The Impact Of Relational Leadership On Employee Innovative Work Behavior

Recently,organizations are looking for quick and novel methods to stay competitive in the higher customer demand for product and service novelty and higher competitive markets.Therefore,innovation is the only survival and strong competitive advantage for modern organizations.However,organizations are dependent on their employees for novel business and operation ideas,therefore,it is important to study what impacts the innovative work behavior of employees.Nonetheless,for generating innovative ideas,organizational employees are directly affected by the actions of their leaders as well as the resources available at their disposal.Hence,importance of relationships in the organizational leadership effectiveness has received a great attention in recent years.Relationships between the leaders and employees are considered as binding glue that connects individuals to one another and help them to achieve certain objectives together.The importance of relationships is evident from the fact that the traditional concepts of leadership are getting obsolete and relational leadership concepts are emerging rapidly.Additionally,one of the most important resource is organizational social capital that provides organizations with a strong competitive advantage.Eventually,organizational social capital is also ultimately affected by the leadership behavior in the organization.Therefore,on the basis of Social Exchange Theory,Behavioral Theory and Role congruent Theory,the researcher has argued in current study that 1)leadership is relational in nature 2)relational leadership have a positive and significant impact on the employee innovative work behavior 3)relational leadership positively influences organizational social capital in the form of structural,relational and cognitive organizational social capital 4)Structural,relational and cognitive organizational social capital have a significant and positive impact on the employee innovative work behavior 5)organizational social capital in the form of structural,relational and cognitive organizational social capital mediates the relationship between relational leadership and employee innovative work behavior and last but not least 6)employee gender,leader gender and leader-follower gender dyadic combinations representing demographic similarity or dissimilarity assumptions,have a moderating impact on the relationship of relational leadership and employee innovative work behavior.Due to its expanding growth and significant importance in the world,this research study is aimed at exploring all these effects in the Chinese service sector.By doing so,this research has attempted to answer certain research questions.In order to achieve its objectives,researcher used survey technique to collect data from 620 employees.This data was then analyzed by using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling techniques through IBM SPSS and IBM AMOS 21.Results from these analyses suggested a strong and positive impact of relational leadership on the employee innovative work behavior.Results also supported the hypothesized meditating role of structural,relational and cognitive organizational social capital between relational leadership and employee innovative work behavior.Further,the overall organizational social capital also mediated the relationship between relational leadership and employee innovative work behavior.Next,the dyadic combination of male leader-male follower vs.female leader-female follower had a moderating impact on the relationship between relational leadership and employee innovative work behavior,whereas,this moderating impact was stronger for male leader-male follower group than female-leader-female follower group.However,this study did not find any moderating effect of gender differences on the relationship of relational leadership and employee innovative work behavior between male and female employees and male and female leaders.By providing a comprehensive model of relational leadership,organizational social capital and employee innovative work behavior,this study contributes to the leadership literature,organizational social capital literature,innovation management literature and gender based studies in leadership.This study has addressed the call of previous researchers who suggested to investigate the factors impacting employee innovative work behavior and to quantitatively investigate the concept of relational leadership.Moreover,for generating new and effective ideas and improving their innovativeness,current study suggests the implication of relational leadership and organizational social capital in the modern day innovation oriented organizations.It also implies the importance of gender in the leadership studies.