Servant Leadership and Innovative Behaviour: An Empirical Analysis of Ghana’s Manufacturing Sector

Abstract

In the competitive global market, innovation is vital to a firm’s longevity. To this end, organisations seek new and alternative ways to motivate employee innovation. This study examines the role of servant leadership as an antecedent to innovation. Drawing on the social identity model, this study examines the effect of servant leadership, team-member exchange (TMX) and perceived insider status on employee innovative behaviour. Primary data were collected from six manufacturing companies in Ghana. Using a sample of 213 employees and their immediate supervisors, a confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to test the discriminant validity of our measurement model. Hierarchical multiple regression was then used to determine direct and interaction effects, followed by bootstrapping tests to identify mediation and moderated mediation effects. The results showed that servant leadership and TMX are significantly related to perceived insider status. The bootstrapping indirect test and Sobel test demonstrated that perceived insider status mediates the relationship between servant leadership and innovative work behaviour. Moreover, the mediated relationship is only significant when TMX is low. This study empirically validated servant leadership as an antecedent to employee innovative behaviour. The findings demonstrated that perceived insider status is a mediating mechanism in this relationship, with TMX as its boundary condition.

Employee-Organization Fit and Voluntary Green Behavior: A Cross-Level Model Examining the Role of Perceived Insider Status and Green Organizational Climate

“…Indeed, previous studies have identified psychological states such as psychological ownership [26], satisfaction of needs [35], and organizational commitment [30] as mediators of the relationships between employee-organization fit and work behaviors. Fit with the organization largely induces feelings of connection, which are likely to motivate employees to undertake extra-role actions [36,37]. As such, the present study argues that perceived insider status can play a mediating role in the relationship between employee-organization fit and voluntary green behavior [38].…”

“…Being an insider comes with certain responsibilities [36,37]. Once employees perceive themselves as insiders, they must behave in certain ways to meet these responsibilities [49,50].…”

Optimizing Employee Creativity in the Digital Era: Uncovering the Interactional Effects of Abilities, Motivations, and Opportunities

“…Creativity is different from innovation. Innovation refers to the development and implementation of new ideas [32]. As individual or team creativity is often a first step to innovation, both management scholars and practitioners are looking for management tools and approaches to facilitate employee creativity and thereby obtain a better means of initiating the innovation process [8].…”

Challenges to the Promotion of Employee-Driven Innovation in State-Owned Enterprises: Two Cases from the Automotive Sector in China

“…However, these studies seem to take managers' willingness to support EDIs for granted, which is clearly not the case in reality. Regardless of the personal characteristics of top managers [7,13], their decisions are made under many constrains from the corporate governance point of view, for instance, top managers in the large firms in the UK are often under short-term pressures from their shareholders, like pension funds and insurance companies, and therefore they cannot afford to invest in innovation projects that have long payback period, like in-house R&D [14].…”

“…Regardless the impact of personal characteristics and leadership style of top managers on EDIs [7,13], their decision making is also heavily influenced by the firm's corporate governance, i.e., how firms are owned and controlled [14,15]. A firm's corporate governance has a significant impact on decision making of managers, and thus poses many challenges to the promotion of EDIs in firms.…”