The Role Of Entrepreneurial Leadership In Fostering Organizational Creativity And Innovation

Creativity and innovation are important factors to sustain organizational performance and to gain a competitive advantage in the business markets.Competitive business markets demand from organizations to launch new products and services for survival.Consequently,organizations must improve the creative behavior of their employees,and must develop organizational innovation by making changes in their policies,structures,and practices,etc.Moreover,entrepreneurial activities are not limited to new ventures or entrepreneurs as the furious competition makes it mandatory for all types and sizes of businesses to innovate to lead in the business market.Accordingly,scholars have introduced entrepreneurial leadership as a new leadership theory that has been emerged from the existing literature of leadership and entrepreneurship to meet the dynamic changes in the business markets.This dissertation comprised of four interconnected studies that aim to explore the influence of entrepreneurial leadership on organizational creativity and innovation.The proposed relationships in the research models are examined by applying tests including discriminate validity,convergent validity,confirmatory factor analysis,and structural equation modeling,etc.by using AMOS22,SPSS22,and Smart PLS.Study one has investigated the effect of entrepreneurial leadership on employee creativity(CRE).Moreover,psychological empowerment(PE)and psychological safety(PS)are used as mediating variables in the relationship between EL and employee CRE.The social learning theory is used to explore the relationships in the model.Data were collected from the manufacturing sector of Pakistan.The proposed relationships in the research model are examined by applying tests including,discriminate validity,convergent validity,confirmatory factor analysis,and structural equation modeling,etc.The results have shown a positive direct influence of EL on employee CRE.Furthermore,it is determined that PE and PS have mediating influence between EL and employee CRE.The current study has contributed to the leadership and creativity literature by empirically examining the role of entrepreneurial leadership to improve employee CRE in organizations.Study two has examined the influence of EL on team creativity(TCRE).Besides,team psychological safety(TPS)is used as a mediator between the relationship of EL and TCRE.Furthermore,knowledge sharing(KS)is used as a moderating variable between the relationships of TPS and TCRE.The social information processing theory is used to explore the relationships in the incorporated model.The proposed relationships in the research model are examined by applying tests including,discriminate validity,convergent validity,confirmatory factor analysis,and structural equation modeling,etc.Data were collected from the manufacturing sector of Pakistan.The results have shown the positive influence of EL on TCRE.Furthermore,TPS mediates the relationship between EL and TCRE.Finally,KS has a positive moderating influence on the relationship between TPS and TCRE in the moderated mediation model.The current study makes an important contribution to the literature by exploring the mechanism of new leadership theory to develop TCRE.Study three has explored the effect of EL on employee innovative behavior(IB),through the intervening effect of creative self-efficacy(CSE).The social learning theory is used to examine the relationships in the integrated model.Data were collected from the textile sector of Pakistan.The proposed relationships in the research model are examined by applying tests including,descriptive statics,confirmatory factor analysis,discriminate validity analysis,and structural equation modeling.The results have shown the positive direct influence of EL on employee IB and CSE.Similarly,EL has an indirect positive effect on employee IB through CSE.The current study findings have contributed to the leadership literature by empirically examining the performance mechanism of entrepreneurial leadership to develop employee innovative behavior through CSE.Study four has determined the effect of EL on organizational innovation(OI).Moreover,innovation climate(IC)is used as a mediating variable in the relationship between EL and OI.The upper echelon theory is used to explore the relationships in the incorporated model in this study.Data were collected from the textile sector of Pakistan.The proposed relationships in the research model are examined by applying tests including,descriptive statistics,convergent validity tests,discriminate analysis,and structural equation modeling.The results showed a positive effect between EL and OI,Similarly,the findings show that IC has a mediating effect between the relationship between EL and OI.This study contributes to the leadership literature by highlighting the significance of entrepreneurial leadership performance mechanism for organizational innovation.Moreover,overall this study explores the mechanism with respect to how entrepreneurial leaders develop organizational creativity and innovation.Besides,the current study empirically extends the understanding of the role of the entrepreneurial leaders in organizational behavior research,whereas previous studies focus on the concept of entrepreneurial leadership and scale development Furthermore,previous studies have explored entrepreneurial leadership consequences either in new ventures or in small and medium enterprises.Even though eminent scholars have suggested that it is a new leadership style that,similar to other leadership approaches,can be applied in any type of organization,irrespective of the size or nature of the business.Accordingly,the current study enriches the literature by explaining the performance mechanism and empirically validating the entrepreneurial leadership concept in established organizations.Finally,based on these findings,it is suggested organizations should focus on creativity and innovation to develop the organizational performance and to achieve a competitive advantage.Similarly,organizations should recognize the importance of EL by hiring managers who possess the entrepreneurial skills to cultivate creativity and innovation.Managers should also embrace and practice EL concepts to stimulate organizational creativity and innovation.Accordingly,organizations should offer such training and development programs for managers so they understand the importance of entrepreneurial leadership skill development.Moreover,to meet dynamic changes during the furious market competition,organizations should develop such skills to an overall hierarchy rather than focusing only on the development of managerial skills.Thus,organizations should also organize training and development programs for employees to develop their creative skills.Finally,organizations must develop policies and structures that promote the characteristics necessary for the promotion of creative behaviors in organizations.These characteristics include trust across functional teams,and access to available information,etc.Despite several theoretical and managerial implications,the current dissertation has also limitations.