Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Research in Human Resource Management
Year: 2024
DOI:
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Unveiling the Role of Leaders in Enhancing Creativity and Innovation
Dzenana Husremovic, Hana Sarajlic
ABSTRACT:
Transformational leadership plays a significant role in many work-related outcomes, of which employee creativity, employee innovation, and organizational innovation have recently received more attention. The purpose of this study is to examine how transformational leadership predicts individual creativity, individual innovation, and organizational innovation and what is the role of motivation in this relationship. Unlike previous research that focused on global measures of organizational innovation, this study used more specific measures of organizational product and process innovation. 116 employees from various private IT companies in Bosnia and Herzegovina completed online self-assessment questionnaires. Data were analyzed by using a regression model and Sobel Test of mediation. The results show that transformational leadership has a significant relationship with all constructs of interest. Extrinsic motivation was not correlated with any outcome variables which is in line with previous research showing that extrinsic motivation does not contribute to creativity and innovation. However, intrinsic motivation fully mediated the relationship between perceptions of transformational leadership and employee creativity and innovation. The mediation effect of intrinsic motivation was partial for organizational product innovation, while mediation effects were not found for organizational process innovation and overall organizational innovation. These findings provide deeper insight into the importance of leadership practices that increase employees’ intrinsic motivation for achieving high levels of creativity and innovation, potentially leading to better outcomes for certain types of organizational innovation and offer practical advice on the leadership behaviors that create more creative and innovative organizations.
keywords: intrinsic motivation, mediation effect, process innovation, product innovation, transformational leadership