Supervisory paradoxical leadership and graduate students’ creative behavior: A multiple mediation model

The complexity and rapid transformation of the current higher education environment require supervisors to demonstrate paradoxical yet complementary leadership behaviors, such as providing structured guidance alongside flexible support, and balancing self-direction with care for others. Grounded in Social Information Processing Theory, this study explores the impact of Supervisory Paradoxical Leadership (SPL) on graduate students’ creative behavior and examines the mediating effects of creative role identity, relationship quality, and psychological safety. Based on a survey of 428 graduate students from a leading university in China, the proposed model was tested using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The results indicate that SPL significantly and positively predicts graduate students’ creative behavior, and that creative role identity, relationship quality, and psychological safety serve as parallel mediators in this relationship. Among the three mediators, psychological safety exhibited the strongest indirect effect, followed by creative role identity and relationship quality. These findings reveal the internal mechanisms by which supervisory paradoxical leadership fosters students’ creative behavior through shaping their role cognition, relational perceptions, and psychological experiences. The study provides both theoretical insights and practical implications for enhancing supervisory strategies and fostering creativity among graduate students.