A Study Of Mechanism On The Relationship Between Leadership Style And Organizational Innovation

Organizational innovation is defined as adopting a new idea, implementing a new product, service, technology or management strategy by a team or organization to be seasoned with environmental change inside and outside. Based on the dual-core theory of innovation, organizational innovation is categorized into technical innovation and administrative innovation. Leadership style, organizational climate for innovation and organizational change inside organization are considered as three main factors that affect organizational innovation. Since transformational leadership was presented at the end of 1970s, the researches on transformational leadership and its effectiveness has been the topic of leadership study area. The effectiveness of transformational leadership has been researched in China in the last several years, while less researches on transactional leadership and laissez-faire leadership. The domestic study on organizational climate for innovation is still being explored, but much less evidence has been showed on it as the mediator of the mechanism that leadership styles affect organizational innovation. As an important context variable of organizational innovation, organizational change should be researched whether moderate the relationship between leadership styles and organizational innovation.Based on literature review and interview, some relevant research hypothesis were put forward and validated through empirical study. That is whether transformational leadership, transactional leadership and laissez-faire leadership have different effect and mechanism from different type and size organizations in the context of Chinese organizational change.There were 120 organizations selected from city of China, and 108 valid organization samples including 577 valid questionnaires were made certain. The statistical tool SPSS13.0 and LISREL8.30 was used to examine the hypothesis by analysis of variances, hierarchy regression model and structure equation model.The main conclusions are as follows.(1) Transformational leadership has significant positive effect on organizational climate for innovation, administrative innovation and technical innovation.(2) Transactional leadership has significant positive effect on organizational climate for innovation, administrative innovation and technical innovation.(3) Organizational climate for innovation has significant positive effect on administrative innovation and technical innovation. The significance of each dimension on administrative innovation was sorted as support for innovation, task orientation, participative safety, frequency and vision. While the significance on technical innovation was sorted as participative safety, support for innovation, frequency and task orientation.(4) Organizational climate for innovation partially mediates the effect of transformational leadership on administrative innovation and technical innovation. Organizational climate for innovation plays part mediating role between transactional leadership on administrative innovation or technical innovation. Organizational climate for innovation fully mediates the effect of laissez-faire leadership on administrative innovation and technical innovation.(5) The range of organizational change moderates the relationship between transformational leadership and administrative innovation. The content of organizational change moderates the relationship between transformational leadership and technical innovation. The content of organizational change moderates the relationship between transactional leadership and administrative innovation. The speed of organizational change moderates the relationship between transactional leadership and technical innovation. Organizational change plays no moderating role between laissez-faire leadership and organizational innovation.(6) Significant differences of administrative innovation, technical innovation and organizational climate for innovation have been found according to different type, size and performance of the enterprises; and discrepancies of perception on administrative innovation, technical innovation and organizational climate for innovation are also existed depending on individual position and educational background. Technical innovation of Chinese-Foreign joint venture is significantly higher than that of state-owned, private, foreign enterprises and public institution. Smaller size of the enterprise is beneficial to the formation of administrative innovation and organizational innovation climate. Organizational innovation and organizational climate for innovation of enterprises with moderate and higher performance, is significantly higher than organization with poorer or much poorest performance. For the differences of position, evaluation of common staffs and supervisors is significantly lower than that of middle or top managers. And for the educational background, the perception of organizational climate for innovation by the employees with high school degree and below is significantly higher than employees receiving junior, undergraduate, and postgraduate or above education.Finally, the conclusions were summarized and relevant management ways were brought forth. Some advices were given for future research to avoid the limitation.