Transformational leadership's impact on organizational innovation and success

¶ … Role of Leadership Styles in Organizational Innovation

Andre Alexandre, Jr.

Dr. Amy Burkman

Revised prospectus outline

The Role of Leadership Styles in Organizational Innovation and Success

The study will research the role of leadership styles in organizational innovation and success. A number of studies have shown that transformational leadership positively influences organizational innovation. However, there is a lack of studies examining the contextual conditions under which this effect occurs or enhance organizational success.

Purpose Statement / Problem Statement

The purpose of this study is to explore and provide a deeper understanding of the relationship between leadership styles and organizational innovation.

It is not known to what extent leadership styles impact innovation and enhances organizational success. Therefore, this study will investigate to provide a deeper understanding of the relationship between leadership styles and organizational innovation and success.

III. Literature Review

a) Theory: Transformational Leadership Theory. This study aims to investigate the impact of transformational leadership on organizational innovation, and to determine whether transformational leadership has a positive influence on organizational success. Because of the rapid technological changes occurring in what is a dynamic work environment in today's organization transformational leadership in leading change is of high value in the organization. (Gumusluoglu and Ilsev, 2009)

Subtopics

i. Defining Innovation & Organizational Success

Organizational innovation in this study is defined as the tendency of the Organizations to develop new or improve products/services and organizational success. Today, almost all organizations engage in innovative activities as a competitive weapon. Thus, it is important to adopt a market-oriented approach and consider the definition of organizational success as the returns due to innovation. The measure of returns gained from organizational innovation will involve polling the organization and its employees about innovation in the organization and specifically those involved in the accounting department about the monetary returns realized due to the innovations realized by the organization.

II. Leadership Style & Innovation

Innovation is defined as the successful implementation of creative ideas within an organization. Leadership styles are among the most important factors affecting innovation. Therefore, this study aims to demonstrate that transformational leadership is an important determinant of organizational innovation and success. In order to measure the organization's implementation of innovative and creative ideas, the employees and leadership of the organization will be polled in a survey to gain the information in this area of the study.

III. Leadership Styles & Organizational Success

Transformational leadership may have a positive impact on market success and innovations. Through transformational leadership, it is expected that success at both a management and an operation level shall be forthcoming.

IV. Instruments for assessing leadership style

According to (Kvale and Brinkmann, 2009), the interview is the fundamental tool in qualitative research. Therefore, in-depth interviews constitute the primary method of data collection in this study. This study also intends to use a single index to measure transformational leadership.

IV. Research Questions

a. R1. Does transformational leadership drive organizational innovation and creativity?

b. R2. Are employees led by transformational leaders more likely to be innovative and creative?

b. Instrument: Interviews, existing documents

The instrument of this study will include questionnaires which will include focus-group discussions on transformatioanl leadership and organizational innovation and creativity and will serve to formulate a case study of one organization to be examined in this study.

c. Data Collection:

One organization will be chosen and the organization's employees and leadership will be administered a questionnaire/survey with open-ended questions. The questionnaire/survey will inform this study in preparing for focus-group discussions comprised of the employees and leadership of the organization. The information taken from the questionnaire/survey and focus-group discussions will formulate a case study on the organization.

d. Data Analysis: Case Study

The data will be qualitatively analyzed through noting recurring themes in the answers of the participants in this study and compiling the data into a case study report.