The Mediating Effect of Employee Creativity on the Relationship between Situational Leadership and Marketing Innovation in the Malaysian Retail Industry

The main objective of the study is to examine the effect of situational leadership on marketing innovation in the Malaysian retail industry, particularly through the mediating role of employee creativity. Grounded in Situational Leadership Theory and Componential Theory of Creativity, the study adopts a quantitative research design with a cross-sectional approach. A non-probability sampling design using purposive sampling was employed to select full-time retail workers located in Klang Valley area, resulting in a final sample of 398 valid responses analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics. The findings provide strong empirical support for all four hypotheses, indicating that situational leadership has a positive and significant relationship with both marketing innovation (r = 0.518) and employee creativity (r = 0.597), while employee creativity shows a strong relationship with marketing innovation (r = 0.737). More importantly, mediation analysis confirms that employee creativity acts as a full mediator (H4), suggesting that leadership adaptability does not directly enhance innovation but instead fosters a supportive environment that promotes creative behaviors necessary for marketing breakthroughs (indirect effect = 0.4233). In conclusion, while the study underscores the importance of adaptive leadership in the retail sector, future research should consider longitudinal designs and expand the geographical and industrial scope to sectors such as banking and hospitality to further validate these causal relationships.

Employee Creativity, Marketing Innovation, Retail Industry, Situational Leadership, Componential Theory of Creativity

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