable dyads that can result in high-quality exchanges (Hughes et al. 2018). A leader’s trust in his/her team signals the belief that the team will fulfill its future obligations, fostering perceptions of competence, whilst reducing the perceived uncertainty and risks involved in the relationship with the leader (Khazanchi and Masterson 2010). Moreover, a team that has the trust of its leader is likely to obtain the support of other actors in the organization to achieve its objectives in a way that would not be possible otherwise (Tsai and Ghoshal 1998). Hence, teams working in a trusting environment perceive more support, better quality communication, and fewer feelings of uncertainty (Chou et al. 2008), fulfilling the need for relatedness, and thereby enhancing the team’s intrinsic motivation. Consequently, trust is a valuable social resource for engaging in risky behavior (Gong et al. 2010), and this is directly related to the team’s perception that it has the conditions and resources necessary to engage in behaviors that radically promote its creative performance (de Stobbeleir, Ashford, and Buyens 2011), which fosters feelings of autonomy.

In addition, as the leader acts as a key agent of the organization (Eisenberger et al. 1986), the team may extend its perceptions of trust from the leader to the organization and may also develop a relationship of social exchange with it (Byrne et al. 2011), which reinforces the satisfaction of relatedness needs. Thus, in line with Aselage and Eisenberger (2003), through a process of personification, TPOSC is generated from trust between the leader and the team. Specifically, when the leader trusts in his/her team, the team will tend to extend these beliefs to the public organization and develop a willingness to reciprocate with behaviors that benefit the organization. Therefore, trust in the team is extended by team members to the organization, resulting in a more positive assessment of organizational policies and practices, and increasing teams’ perceptions of organizational support for creativity over time (Wong, Wong, and Ngo 2012). We therefore expect the following:

 

Hypothesis 3: The leader’s trust in the team is positively related to TPOSC.

The mediating effect of TPOSC

Being at the center of social and professional relationships, trust influences the behavior of each party towards the other (Robinson 1996). Specifically, a leader’s trust in his/her team influences the attitudes, perceptions, and other cognitive constructs of those involved in these exchange relationships (Dirks and Ferrin 2001). Moreover, a leader’s trust in his/her team can also influence the quality of the team’s exchange relationships with the organization (Khazanchi and Masterson 2010), increasing the team’s perception of the support given by the organization to the development of new ideas. The leader’s trust in the team should lead to high-quality interactions that convey a sense of power and confidence to the team, which in turn motivates them to exert greater effort within and beyond their prescribed roles (Brower et al. 2009). In this context, and drawing on a relationship of mutual trust, teams are more likely to perceive an environment in which they will feel free to explore and exchange new ideas and try out new methods. In turn, the belief that the organization gives due support to creativity (Farmer, Tierney, and Kung-McIntyre 2003) leads the team to take greater risks, persist more strongly in the face of difficulties, and seek more challenging tasks (Ntoumanis and Biddle 1999), which may imply the generation of more disruptive, radical ideas. Therefore, a leader’s trust in his/her team should be indirectly and positively related to TRC through TPOSC. We therefore propose the following:

 

Hypothesis 4: TPOSC mediates the positive relationship between the leader’s trust in the team and TRC.

The moderating role of TCC

Previous research has argued that team climate plays a critical role in the generation of ideas by the team (e.g., Antonio, Indrianto, and Padmawidjaja 2022). Extending the componential theory of creativity (Amabile 2013), we approach this perspective by examining TCC, a team characteristic, as a contingent factor in the relationship between the leader’s trust in the team and TRC.

TCC is conceptualized as an environment marked by intentional sharing and receiving of personal effort (Zhu, Gardner, and Chen 2016). Moreover, this climate involves a social structure that supports mutual effort and cooperation, and that places emphasis on learning and mastering skills to achieve common goals (Ames 1992). Hence, TCC is an open, safe climate that values the efforts of team members, encourages knowledge sharing, learning, and self-development, and in which team members trust and support each other and encourage a sense of belonging (Kim, Pathak, and Werner 2015). Therefore, such a climate helps to fulfill the need for relatedness, as well as for autonomy and competence. Not surprisingly, organizations can benefit from a collaborative climate in teams (Kim, Pathak, and Werner 2015), as it has been related to outcomes such as performance, the pursuit of challenging tasks, intrinsic interest, and positive attitudes (Černe et al. 2014; Ntoumanis and Biddle 1999). In this context, the way a team responds to leader trust and the perceived creativity support is likely to be affected by the TCC, that is, the extent to which the team facilitates learning and the sharing of ideas, which are crucial for creativity (Černe et al. 2014).

Cooperation and trust are closely linked (Ruppel and Harrington 2000), as a highly collaborative climate entails trust, cohesion, and mutual support among team members (Beersma et al. 2003). By constituting and cultivating a beneficial social-organizational work environment, TCC can help to increase work engagement, effort, and persistence in the face of difficulties (Černe et al. 2017). In addition, it helps to overcome the potential negative effects that resistance to change can have on employees’ creative performance (Hon, Bloom, and Crant 2011). Therefore, when a team is trusted by its leader and its climate is characterized by cooperation, team members feel (intrinsically) motivated not only to take more risks (Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman 1995) but also to explore and exchange new ideas that lead to better creative performance (Xie et al. 2018). Accordingly, we expect that a TCC will accentuate the positive relationship between a leader’s trust in his/her team and TRC. We thus propose the following:

 

Hypothesis 5: TCC strengthens the positive relationship between the leader’s trust in the team and TRC.

When a team enjoys a greater climate of collaboration, that is, when individuals feel an open and secure team environment, they should develop a greater (intrinsic) motivation for sharing knowledge and cooperation among members (Kim, Pathak, and Werner 2015). This enhanced social exchange pattern facilitates more constructive exchange relationships (Černe et al. 2014) between team members and between the team and the organization. In this process, team members believe they have the necessary support to deal with their work challenges (Wang et al. 2013), and this should lead to the generation of radical ideas.

In this context, TCC can create an environment that is even more favorable to the generation of new radical ideas. A TCC entails trust, cohesion, and mutually supportive behavior, facilitating constructive exchange relationships between team members that emphasize learning, mastery, and skills development (Ames 1992; Černe et al. 2014). Hence, in line with SDT, when the team has a more collaborative way of facing difficulties and seeking more challenging tasks (Ntoumanis and Biddle 1999), as well as a greater belief that the organization is supportive and values its creative performance (Farmer, Tierney, and Kung-McIntyre 2003; Kwan et al. 2018), the team is likely to generate more disruptive, radical ideas. Thus, the understanding that TCC can play a moderating role by expanding the magnitude of the positive effects of TPOSC on TRC leads to the following hypothesis:

 

Hypothesis 6: TCC strengthens the relationship between TPOSC and TRC.

Methods

Sample and procedure

To test our hypotheses, we focused on forty-four Brazilian public organizations. Positioned as a developing country, Brazil holds the ninth spot among the world’s largest economies, as per the International Monetary Fund. The country boasts a state structure marked by federalism, featuring the decentralization of competencies across public entities, namely the Union, States, and Municipalities. In terms of public administration, the Brazilian federal government has reproduced the NPM propositions since 1995, promoting a series of changes in the organization of the Executive Power (Donadelli, Cunha, and Dussauge-Laguna 2020). The adoption of NPM practices spread to the states from the beginning of the 2000s.

Initially, all the sixty-one public institutions from a Brazilian region were approached, and this included both Direct and Indirect Administration, which involved all types of organizations, including semi-public companies and private law state foundations. Subsequently, in alignment with Wynen et al. (2014), we excluded responses from semi-public companies and private law state foundations from the database. The nature of the latter is akin to the private sector due to specific legislation. This refinement resulted in data from forty-four organizations. In total, 4,184 teams were identified. These teams carried out three types of activities: front-line activities, which directly serve citizens; final policy management activities, which develop planning and management actions for public policies; and secondary activities, administrative activities of a common nature, such as finance, accounting, budget planning, communication, internal control, among others. For the 4,184 teams identified, we obtained emails from 3,901 leaders from the focal points of each organization. Appointed by the organization’s top manager, each focal point had the role of internally articulating the research, in addition to providing leaders’ emails and reinforcing the importance of participating in the research. The team members’ emails were provided by the team leaders themselves when responding to questionnaire 1.

Data was collected from June 5 to November 25, 2022. Leaders and their team members received an email invitation to participate in a voluntary, anonymous, and confidential online survey. Respondents gave their informed consent before responding. In order to reduce the risk of common method bias (CMB; Podsakoff et al. 2003), we used two sources (leaders and team members) and data was collected in three waves separated by a one-month interval. According to Podsakoff et al. (2024), a particularly effective way of controlling CMB is to obtain measures from different sources and include a temporal separation between them. Following prior research on team creativity, a one-month interval was chosen (e.g., Chi and Lam 2021) so that the time lag between data collection was long enough to mitigate CMB, and also short enough for the predictors to exert influence on the outcomes (Podsakoff et al. 2024). At Time 1, leader-participants rated their trust in their teams. We received 1,174 completed leader questionnaires (a 30.1 percent response rate). One month later, at Time 2, employee-participants rated their perceptions of organizational support for creativity, as well as TCC. We received 2,197 completed employee questionnaires (a 34.3 percent response rate). Approximately one month later (Time 3), supervisors rated the creativity of the teams whose subordinates responded at Time 2, with 610 supervisors rating their team’s radical creativity (an 85.1 percent response rate).

After matching the data, considering teams with at least two or more members (Kozlowski and Ilgen 2006), and teams in which at least 50 percent of team members provided valid responses, we retained 228 complete responses to test the hypotheses at the team level. In terms of demographics, the leader sample is predominantly female (55.9 percent) and 93 percent have a bachelor’s degree. The 228 leaders have an average age of 48 years (SD = 12.4), have been working in the public sector for about 20 years (SD = 14.1), and in the same team for about six years (SD = 5.6). Regarding the teams, they have an average of five members (SD = 4.6) and their leaders have been leading them for about four years (SD = 4.4).

Measures.

The items of the measures were assessed using a seven-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree).

Team radical creativity.

This was measured at Time 3 by leaders using a four-item scale developed by Gilson et al. (2012) for radical creativity. Sample items include “Departures from what is currently done or offered” and “Fundamental changes to how things are currently done or what is currently offered.”

Leader’s trust in team.

This was measured at Time 1 using a scale adapted from Hughes et al. (2018). In order to reflect the leader’s trust in his/her team, we used two of the three items and changed the scale’s referent from the supervisor to the team. The original two items “I trust my direct supervisor” and “If I need my direct supervisor, he or she will be there for me” were adapted to “I trust my team” and “If I need my team, it will be there for me.”

Team perceived organizational support for creativity.

This was assessed by team members at Time 2 with a six-item scale adapted from Farmer, Tierney, and Kung-McIntyre (2003). Since the original scale reflected the individual level, we used the referent-shift consensus model to create a higher-level construct by shifting the referent from the individual to the team (Chan 1998). Using a referent-shift consensus model creates a construct that reflects the team as a whole, thus, items were reworded accordingly. For example, the original item “I feel creativity is supported and encouraged” was adapted to “My team feels creativity is supported and encouraged.”

Team collaborative climate.

This was also assessed by team members at Time 2 using Zhu, Gardner, and Chen (2016) four-item scale for collaborative climate, which also uses the referent-shift consensus model. A sample item is “My team members work collaboratively as a team to achieve goals.”

Control variables.

We considered five team-level variables that previous research revealed may affect team creativity: team size (TS) (Li, Lin, and Liu 2018), which was measured considering the number of members; team gender composition (TGC) (Sun et al. 2016), which was measured as the percentage of female gender on each team; leader team-leading tenure (LTLT) (Lang, Zhang, and Yin 2022), which was measured as the number of years that a supervisor has been leading the current team; and also following Lang, Zhang, and Yin (2022), we considered leader’s gender (LG), which was measured as a dichotomous variable coded as 0 for females and 1 for males, and leader’s age (LA), which was measured in years.

Data aggregation.

Since our unit of analysis is the team, team members’ ratings regarding TPOSC and TCC were aggregated to the team level by computing the mean of the individual scores. To examine the appropriateness of aggregating individual scores to the group-level, we assessed the average within-group interrater agreement (r_wg(j)). The results revealed an average of 0.62 for TPOSC, showing a moderate agreement, and an average of 0.86 for TCC, supporting a strong agreement (LeBreton and Senter 2008). Additionally, to provide further support regarding the agreement level among team members, we computed the average deviation index, or AD_M(J), proposed by Burke, Finkelstein, and Dusig (1999). Compared to the r_wg(j), the AD_M(J) has the advantage of providing estimates in the metric of the original response scale (LeBreton and Senter 2008). The average AD_M(J) obtained for TPOSC was 0.80 (SD = 0.64) and for TCC was 0.40 (SD = 0.45), both below the value of 1.2 suggested by Burke and Dunlap (2002) as the cut-off point for use with seven-point scales.

Subsequently, we tested whether the average scores differed significantly across teams with one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and, additionally, we computed the associated intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC). ICC(1) indicates whether there is a team-level effect on the variable of interest, while ICC(2) provides an estimate of the reliability of the team-level mean (Bliese 2000). ANOVA results showed that perceptions of TPOSC (F = 1.80, P < .001) and of TCC (F = 1.82, P < 0.001) differed significantly across teams, supporting the validity of the aggregated measures (Chan 1998). Regarding ICC(1), which is typically interpreted as a measure of effect size (Bliese 2000), informing about the extent to which individual ratings are attributable to group membership, the results were 0.18 and 0.19 for TPOSC and TCC, respectively, revealing a medium team-level effect (LeBreton and Senter 2008; Myors and Murphy 2023). Finally, ICC(2), which informs about how reliably the mean rating distinguishes between groups (Bliese 2000), was 0.44 for TPOSC and 0.45 for TCC. Since both values are near 0.50, which is considered acceptable (Klein and Kozlowski 2000), our results indicate that the team means are reliable enough. Hence, the values of some indices are slightly lower than recommended. This can be attributable to the small group sizes (we have, on average, four raters per team, and 90 percent of our teams have seven raters or less) in our sample (LeBreton and Senter 2008). Therefore, taken together, the aggregation indices indicate a reasonable level of within-group agreement and between-group variance, supporting aggregating team members’ scores to the team level.

Additionally, we explored whether the existence of differences in team creativity ratings could be due to the organizational level. Thus, we performed an ANOVA test (Zhang and Bartol 2010), with team creativity as the dependent variable. No systematic differences were observed in the assessments of creativity attributable to differences in organizations [F (43, 184) = 0.86, ns]. This suggests that it is not necessary to take the organizational level into account and, therefore, the use of hierarchical linear modeling is not required.

Results

Measurement model assessment

Prior to hypothesis testing, we performed a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) with Amos (version 28) software, to examine the convergent and discriminant validity of four latent variables in the conceptual model: leader’s trust in the team, TPOSC, TCC, and TRC.

We introduced a correlation between the errors of two items of the same construct, given a relevant modification index. The model fit statistics were good. Moreover, we compared our four-factor baseline model with four other alternative models to analyze the validity of the measures in the study (Madjar, Greenberg, and Chen 2011). Table 1 shows the complete results of the hypothesized model and the alternative models. The results indicate that each of the alternative models has a worse fit than the predicted four-factor model—the Δχ²s are all statistically significant. Hence, the results provide evidence of the convergent and discriminant validity of the study’s measures.

Table 1.

Comparison of alternative measurement models.

Model	Factors	χ2	df	RMSEA	SRMR	TLI	CFI	AIC	ECVI
Baseline model	Four-factor (LTT, TPOSC, TCC, and TRC)	190.80	97	0.07	0.05	0.97	0.97	268.80	1.18
Alternative model 1	Three-factor (combined TPOSC, and TCC)	1,178.24	100	0.22	0.16	0.64	0.70	1,250.24	5.51
Alternative model 2	Two-factor (combined LTT, TPOSC, and TCC)	1,326.58	102	0.23	0.17	0.60	0.66	1,394.58	6.14
Alternative model 3	Two-factor (combined TPOSC, TCC, and TRC)	1,610.71	102	0.26	0.20	0.51	0.58	1,678.71	7.40
Alternative model 4	One-factor (combined all)	1,747.66	103	0.27	0.21	0.47	0.55	1,813.66	7.99

Note: AIC, Akaike’s Information Criteria; CFI, comparative fit index; df, degrees of freedom; ECVI, Expected Cross-Validation Index; RMSEA, root mean square error of approximation; SRMR, standardized root mean square residual; TLI, Tucker-Lewis index.

Additionally, although we have implemented procedural remedies to control for CMB (Podsakoff et al. 2024), namely by relying on two source data and on measurement temporal separation, we also statistically explored whether CMB played a role in the observed relationships. Leader’s trust in team (LTT) and TRC were obtained from the team leaders, while TPOSC and TCC were obtained from the team members. To test for CMB, we computed CFAs for team members’ measures and for team leaders’ measures with and without a latent common method factor (Podsakoff et al. 2003). Specifically, this method checks for the common influence across the indicators from the same source. If common method variance plays a role, the chi-square difference between the model with and without the common method construct will be significant (Collier 2020). Regarding team members, the Δχ² between the model with (χ² = 132.90; df = 33) and without (χ² = 134.87; df = 34) the latent common factor was not significant (Δχ² = 1.97, ns). Concerning team leaders, the χ² was the same for the model with (χ² = 36.69; df = 7) and without the common factor (χ² = 36.69, df = 8). We have also conducted the Harman single-factor test on the four constructs, with the first factor accounting for 40.1 percent of the variance in the data, thus below the 50 percent cut-off. Finally, we conducted a CFA with a single common latent factor and the fit statistics were very poor (χ² = 1788.06, df = 104; CLI = 0.53; TLI = 0.46; IFI = 0.54; RMSEA = 0.28). In short, these results suggest that common method variance is not a concern in our study.

Table 2 provides the correlations, means, and standard deviations, as well as the validity and reliability of latent variables. Control variables, except the leader’s age, were dropped from further analysis since they were not correlated with our dependent variable (Becker 2005).

Table 2.

Descriptive statistics, intercorrelations matrix, alpha values, CR, and AVE.

	X1	X2	X3	X4	X5	X6	X7	X8	X9	Mean	SD	AVE	CR
LTT (X1)	(0.81)									6.54	0.79	0.69	0.82
TPOSC (X2)	0.17	(0.97)								5.30	1.18	0.83	0.97
TCC (X3)	0.16	0.39	(0.96)							6.30	0.87	0.86	0.96
TRC (X4)	0.22	0.15	0.04	(0.84)						4.25	1.53	0.60	0.85
TS (X5)	−0.03	−0.07	−0.08	0.02	—					5.30	4.57	—	—
TGC (X6)	0.05	0.16	0.01	−0.01	−0.12	—				0.58	0.36	—	—
LTLT (X7)	0.10	−0.00	−0.01	0.08	−0.04	0.08	—			4.11	4.31	—	—
LG (X8)	0.03	−0.06	0.10	−0.03	0.09	−0.36	−0.05	—		0.44	0.50	—	—
LA (X9)	0.11	0.02	−0.01	0.13	−0.04	−0.01	0.42	0.08	—	47.77	12.38	—	—

Note: N = 228 teams. All correlations were calculated at the group level. Cronbach’s alphas are presented within parentheses in diagonal entries.

AVE, average variance extracted; CR, composite reliability; SD, standard deviation. Correlations above .10 are statically significant (one tailed tests); LA, leader age; LG, leader gender; LTLT, leader team-leading tenure; LTT, leader’s trust in team; TCC, team collaborative climate; TGC, team gender composition; TPOSC, team perceived organizational support for creativity; TRC, team radical creativity; TS, team size.

Hypothesis testing

To test the effects of the interactions (LTT × TCC and TPOSC × TCC), we formed single observed indices for the variables involved in the multiplicative terms. This is a recommended procedure to reduce model complexity (Cadogan, Kuivalainen, and Sundqvist 2009). In the presence of latent variables, each with multiple indicators, forming product terms between items of the two separate constructs is likely to result in several problems, such as correlations among residuals (Marsh, Wen, and Hau 2004). In this context, a method recommended by Collier (2020) is the mixed model approach, in which the moderating effect is included in the estimation as an index. The first step involves forming a composite index for the independent and moderator variables by averaging the corresponding items. Subsequently, the two indexes are multiplied to form the interaction term. Prior to forming the product terms, we mean-centered the two indices to reduce multicollinearity. We used Amos (version 28) to test the hypothesized model. Table 3 shows the complete results of the direct, indirect, and moderating effects. In the process of fitting the model, we observed that some of the items denoted relevant departures from normality. Accordingly, we resorted to bootstrapping, which delivers adjusted standard errors (Byrne 2010).

Table 3.

Direct, indirect, and moderation results.

Outcome	Estimate	SE	P
Team perceived organizational support for creativity
Leader’s trust in team	0.36	0.20	.036
Team radical creativity
Leader’s trust in team	0.51	0.16	.000
Team perceived organizational support for creativity	0.13	0.08	.042
Team collaborative climate	−0.08	0.11	.231
Leader age	0.01	0.01	.136
Mediation analysis
Leader’s trust in team → team perceived organizational support for creativity → team radical creativity	0.05	0.04	.034
Interaction terms
Team collaborative climate × leader’s trust in team → team radical creativity	0.34	0.15	.014
Team collaborative climate × team perceived organizational support for creativity → team radical creativity	−0.07	0.07	.181
Chi-square	406.31 (df = 141, P < .001)
TLI	.92
CFI	.93
RMSEA	.09
AIC	504.31
ECVI	2.22

Note: N = 228 teams. One-tailed tests. Coefficients are unstandardized.

The results provide support for most hypotheses: H₁: the direct effect of LTT on TRC (b = 0.51, SE = 0.16, t = 3.54, P = .000); H₂: the direct effect of TPOSC on TRC (b = 0.13, SE = 0.08, t = 2.15, P = .042); H₃: the direct effect of LTT on TPOSC (b = 0.36, SE = 0.20, t = 2.72, P = .036); and H₄: the indirect effect of LTT on TRC via TPOSC (b = 0.05, 95% confidence interval [CI] = [−0.00, 0.16], P = .034). H₅ proposed the moderating effect of TCC on the relationship between LTT and TRC. The coefficient of this interaction is significant (b = 0.34, SE = 0.15, t = 3.04, P = .014), so H₅ is supported. H₆ proposed the moderating effect of TCC on the relationship between TPOSC and TRC. This interaction is not significant (b = −0.07, SE = 0.07, t = −1.43, P = .181), so H₆ is not supported.

In addition, for the significant interaction (TCC × LTT), the plot (see fig. 2) suggests that the relationship between TCC and TRC is stronger when LTT is higher than when it is low. We conducted a simple slopes analysis to examine the nature of this interaction. When TCC is high, LTT has a stronger positive effect on TRC (b = 0.80, P = .001) than when TCC is low (b = 0.22, P = .047).

Figure 2.

Moderating effects of TCC on LTT-TRC.

Discussion

Creativity in the public sector is crucial to addressing social issues and enhancing service performance (Houtgraaf, Kruyen, and van Thiel 2023; Salge and Vera 2012). However, bureaucracy, risk aversion, and limited competition present obstacles to creativity (Boyne 2002; Chen and Bozeman 2014; Rangarajan 2008). Our study explores how contextual factors can promote radical creativity among public servants, mitigating bureaucratic constraints. We investigate the role of leaders’ trust in teams, perceived organizational support, and team climate, offering insights often overlooked in public administration literature (Houtgraaf, Kruyen, and van Thiel 2024). We accomplished our research objectives by collecting data from two different sources at three different points in time. The majority of our hypotheses were supported, offering significant theoretical and managerial implications for public sector organizations.

Past studies have shown that individuals’ trust in their leader is conducive to creativity (e.g., Gong et al. 2010). Surprisingly, a leader’s trust in the team has generally received little attention in previous studies (Han, Harold, and Cheong 2019). This is a serious research gap, as the leader’s trust in the team can influence team performance (Spreitzer and Mishra 1999) and other team outcomes. This study finds support for the positive relationship between the leaders’ trust in the team and TRC. Hence, this result shows that leaders in public organizations can have an important role in creating an environment that overcomes red tape and formalization issues to foster more radical creative endeavors among public servants. This could facilitate the introduction of complex innovations in public services, which face increased barriers (Torugsa and Arundel 2016), benefiting the delivery of public services. A leader’s trust in the team is likely to address the self-determination needs of public servants, thereby fostering their (intrinsic) motivation to engage with out-of-the-box ideas. Hence, the leader’s trust in the team appears to be an important force behind public sector motivation, which has been deemed important for instilling change-oriented behaviors in public servants (Vigoda-Gadot and Beeri 2011).

Moreover, many studies (e.g., Griep and Bankins 2020) show a link between employees’ perception of organizational support and trust in their supervisor. However, the impact of leaders’ trust in their teams on perceived organizational support for creativity remains unexplored. Our study fills this gap, contributing to the trust–TRC literature, particularly in the public sector. Future research should focus on other outcomes of leaders’ trust in teams, such as its influence on service quality and public servant commitment, crucial for performance. Additionally, leaders’ trust can foster risk-taking and drive functional change (Vigoda-Gadot and Beeri 2011), and future studies could explore how this trust promotes climates of learning and customer orientation, key for innovation in the public sector (Salge and Vera 2012).

The results concerning trust indicate that leaders’ trust in their teams is a tool that enables managers in public organizations to overcome institutional barriers to generate radical creativity. This makes it important to understand the antecedents of trust, which has been deemed “a lubricant of organizational functioning,” key to the performance of public organizations (Cho and Poister 2013, p. 817). Although a few past studies have looked at the antecedents of employee trust in higher levels of management in public administration (e.g., Cho and Poister 2013), our study highlights the need to understand how firms can lead managers to trust the teams they supervise.

Regarding the relationship between TPOSC and TRC, our results reveal that the greater the former, the greater the latter. When the team believes that the public organization supports and values its creative performance (Farmer, Tierney, and Kung-McIntyre 2003; Kwan et al. 2018), it tends to feel more engaged and secure in pursuing risky, more challenging tasks (Ntoumanis and Biddle 1999). Such an environment enables public servants to fulfill their needs for relatedness, autonomy, and competence. Hence, by fulfilling self-determination needs, support for creativity ends up contributing to a team’s radical ideas. This is a novel result in the context of TRC but it is in line with past studies relating perceived support for creativity and creativity at the employee level (e.g., de Stobbeleir, Ashford, and Buyens 2011), and linking climate for creativity in public organizations with innovation (Callens et al. 2022). Therefore, through the creation of such an internal environment, public organizations cultivate the generation of ideas with a higher level of novelty, potentially resulting in more transformative innovations (cf. Torugsa and Arundel 2016). Given the role played by support for creativity, a key challenge for theory and public organizations is how to create such an environment. This is a major issue, given that organizations in the public sector face no or low levels of competitive pressure over innovation, have bureaucratic structures, and have a higher risk aversion (Callens et al. 2022).

The results also indicate that beyond the direct relationship between the leader’s trust in the team and the team’s radical creativity, there is an indirect relationship through TPOSC. As a result of the leader’s trust, the team perceives the environment as more favorable to experimentation, as its members believe that the work context gives due support to creativity (Farmer, Tierney, and Kung-McIntyre 2003). In line with SDT, such an environment increases teams’ intrinsic motivation, which fuels risk-taking (Ntoumanis and Biddle 1999), resulting in the generation of radical ideas. Therefore, our study adds to the literature on TRC by unveiling that perceived organizational support for creativity within a team serves as a mediator in the relationship between a leader’s trust in the team and TRC. This suggests that future research on public organizations could explore other mediators that may intervene in the link between the leader’s trust in the team and TRC. Alternative mediation mechanisms can include, for example, team conflict.

Finally, our results suggest that TCC in public organizations moderates the relationship between the leader’s trust in the team and TRC. The results indicate that the climate for cooperation within the team, which facilitates the satisfaction of self-determination needs, can intensify the relationship between a leader’s trust in his/her team and TRC. When the leader trusts in the team and the climate within the team is characterized by collaboration, the team is likely to feel more comfortable, secure, and intrinsically motivated, thereby enhancing the willingness to take risks and propose new radical ideas. This means that maximal results in terms of radical creativity are attained when a leader’s trust in the team matches the internal functioning of the team. This is also a novel contribution to the creativity literature in relation to the role of team climate in public management and, more generally, in the creativity literature. Hence, the results suggest that the relationship between a leader’s trust in the team and TRC is contingent upon other contextual elements in the environment of a public organization. Therefore, it is important to identify other contextual circumstances in public organizations that might affect such a relationship. This includes, for example, organizational culture, which plays an important role in shaping the performance of public organizations (Garnett, Marlowe, and Pandey 2008). However, contrary to our predictions, collaborative climate does not moderate the relationship between TPOSC and TRC. It is possible that a TCC might engender forces that replicate those associated with an environment that is perceived as supporting creative endeavors, and this overlap might have rendered a non-significant interaction.

Managerial implications

The findings of the current study indicate various avenues that may be of interest to managers seeking to foster TRC in public settings. First, the results of this study suggest that when leaders trust their teams, the latter tend to generate more radically creative ideas. This reinforces the importance of considering that leaders and teams are partners in a social exchange. In order to build leaders’ trust in their teams, public managers can foster high-quality leader–member exchange (LMX) relationships. The LMX theory considers that a “relationship is built through interpersonal exchanges in which parties to the relationship evaluate the ability, benevolence, and integrity of each other,” thus clarifying how mutual trust develops in hierarchical relationships in organizations (Brower, Schoorman, and Tan 2000, p. 227). To foster high-quality exchanges, public organizations can, for example, look for supervisors and subordinates who are agreeable, a trait that facilitates trustworthiness, and hire (or develop) subordinates with high core self-evaluations, a compound construct including self-esteem, self-efficacy, emotional stability, and locus of control, traits that involve a strong ability and work motivation elements that are important for exchange relationships (Sears and Hackett 2011). Hence, a public work environment marked by high-quality LMX relationships should make the team feel more comfortable taking risks and wanting to reciprocate the positive expectations placed on them.

The results also indicate that a team’s perceptions of the organizational support for creativity partially mediates the relationship between the leader’s trust in the team and TRC. Therefore, to promote radically creative outcomes from their teams, organizations must engender an environment in which team members feel more encouraged and supported in generating radical ideas. Organizations can establish creativity as an element of the work performance process and create mechanisms to encourage and reward the team’s radical creativity in performance evaluation processes. More specifically, organizations can, for example, use extrinsic rewards (e.g., pay, promotion, and additional benefits) or intrinsic rewards (e.g., praise, approval, and recognition) (Shin and Kim 2015) to increase perceived organizational support for creativity.

Moreover, it was determined that the collaborative climate of the team moderates the relationship between the leader’s trust in the team and TRC. Accordingly, public organizations should put mechanisms in place that are conducive to a collaborative atmosphere in their work environment. For this reason, managers in public organizations should work on a plan to bring people closer to each other in the workplace, stimulating a collaborative climate to provide more psychologically friendly interactions. Specific training, like team building activities, and development programs can be implemented to facilitate knowledge sharing and reduce the factors that hinder collaboration within teams. Finally, human resources management practices (for instance, rewards for team achievements) and leadership initiatives (such as regular meetings) can facilitate the generation of a collaborative climate within the team (Černe et al. 2017).

Limitations and future research directions

Our study combines the use of multiple sources and multiple time periods, which is considered a strong design because it reduces “the possibility of various sources of CMV influence the results and it increases causal inferences” (Podsakoff et al. 2024, p. 38). Nonetheless, by introducing a specific time lag (1 month), we assume that the phenomena under investigation are stable over the chosen period. However, in organizational studies, we lack a comprehensive understanding of the duration and patterns of most phenomena (Shipp and Cole 2015). Therefore, the lag used can be either too short or too long, failing to capture appropriately the relationships studied (Podsakoff et al. 2024). For example, a team’s perception of the support received to engage in a creativity process, measured at T2, may change during the month between T2 and T3, and the effect on the team’s creativity captured may be the result of the support received last week, for instance, rather than that measured at T2. Thus, future research may adopt a design that takes into account the fluctuation of our studied variables over time, such as diary designs.

Additionally, this is a non-experimental study and, although predictor, mediator, and criterion variables were collected at three different moments, there was no manipulation of the independent variable, and this prevents us from establishing causal conclusions. Accordingly, to further advance knowledge of these relationships, future research with experimental methods could be conducted. For example, an experimental study could be implemented, in which team leaders in a public organization would take part in an intervention designed to develop their levels of trust in the team and the ability to communicate this to team members. After the intervention, team members would be asked to rate their perception of support for creativity, and team leaders would rate the team’s radical creativity. With this type of design, we could have more control over alternative possible explanations for the proposed relationships, reinforcing, in turn, the internal validity of the study and the confidence in the results obtained.

As our study focused exclusively on Brazilian public organizations teams, it is also important to acknowledge potential limitations related to its external validity. The specific nature of the country under investigation, with its unique socio-economic and cultural characteristics, and the way it adopted NPM may affect the generalizability of our conclusions. Consequently, the insights gleaned from our research offer valuable perspectives specific to the interplay between leader trust and TRC within the context of Brazilian public organizations. However, in light of these considerations, future research should consider exploring how variations across countries with diverse political, social, and economic contexts affect the relationships observed in the current study.

Finally, we recognize the potential for further exploration into alternative studies that consider additional contextual and individual antecedents influencing TRC in public organizations. For instance, our current perspective on trust positions the leader as a trustor and the team as a trustee. However, future investigations might adopt a reversed approach, casting the team as the trustor and the leader as the trustee. Hence, exploring the nuanced levels of trust exchanged between the leader and the team is another avenue for inquiry. Moreover, while we have considered TPOSC as a mediator and TCC as a moderator, future research could delve into the roles of other team characteristics. Investigating variables such as the promotion/prevention focus of the team or the team innovative culture may provide further insights into the relationship between the leader’s trust in the team and TRC. Additionally, the exploration of control mechanisms employed by organizations to guide subordinate efforts has been fruitful in explaining various behaviors (e.g., Schepers et al. 2012). It would be worthwhile to assess whether and how such mechanisms influence radical creativity within teams. Hence, these avenues for future studies suggest that there are exciting opportunities for future research seeking to further illuminate the intricate dynamics influencing TRC.

Conclusion

Building on SDT, and diverging from prior studies, we hypothesized and empirically tested a model designed to elucidate the conditions under which leaders’ trust in their teams amplifies TRC. Thus, our findings offer valuable insights into the impact of leader trust on TRC. Additionally, we also showed that TPOSC mediated the effect of the leader’s trust on radical creativity. We also contribute by showing that a TCC plays an important role in the generation of radical ideas, particularly in strengthening the link between leader trust and radical creativity. Finally, we also stress that our study was conducted within the realm of public sector teams, a significant yet often overlooked context in the study of creativity. In summary, our contribution to existing knowledge lies in offering insights into the ways leaders’ trust in their teams influences radical creative outcomes and addressing the neglected aspects of this context.

Funding

This work was supported by national funds through FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., Project UIDB/05037/2020.

Conflicts of interest: None declared.

Ethical approval

This manuscript has been approved by the ethics committee Comissão de Ética e Deontologia da Investigação of Faculdade de Psicologia e de Ciências da Educação da Universidade de Coimbra, CEDI/FPCEUC:78/R_13.

Data availability

The data underlying this article are available in its Supplementary material.