Transformational leadership, creativity, and organizational innovation

Abstract

This study proposes a model of the impact of transformational leadership both on followers' creativity at the individual level and on innovation at the organizational level. The model is tested on 163 R&D personnel and managers at 43 micro-and small-sized Turkish software development companies. The results suggest that transformational leadership has important effects on creativity at both the individual and organizational levels. At the individual level, the results of hierarchical linear modeling show that there is a positive relationship between transformational leadership and employees' creativity. In addition, transformational leadership influences employees' creativity through psychological empowerment. At the organizational level, the results of regression analysis reveal that transformational leadership positively associates with organizational innovation, which is measured with a market-oriented criterion developed specifically for developing countries and newly developing industries. The implications of the findings along with some potential practical applications are discussed.

Transformational and transactional leadership and innovative behavior: The moderating role of psychological empowerment

“…Research shows that transformational leaders put greater emphasis on innovation than transactional leaders (Church & Waclawski, 1998;Howell & Higgins, 1990). In addition, recent research found a positive relationship between transformational leadership and organizational innovation (Gumusluoglu & Ilsev, 2009;Jung, Chow, & Wu, 2003;Jung, Wu, & Chow, 2008). However, as these results concern organizational innovation, they do not provide evidence that transformational leaders are more effective in stimulating innovative behavior among followers-organizational innovation could also flow from strategic decisions such as greater investments in research and development.…”

“…In comparison to followers of transactional leaders, followers of transformational leaders have been found to have higher creative performance on idea generation tasks in experimental studies (Jung, 2001;Jung & Avolio, 2000). In addition, an increase in transformational leadership has been related to improved idea generation in laboratory studies (directly; Sosik, Kahai, & Avolio, 1998;and indirectly;Sosik, Kahai, & Avolio, 1999) and to ratings of follower creativity in field studies (Gumusluoglu & Ilsev, 2009;Shin & Zhou, 2003;cf. Shin & Zhou, 2007 in diverse teams).…”

The Mediating Role of Intrinsic Motivation Between Transformational Leadership And Creativity

“…Researchers found intrinsic motivation having a significant relationship with creativity [26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33]. Furthermore, several studies established that intrinsic motivation is positively related and moderately related [34][35][36].…”

“…Conventionally, motivation is of two types extrinsic and intrinsic and research authenticated the significance of intrinsic motivation for creativity [26][27][28][29][30]. Additionally, some other researches focused on the significance of intrinsic motivation for creativity in the workplace [31][32][33].…”

“…In fact, inspirational leaders may motivate their workers to stay dedicated to and become a part of the common dream in the organization. Furthermore, transformational leaders who show individual thought give a supportive atmosphere to their followers and they listen precisely to the followers' needs and enhance the followers' motivation so that they can focus on doing their tasks in a better way [26]. Moreover, leaders having intellectual stimulation motivate followers' eagerness in achieving their work creatively and efficiently.…”