Strengths-based leadership and bootleg innovation: The roles of growth need strength and work centrality

Bootleg innovation serves as a vital supplement to routine innovation, yet strengths-based leadership mechanisms driving such informal behavior remain underexplored. This study examined the mediation mechanism of growth need strength, as well as the boundary condition set by work centrality, in the association between strengths-based leadership and bootleg innovation. We employed a time-lagged design across two waves to gather data from 375 employees within the technology sector (Wave 1, n = 583; Wave 2, n = 425). The final sample consisted of 47.5% males, with 67.7% aged between 30 and 40. Hierarchical regression results found that strengths-based leadership serves as a predictive factor of employee bootleg innovation. Furthermore, growth need strength was found to fully mediate this association, suggesting that such leadership fuels employees’ developmental desires, which in turn prompts them to undertake bootleg innovation. Moreover, it was found that work centrality attenuates the positive association between strengths-based leadership and bootleg innovation. Based on these findings, we suggest that organizations focus their strengths-based leadership efforts on employees with lower work centrality, as high work centrality naturally substitutes for the need for external leadership support.