Leadership and Innovation in Organizations: A Systematic Review of Factors That Mediate or Moderate the Relationship

Abstract

A leader supports teams and individuals as they turn their creative efforts into innovations (leader as facilitator) and manages the organization's goals and activities aimed at innovation (leader as manager). This review focuses on when and how leadership relates to innovation (i.e., the factors that moderate or mediate the relationship between leadership and innovation). The sample consists of 30 empirical studies in which leadership is treated as the independent variable and innovation as the dependent variable. In addition to reviewing moderating and mediating factors, we identified two factors where the findings are ambiguous. The review proposes three new factors that may mediate or moderate the relationship between leadership and innovation.

Analyzing the Effect of the Senior Management’s Support on the Relationship between Factors Affecting and Employees’ Performance in the Al-Zawiya University of Libya

“…3;2017 2005; Oke et al, 2009;Chahine & Goergen, 2013;Agbim et al, 2013). According to other researchers, the support of top management support is a key element in affecting adoption of innovative activities in organizations (Elenkov et al, 2005;Makri & Scandura, 2010;Denti, 2012;Kim et al, 2012;Hoang et al, 2009;Al-Refaie et al, 2011). In this study, the following research hypotheses are relevant to senior management's support variable as displayed in Figure 1.…”

How does altruistic leader behavior foster radical innovation? The mediating effect of organizational learning capability

“…Nevertheless, further knowledge is still needed on how to generate organizational environments in which radical innovations can thrive. Several authors have stressed the need to continue working on the antecedents of radical innovations and emphasize the importance of leadership as a facilitator of this type of innovation (Chang et al, 2012;Denti & Hemlin, 2012).…”

“…They can also create an environment in which employees feel protected, take risks, and are therefore more inclined to innovate (Nutt, 2002). Some authors such as Denti and Hemlin (2012) also call for more research on leadership when what the organization aims is to achieve radical innovations. Chang et al (2012) argue that many of the main determinants of radical innovation may still be unidentified and propose leadership as one of the issues to be considered in future research.…”

Modelling organisational innovation in UAE: investigating the love triangle involving leadership, organisational culture and innovation

“…This definition is in line with current conceptualisation of the construct linking innovation with the introduction of valuable and useful new products/services by an organisation e.g., (Denti and Hemlin, 2012;Gumusluoglu and Ilsev, 2009;Sarros et al, 2008). Bharadwaj and Menon (2000) propose that innovation is driven by both the individual efforts as well as organisational interventions, so that the presence of a knowledge sharing culture in an organisation leads to improved operational performance (Wang and Wang, 2012).…”