The Importance Of Transformational Innovation

In today’s world of uncertainty, it is important for corporate organizations to let go of the stability and consistency paradigms and welcome the culture of creativity and innovation. Organizational Innovation is the administrative process which includes the introduction of a significant, non-routine and discontinuous organizational change (Stephen J. Mezias, 1993). Innovation is creation of new products, processes and new systems which requires four special situations: uncertainty, intensive knowledge, competition with alternatives and boundary crossing (Kanter, 1985). It reflects the way in which an organization reacts to the technological changes and market opportunities (Brenner, 1987). Innovation is simply about introducing new products

Innovation is most likely to be adopted and assimilated if it is initiated or supported by the CEO or top management (Meyer, 1988). The success of innovation lies in the management’s support for innovation (Marshall & Vrendenburg, 1992). The theory of transformational leadership supports the notion that a leader’s characteristics are one of the determinants of innovation (Conger, 1987). As evident from these different fields of research, the kind of leadership practiced in an organization does have a significant impact on the level of innovation in an organization. The main question now is the direction, intensity and significance of this impact. Recently, the researchers have been linking transformation leadership with learning orientation and creativity which leads to innovation (Gong, Huang, & Farh, 2009). Transformational leaders do no not try to control their followers. They allow the followers to use their own ideas and let them use creativity which results in an innovative culture in the

The effect of idealized influence on organizational behavior is opposite to common perceptions and is shown to be negative (Mokhber, Ismail, & Vakilbashi, 2015). When leaders exhibit idealized influence, the followers look up to their leaders as ideal role models and try to replicate their work and behaviors to reach the organizational objectives (Oke, Munshi, & Walumbwa, 2009). Bass (2006) has explained this phenomenon in detail. Although the leaders use idealized influence to empower and motivate the followers, the charisma of the leader executing idealized influence might have a negative impact on innovative behavior, mainly because of an increased dependence on the leader. Instead of working towards organizational goals, the goal of employees is to imitate their leaders implementing the influence (Bass & Riggio, 2006). Whereas, the individual consideration is found to have a positive impact on innovative behavior of employees (Sethibe & Steyn, 2017). Thus, with reference to the literature discussed above, it can be deduced