Unlocking innovative work behavior through paradoxical leadership, work autonomy and creative deviance: A hybrid SEM-ML approach

Innovative work behavior is crucial for maintaining long-term competitiveness and organizational growth. Promoting this behavior is essential and requires discretion, flexibility, and the acceptance of constructive deviation while upholding organizational discipline. Therefore, managing these conflicting demands is vital for leadership. Based on paradox and self-determination theories, we explore how paradoxical leadership impacts innovative work behavior through work autonomy and creative deviance. Self-reported responses were gathered in three waves from 427 employees at software development companies across Pakistan. This study used a hybrid analytical approach combining PLS-SEM with machine learning techniques. The results show that paradoxical leadership significantly enhances innovative work behavior and that work autonomy and creative deviance partly mediate this relationship. Additionally, machine learning analyses indicated that paradoxical leadership was the most influential predictor of innovative work behavior and identified mild nonlinear patterns involving paradoxical leadership and work autonomy. This study discusses contributions and provides practical implications for both theory and practice.