The Creative Advantage: Sustainable Leadership in Digitally Evolving Business World

The researchers analysed responses from 456 white-collar employees across 109 businesses in Giresun, Kars and Kırşehir, collecting questionnaires between 2 June and 10 December 2025.

Buying new software can change the tools people use without changing the way a business works, especially when employees have little say in how technology fits their jobs or how resources are used. For smaller firms facing pressure to modernise and reduce waste, leadership and the space for new ideas deserve attention alongside equipment investment.

Research published in Frontiers in Psychology examines these connections in "The mediating role of artificial intelligence perception and creative idea generation in the impact of sustainable leadership on digital transformation and circular economy awareness." Ceyda Yerdelen-Kaygin and colleagues surveyed employees in Turkish small and medium-sized enterprises to explore how leadership relates to digital change and resource awareness, including the possible roles of attitudes towards AI and employees' creative thinking.

Sustainable leadership brings economic, social and environmental priorities into business decisions, creating lasting value. The research connects this approach with a workplace's ability to adapt, suggesting that employees' ideas and their understanding of technology help explain the relationship between leadership and organisational change, with creativity showing the stronger links to both outcomes examined.

What employees in 109 Turkish businesses revealed

The researchers analysed responses from 456 white-collar employees across 109 businesses in Giresun, Kars and Kırşehir, collecting questionnaires between 2 June and 10 December 2025. Participants rated statements about sustainable leadership, AI perceptions, creative idea generation, digital transformation and circular economy awareness on a five-point scale, providing a picture of how these features were experienced inside their workplaces.

The analysis used structural equation modelling to examine the relationships together, with 5,000 bootstrap resamples to assess the evidence supporting the proposed pathways. Its foundation was Dynamic Capabilities Theory, which describes how organisations recognise change, pursue opportunities and reorganise their resources; the researchers applied this framework to leadership, technology and human creativity within the same model.

Creative thinking showed the stronger connection

Employees who reported stronger sustainable leadership also reported more favourable perceptions of AI, greater creative idea generation, more digital transformation and higher circular economy awareness. Leadership's strongest direct relationship was with creative idea generation, supporting the authors' view that managers can play an important role in creating conditions where employees question familiar routines and suggest useful alternatives.

Creative idea generation had stronger estimated links than AI perceptions with both digital transformation and circular economy awareness. The findings suggest that a workforce's capacity to rethink products, processes and everyday decisions deserves a central place in discussions about digital and environmental change, alongside the attention businesses give to emerging technologies.

Circular economy awareness concerns understanding practices such as repair, reuse, remanufacturing and keeping materials in circulation, reducing dependence on a system of making, using and discarding products. The full model accounted for 67% of the variation in reported digital transformation and 59.8% in circular economy awareness, describing how well the combined relationships explained differences within this sample.

AI attitudes formed a smaller bridge to digital change

The researchers found evidence for indirect relationships connecting sustainable leadership with both outcomes through AI perceptions and creative idea generation. They described all four routes as partial mediation, meaning that these two factors helped explain the leadership relationships without accounting for them completely; direct links between leadership and the outcomes remained in the model.

The route connecting leadership to digital transformation through AI perceptions was particularly modest. The paper reported a mediation-share measure of 12.6%, below its stated 20% benchmark for partial mediation, and the authors acknowledged that their interpretation was open to criticism despite supporting bootstrap evidence. Their discussion suggests that favourable attitudes towards AI need support from leadership decisions, resource allocation and suitable infrastructure to translate into organisational change.

The indirect pathways through creativity were larger for both outcomes, giving human idea generation a prominent place in the authors' interpretation. Employees who can develop practical alternatives may help connect a leader's sustainability priorities with changes in workflows and product thinking, although the survey cannot establish that these processes actually unfolded in that order.

Turning the findings into workplace action

For managers, the paper recommends treating digital transformation as a change in workplace culture, strategy and capabilities, supported by technical investment. Creating opportunities for employees to suggest improvements, strengthening digital literacy and combining environmental skills with technology training could help staff understand how their work connects with wider business priorities. Responsible AI use, clear resource decisions and support for experimentation form part of this approach.

The findings also support giving employees a role in questioning production models and developing greener alternatives, with managers connecting digital projects to social and environmental goals. A suggestion to repair a component, redesign a process or extend a product's useful life illustrates the kind of practical thinking relevant to circular business models, rather than an outcome measured directly by this research.

The evidence comes from a convenience sample in three Turkish provinces, which limits how confidently it can represent other regions, countries or types of business. Responses relied on employees' own perceptions and could reflect favourable self-presentation or other reporting biases. Data collected during one research period cannot establish cause and effect or show how the relationships develop over time.

Circular economy awareness also does not establish that a business reduced waste or improved environmental performance, and reported digital transformation was not independently verified through operational records. The authors recommend research across multiple time periods, interviews and objective performance information, with further attention to change management, technology acceptance and ethical concerns. Leadership, employee creativity and technological capabilities need to be considered together when businesses plan digital and environmental change.