A STUDY ON THE IMPACT OF INCLUSIVE LEADERSHIP ON EMPLOYEE DEVIANT INNOVATION BEHAVIOUR: EVIDENCE FROM CHINESE CULTURAL AND CREATIVE ENTERPRISE

In today’s world of globalization and digital, cultural, and creative business is becoming the main driving force for high-end local development. Employees acting as main actors of innovations and employees performing deviant innovations are voluntary acts to achieve the purpose of innovation without complying with all the organization's rules. Leadership is a very critical antecedent that has an impact on this behavior; inclusive leadership encourages employees to do more deviant innovation and behave differently, encourages different voices, and challenges the boss. Based on the social cognition theory, this paper takes sample data of leaders and employees in cultural and creative enterprises in various parts of China collected in March-July 2025 as a whole and comprehensively analyzes the mechanism by which inclusive leadership affects the deviant innovation behavior of employees. From the result, it is clear that the inclusive leader increases employee psychological safety and the risk that they take; by providing an open and accepting environment, it allows employees to desire to break norms and change the status quo. Control for factors like company scale, industry kind, and work features, and these still stand; inclusive leadership, this sort of leadership emphasizing people’s values and their initiatives, is an essential driver of encouraging deviant innovations and improving an organization’s performance in cultural and creative industries.