Leadership Theories In Innovation

Theories for leadership in innovation and creativity

Innovation leadership comes from both Leader-Member Exchange Theory and the Path-Goal theory. Certain elements within an organization are also needed in order for innovation leadership to occur and be successful. It has been found through research that organizational culture is one of the important factors for innovation. Similarly it is agreed fact that innovative steps would fail without a supportive environment. A supportive organization encourages creativity, autonomy, resources, and pressures in its employees. Some other elements for leadership in innovation include creative work, a creative workforce, and certain attributes of the leader.

Roots in Path-Goal Theory

The Path-goal theory

Following example may be sighted to show similarities between innovation and path-goal theory leadership: it is the use of supportive behaviors and upward influence. Such behaviors encourage creative teams and leader to generation huge number of new ideas and lead to judgment of such ideas and their practical use.

Leader-member exchange theory (LMX theory)

It is one more component of innovation leadership. It follows the same principle as the path-goal theory of leadership. It proposes that variation in leadership styles are required to manage different subordinates but includes another dimension to it.

Leader-member exchange theory says that we have to include different leadership style for each of the employees. From prior experience with the LMX theory it is evident that it influences innovation. Researches have shown that the leader-member exchange leads to significant organizational and attitude like positive impact on job performance and job satisfaction.

The change in innovative attitude is related to the quality of the interaction between leader and member and considers the contributions from both parties. But some studies show that the innovativeness is only affected by the loyalty between the leader and

The transformational leader show the followers that if old ways are ineffective then they should bring about a change in their methods which leads to innovation. They don’t focus on the particular problems but urge the employees to focus on the root cause.

The following is the result of a certain study done on a group of R&D personnel and managers at some software development companies show the effect of transformational leadership both on the creativity and innovativeness of the employees.

It was found that transformational leadership has significant impact on the creativity and innovativeness of the employees as well as on the whole organizational level. A directly proportional relationship was found between the creativity of the employee and the transformational leadership followed by the higher level management. Psychological empowerment was also seen as a factor in influencing the employees’ innovativeness. Same was the impact of transformational leadership at the organizational level and it was positively associated with the organizational