Understanding the Relationship between Transformational Leadership Styles: Idealized Influence, Intellectual Stimulation, Inspirational Motivation, Individualized Consideration and Product Innovation among Manufacturing and Services Firms: The Role of Open System:
Given our highly competitive and global market, organizations are constantly seeking continuous improvement of their products and services, and they strive to achieve higher innovation capabilities. Leadership with the ability to create this type of change and innovation is critical for an organization’s survival. Most of the leadership literature has defined transformational leadership as a single-factor model. However, this empirical study will investigate the relationship between the individual components of transformational leadership on organizational outcomes. Specifically, the relationships between idealized influence, intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation, and individualized consideration and product innovation as an outcome are examined. In the absence of such understanding, it is important to conceptualize them separately, for research purposes, as well as for leadership development purposes. Additionally, this study investigates the moderating role of open system as the organizational climate’s framework—characterized by flexibility, outward focus, and reflexivity—on the relationship between the individual components of transformational leadership and product innovation.
The objectives of the empirical study are: (a) to investigate the roles of the different dimensions of transformational leadership on product innovation. By doing so, the research will provide a better understanding of the most influential factors within the transformational leadership style. Specifically, to determine if each component of transformational leadership has different roles in fostering product innovation and what are these roles; (b) to examine the use of an open system framework in the context of transformational leadership and product innovation, which represents a significant contribution, as this research will provide a better understanding of how open system as an organizational climate factor impacts the relation between each component of transformational leadership and product innovation; and (c) to apply the findings of the current study to benefit top management in examining their own leadership styles and how that impacts product innovation through the open system.
While many studies have studied transformational leadership as holistic constructs, this study will explore the different elements of each component: Idealized Influence, Intellectual Stimulation, Inspirational Motivation, and Individualized Consideration and its relationship with product innovation. I believe that this will add greater understanding of each component of transformational leadership and will help practitioners with leader development. To fill this research gap, this study examines the following research questions: (1) What is the impact of transformational leadership’s different dimensions: Idealized Influenced (II), Intellectual Stimulation (IS), Inspirational Motivation (IM), and Individualized Consideration (IC) on radical and incremental product innovation? (2) How does an organization’s climate and, more specifically, an open system moderate the relationship between II, IS, IM, and IC and product innovation outcomes?
A primary data collection methodology was employed in this study. Specifically, an online survey was used to facilitate the large-scale data collection process. Data from 220 respondents representing manufacturing and services companies located in the United States was collected. A respondent that has a c-level position, such as CFO, CIO, COO, etc, represented each company. Then the research model was tested using structural equation modeling (SEM). The findings indicate that each component of transformational leadership impacts product innovation differently.
This study makes different valuable contributions. Theoretically, this study conceptualizes and empirically tests transformational leadership factors--idealized influence, intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation, and individualized consideration--separately. Specifically, it empirically investigates how these factors impact product innovation. Practically, this research confirms that each style of transformational leadership impacts product innovation differently. Therefore, this finding can help companies with their leadership development process.