Innovational Leadership: A new construct and validation of a scale to measure it/Estilo de Liderazgo para la Innovación: Presentación de un nuevo constructo y validación de una escala para medirlo/Estilo de Liderança para Inovação: apresentação de um novo construto e validação de uma escala para medi-lo. - Vol. 38 Núm. 163, Abril 2022 - Estudios Gerenciales - Libros y Revistas - VLEX 907295940

Innovational Leadership: A new construct and validation of a scale to measure it/Estilo de Liderazgo para la Innovación: Presentación de un nuevo constructo y validación de una escala para medirlo/Estilo de Liderança para Inovação: apresentação de um novo construto e validação de uma escala para medi-lo.

AutorContreras, Francoise
CargoResearch article
  1. Introduction

    Companies face a highly complex and uncertain environment nowadays, they should transform themselves continuously to successfully adapt to these changing circumstances without losing their stability. In this context, innovation is a key factor that helps companies survive and thrive, and employees play a crucial role in this innovation. They create and implement innovative solutions in their organization, thus enhancing its innovation capacity (Purc & Laguna, 2019). Those who think differently and propose innovative and productive changes in their work environment are essential under such conditions. In fact, they are considered critical for companies' survival and success in the current times, since they allow the company to adapt to a changing business environment and help it build and maintain a competitive advantage (AlEssa & Durugbo, 2021; Choi et al., 2016; De Spiegelaere et al., 2014). Therefore, employees should be able to create synergies with others to propose useful ideas or transformations by sharing knowledge and enhancing their learning capacities. This study introduces the term innovational leadership, a kind of leadership that encourages innovative work behavior (IWB) individually in their employees.

    Thus, developing and maintaining employee innovative behaviors is currently the most important and relevant challenge for companies to successfully cope with a complex business environment in which global market forces are highly competitive (Kim & Lee, 2013; Wang et al., 2018). However, despite its importance, the knowledge about organizational and individual factors underlying this behavior is still limited (Shafie et al., 2014). In this regard, a recent review conducted by AlEssa and Durugbo (2021) highlights the need to address the issue of leadership in future research, and suggests to study leadership styles that influence IWB in different industries and countries.

    Although it is well known that leadership is an important driver of employees' IWB, results are not conclusive and there is an important gap in this regard that should be addressed by studying the type of leadership that encourages it in the organizations (Sudibjo & Prameswari, 2021). This study presents a new construct named "Innovational Leadership", that contributes to fill this gap. In addition, we offer a valid questionnaire to measure it, which has practical implications because it can be applied in companies with other organizational and individual variables, allowing them to design more effective interventions to enhance innovative behaviors based on leadership practices.

    This study is presented as follows: first, we present a theoretical framework to support the new construct proposed. Then, we analyze and discuss some terms related to innovational leadership by delimiting the proposed construct. Subsequently, the background to develop the construct and the scale's building process is presented through three sequential studies: In study 1, we present the item generation and initial version of the Innovational Leadership Scale (ILS), including statistical analysis to estimate the dimensionality and reliability of the scale; In study 2, we present an adjusted model and examine the criterion-related validity; In study 3, the psychometric properties of the final version of the scale are presented. This analysis includes dimensionality, convergent validity, and reliability. Finally, the discussion and conclusions are presented.

  2. Theoretical Framework

    2.1 Leadership and organizational innovation

    Broadly speaking, leadership styles directly or indirectly affect organizational innovation. Leaders influence organizational climate, organizational learning, knowledge sharing, and employees' innovative behavior (Alblooshi et al., 2020). They also influence organizational practices that shape an environment which supports and promotes the innovation process (Jia et al., 2018). Studies have extensively focused on the relationship between leadership styles and organizational innovation. A systematic literature review by Alblooshi et al. (2020) showed leadership styles that directly affect organizational innovation, such as entrepreneurial, strategic, and integrative leadership. Other styles that indirectly affect organizational innovation are authentic, ethical, altruistic, and spiritual leadership. Some others such as transformational and transactional leadership affect organizational innovation both directly and indirectly. According to the cited literature review, transformational leadership affects innovation indirectly by enhancing an organizational climate for innovation and directly by promoting followers' innovative work behaviors. However, to a lesser extent, transactional leadership, a style based on benefit and goals, also has a significant impact on organizational innovation, mainly through exploitative innovation activities. Similarly, Miller and Miller (2020) highlighted the fact that leaders should be oriented toward more transformational rather than transactional tasks to encourage innovative behaviors. In any case, despite the lack of conclusive results about the specific leadership style that encourages IWB, it can be asserted that leadership is one of the main factors to encourage innovation in companies (Sethibe & Steyn, 2017).

    Based on those two leadership styles, we built the initial models of Innovational Leadership Style. They were selected because they affect innovation directly and indirectly by creating an organizational environment appropriate for it. This work environment includes an organizational climate broadly understood as a sociological context, where formal and informal interpersonal relationships occur. The employees feel free to interact openly, and confident and safe to share their ideas and to propose changes (Alblooshi et al., 2020). Thus, innovational leadership can be understood as a style of leadership that encourages innovative behaviors in the employees.

    2.2 Leadership and innovation: Related notions

    The literature review shows that leadership and innovation have been linked from various perspectives. In this framework, we found two different ones: innovative leadership and innovation leadership. Innovative leadership is defined as the process of making relevant changes to solve problems and benefit people (Sen & Eren, 2012). Thus, organizational innovation requires a leadership that encourages organizational learning, enables employees' participation in the decision-making process, promotes team collaboration, provides support and resources to innovate, and creates an organizational climate for innovation where change and risk are accepted. From this perspective, leaders are oriented to innovation in their companies, and they should transform ideas into tangible assets (Alblooshi et al., 2020). Accordingly, these authors asserted that "Innovative leaders know the past, see the present and predict the future, and establish a vision for changing and creating new political, social, economic, and technological conditions for solving the present and anticipated future problems and satisfying the needs of people in organizations and nations" (p.5). Thus, innovative leader are strategists who share a vision that inspires followers to work toward goals, encourages collective thinking, and focuses on stakeholders' needs and their feedback. Accordingly, the leaders are those who know when there is a need to be innovative (Sultana & Rahman, 2012). Innovative leaders inspire and have a clear strategic vision, strong focus on the customer, and the ability to create an organizational climate of trust through concrete actions (Mamula et al., 2019). In general, the concept of innovative leadership is linked to performance and successful organizational change (Whitney & Schau 1998) through vision, competencies, and management of organizational innovation by developing an innovative culture in their companies and giving a strategic direction to do it (Goals, principles, and policies) (Sultana & Rahman, 2012). Innovative leadership is related to the strategy and innovation culture (Agin & Gibson, 2010).

    Alternatively, the term "innovation leadership" refers to leaders who can create strategy, build relationships, and bring commitment to implement something new that adds value to their organization. Thus, the main role of those leaders is to influence creativity and innovation by promoting, sponsoring, and leading the innovation processes with its components strategically (Alsolami et al., 2016; Ailin & Lindgren, 2008; Deschamps, 2003; Samad & Abdullah, 2012). Therefore, innovation leaders should have the competences to motivate employees to change and propose creative ideas, be a strategist, and build capacities in the organization to accomplish their innovative goals (Vlok, 2012). At an individual level, innovation leadership involves leaders' behaviors that stimulate employees' initiative, assign responsibilities, provide performance feedback, and maintain a trusting relationship with them to contribute to organizational innovation (Carmeli et al., 2010).

  3. Innovational Leadership: Conceptual Delimitation

    Alternatively, this study proposes innovational leadership, which refers to a style of leadership that encourages individual innovation and innovative behaviors in their employees. Innovative work behavior is defined as an employee's intentional action addressed to generating, applying, and implementing new ideas, products, or processes. These...

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