Top management styles and organizational innovation: Perception of learning as a mediator

Abstract

As a key influencing factor, top management is very important for organizational innovation. With the survey data from 112 Chinese firms, the relationship between top management styles and organizational innovation is analyzed. Based on cluster analysis, four styles of top management, labelled mechanical, moderate, autocratic entrepreneurial and democratic entrepreneurial, were empirically derived firstly. The discriminant analysis shows the significant diversity of organizational innovation between different top management styles. A top management style with higher entrepreneurial, long-term, and participative orientation like democratic entrepreneurial style seems to be having better organizational innovation performance. Then, the mediating role of perception of learning between top management styles and organizational innovation is verified. The findings show that a firm can improve organizational innovation by transforming the top management style to facilitate members' perception of learning.