Transformational leadership, creativity, and organizational innovation

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 leadership Creativity Organizational innovation Turkey

How Do Different Faces of Paternalistic Leaders Facilitate or Impair Task and Innovative Performance? Opening the Black Box

There is a growing amount of research integrating leadership and positive organizational behavior literatures in order to understand the processes through which leadership contributes to performance. One such mechanism through which leaders influence performance is psychological capital (PsyCap). Particularly, paternalistic leadership, which is a leadership style that combines discipline, authority, and power with fatherly benevolence, may be a critical antecedent to the development of followers’ PsyCap. Yet no studies to date have investigated how paternalistic leaders affect followers’ PsyCap, which, in turn, influences their task and innovative performance. To this end, based on a sample of 409 Turkish employees and their 72 leaders, the current study investigates the effects of three dimensions of paternalistic leadership (i.e., benevolent, authoritarian, and authoritative) on followers’ leader-rated task and innovative performance. While there were no significant mediation effects for task performance, the results revealed that both benevolent and authoritative leadership positively influenced innovative performance through enhancing followers’ PsyCap. Authoritarian leadership, however, has negative effects on PsyCap, which, in turn, mediates the effect on innovative performance of followers. The theoretical and practical implications of our findings, along with suggestions for future research, are discussed

What if authoritarian to all or to some? A multi-level investigation of within-team differentiation in authoritarian leadership

The literature on the bright side of leadership has established that leaders differentiate among their followers. This paper examines a negative leadership style, authoritarian leadership (AL) and, based on group value and engagement models, proposes that AL differentiation softens the negative effects of mean AL on team cohesion, which in turn influences team and individual performance. Based on social comparison and justice theories, we also test the opposite effects of AL differentiation on these outcomes as a competing hypothesis. The results (multi-source cross-level data from 381 employees of 63 teams) support our main hypothesis but not the competing hypothesis. When team leaders exhibited authoritarian behaviors to all members (low differentiation), team cohesion decreased drastically, which reduced individual (in-role, extra-role, but not innovative performance) and team performance. In the high differentiation condition, the negative effects of mean AL via team cohesion on in-role and extra-role performance and team performance were alleviated

Two to Tango? A cross-cultural investigation of the leader-follower agreement on authoritarian leadership

This study investigates how the leader–follower agreement on authoritarian leadership influences the quality of communication experience with the leader across three countries: Taiwan, Turkey, and the U.S. We also examine the mediating role of the quality of communication in linking agreement on authoritarianism to subordinate in-role and extra-role performance. Our sample consisted of 674 Taiwanese, 409 Turkish, and 294 American employees and their leaders. The results demonstrate that in the U.S., the leader–follower agreement on this negative form of leadership has positive effects on the quality of communication. In Turkey, however, the leader–follower agreement on high levels of authoritarian leadership has a negative effect on interpersonal interactions. In Taiwan, agreement or disagreement on authoritarian leadership is not as important as in the U.S. or Turkey. We also found that the quality of communication experience was a significant mediating mechanism between the leader–follower agreement and follower performance in all three countries