A spotlight on Professor He Peng, School of Management Fudan University, and his research into leadership integrity included in the recently published Routledge CoBS book The Employee and the Post-Pandemic Workplace: Towards a new, enlightened working environment.

Integrity: A leadership attribute that can spark employee creativity by Tom Gamble. Related research: Peng, H., Wei, F. Trickle-Down Effects of Perceived Leader Integrity on Employee Creativity: A Moderated Mediation Model. J Bus Ethics 150, 837–851 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-016-3226-3.

Professor He Peng is a widely published academic based at the prestigious School of Management Fudan University in Shanghai, and whose research fields focus on organizational behavior and human resource management, leadership, and indigenous management.

The beauty of Prof. Peng’s research lies in exploring the psychology of leadership and workplace relations from an original, some would say atypical, viewpoint – be it jealousy and conflict, employee voice, knowledge hiding, how humility and modesty impact job and corporate performance, and the impact of integrity on behaviours. Indeed, we are lucky at the CoBS to have been able to highlight several of these fascinating research findings via CoBS Insights.

Further, Prof. He Peng’s research on leader integrity features in the latest Routledge-CoBS book The Employee and the Post-Pandemic Workplace: Towards a new, enlightened working environment. In this interview, Prof. Peng gives the CoBS a special insight into the takeaways to be gleaned from his work included in the publication.

The importance of ethical standards

“Leader behavioural integrity,” asserts Prof. Peng, “can significantly increase employee creativity.” Indeed, it can flow down through an organizational hierarchy from high-level managers to lower-level managers, to finally manifest itself in employee creativity. And for him, it is the responsible culture of the organisation or firm that creates the necessary ethical standards to shape and strengthen the positive effects of leader behavioral integrity on employee creativity.

Why should all this be important in the context of the post-pandemic workplace? Prof. He Peng emphasizes the role of creativity and its essential influence in building advantages for the organisation – especially in a post-pandemic era marked by stagnant growth, tensions caused by shortages, and the tendency to retract from the type of globalized business model so typical of the pre-pandemic period.

Indeed, until not so long ago, creativity was relegated to the lower end of companies’ skills lists. With the challenges of the post-pandemic era, coupled with rapid technological advances, it has now become one of the most solicited employee skills. After all, thinking out of the box can be a game changer in terms of product innovation, new market penetration, and subsequent business growth.

“Our research,” says Prof. Peng, referring to the co-authored paper Trickle-Down Effects of Perceived Leader Integrity on Employee Creativity published in the Journal of Business Ethics, “provides very usual practical implications. Among our findings, we reveal that to encourage employee creativity and innovation, organisations would be wise to underscore leader integrity.”

Fostering employee creativity: Towards the future  

To make this happen, Prof. Peng states that change needs to occur within firms and organisations, hopefully with the latter considering ways in which to include the notion of leadership integrity in their managerial actions – for example, making it a feature of HR policy to hire or promote employees with a high level of integrity.

“Organizations should consider the benefits of leader integrity at different levels,” adds Prof. Peng. “With organizations especially putting more effort into fostering the integrity of higher-level leaders because, as our research has demonstrated, the confidence leaders instill as a result of their ethical behaviors plays a highly important role in in encouraging employee creativity.”

Discover the book chapter Leader Integrity: How it influences the organisation and employee creativity. Based on Professor He Peng’s research included in the book:

The Employee and the Post-Pandemic Workplace: Towards a new, enlightened working environment

Useful links:

• Link up with Prof. He Peng on LinkedIn
• Discover School of Management Fudan University
• Read a related article: How leaders can create fun in the workplace Find out more about the Routledge-CoBS book series.

Learn more about the Council on Business & Society

The Council on Business & Society (The CoBS), visionary in its conception and purpose, was created in 2011, and is dedicated to promoting responsible leadership and tackling issues at the crossroads of business and society including sustainability, diversity, ethical leadership and the place responsible business has to play in contributing to the common good.  

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Member schools are all “Triple Crown” accredited AACSB, EQUIS and AMBA and leaders in their respective countries.

• ESSEC Business School, France, Singapore, Morocco
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• School of Management Fudan University, China
• IE Business School, Spain
• Keio Business School, Japan
• Monash Business School, Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia
• Olin Business School, USA
• Smith School of Business, Canada
• Stellenbosch Business School, South Africa
• Trinity Business School, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
• Warwick Business School, United Kingdom.