Entrepreneurial Leadership and Employee Creativity: The Mediating Role of Employee Ambidexterity in Food and Beverage Manufacturing Firms A Conceptual Perspective

Abstract In today's turbulent business environment, organizations increasingly depend on employee creativity to sustain innovation and competitive advantage. Entrepreneurial leadership has emerged as an important leadership approach that promotes opportunity recognition, innovation, proactive decision-making, and employee empowerment. Although previous studies have established a positive association between entrepreneurial leadership and employee creativity, the mechanisms through which entrepreneurial leadership enhances creative performance remain insufficiently understood. This conceptual paper examines employee ambidexterity as a mediating mechanism linking entrepreneurial leadership and employee creativity. Anchored on Dynamic Capability Theory, the paper argues that entrepreneurial leaders create supportive work environments that encourage employees to simultaneously engage in exploratory and exploitative behaviours, thereby improving their creative performance. By synthesizing existing literature, the paper develops a conceptual framework illustrating the indirect relationship between entrepreneurial leadership and employee creativity through employee ambidexterity. The study contributes to the entrepreneurship and organizational behaviour literature by extending current understanding of how entrepreneurial leadership translates into enhanced creativity. The paper further offers practical implications for managers seeking to foster innovation by promoting employee learning, flexibility, and knowledge integration. Finally, it proposes research propositions for future empirical validation across manufacturing organizations.