Abstract:

Leadership support is largely related with the fostering of creativity and development, yet empirical findings indicate that similar supportive behaviours can produce either follower growth or dependency (Koseoglu et al., 2017; Zhao et al., 2025). Existing explanations explore leadership styles, psychological safety, and empowerment and find positive relationships with creativity, but do not specify the interaction-level mechanism through which these divergent outcomes emerge. This paper addresses this gap by introducing leader stance toward ownership as the critical micro-process shaping the effects of support in help-seeking episodes. Conceptualising supportive exchanges as bounded conversational events, the paper proposes a process model in which leaders allocate problem-solving authority either centrally or in a follower-enabling manner. These ownership positions activate distinct attributional shifts and reinforcement dynamics that accumulate into dependency stabilisation or identity development over time. By reframing leadership as a micro-foundational process of agency allocation enacted through conversational positioning, the framework advances a process-based explanation of the conditional effects of leader support. It identifies a learnable mechanism for intentionally cultivating development.

Please choose your submission type: Full Paper

Primary Track: Leadership and Leadership Development

Keywords: Traditional paradigms of leadership, including traits, behaviour and contingency approaches;Leadership skills and development;Psychodynamic approach to leadership;Transformational leadership in organisations;Emerging leadership theories

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Ms. Tanya Bennett