Style and substance: Towards an integrated framework for research into leadership and creativity

This paper is the first stage in a cross-disciplinary research project on leadership and creativity in the media industries and their inter-relationship. It reviews the treatment of these issues in three bodies of literature – media management research, ‘mainstream’ management research, and published accounts of two examples of creativity-focused leadership in the media: Greg Dyke at the BBC, and Michael Eisner at Walt Disney. It finds that leadership and creativity have been under-addressed to date by media management researchers. Leadership theory although extensive does not focus explicitly on creativity. Theories of organisational creativity are more concise but do not address leadership directly. Four contact points are identified between the bodies of theory. The first is intrinsic motivation: this is central to transformational and charismatic leadership theories and also to creativity theories, although it confers different benefits. A second link is vision: in both research streams a leader develops a vision which influences the nature of the creative challenge. A third link involves a leader’s actions in establishing an environmental context conducive to creativity. A fourth, less obvious, point of connection concerns emotions: emotions on the part of leaders and those led are involved in leadership processes, and also fundamental to the intrinsically motivated state, which is central to organisational creativity. This analysis is used to provide insights for how empirical research might be approached. It proposes that this should be exploratory, phenomenological, processual, contextual and pluralist. The paper also highlights potential research themes. The first concerns who is actually leading in the media industries, with a particular focus on collaborative leadership. The second is the tension between optimising current operations and boosting flexibility and creativity. A third concerns the role of emotions in leadership, creativity, and the media industries.