Abstract:
The modern and dynamic business environment requires an organization to foster an innovative culture to compete effectively and enjoy success. Central to the approach is the leadership role in fostering a positive and innovative culture. Corporate culture is critical in shaping innovative behaviour and motivating human resources in an organization. Nurturing entrepreneurial practices and behaviour to ensure that they are an integral part of the embraced culture can offer an opportunity to create innovation. Leadership is one of the primary factors that experts have suggested to affect innovation. An organization leader will help shape and define work contexts and manage a culture that contributes to and promotes innovation. The top leadership helps an organization attain the desired outcomes by influencing organizational climate and establishing a culture that helps build innovation and change capacity. The proposal represents a roadmap for research on modern organizations’ innovative culture and leadership relationships.
Background:
Recent managerial and scholarly articles demonstrate that innovation is critical for an organization’s long-term success in a volatile modern business environment. Huang et al. (2022) state that organizations possessing strong and positive entrepreneurial orientation usually possess distinctive, innovative outlooks and competencies. These organizations also have a creative organizational culture and managerial vision to help them meet their goals through operations (Yas et al., 2022). Corporate culture is integral in shaping an organization’s entrepreneurial behaviour, with leadership being a suggested factor that significantly influences innovation. Leaders can manage and introduce a culture that promotes innovation, which can be informed of heroic innovators or product champions and help establish a structure that makes it easy to support innovation.
While the importance of leadership and management has been widely acknowledged across sectors, the specific mechanisms that allow leaders to foster an innovative culture are still being researched and debated. According to Leso, Cortimiglia and Ghezzi (2023), many experts have proposed different leadership styles and theories, including servant, authentic and transformational leadership, as integral to fostering an organization’s innovative culture. However, Weintraub and McKee (2019) argue that there is mixed empirical evidence concerning their effectiveness in attaining the desired outcome in different contexts. Against this backdrop, it is essential to consolidate and synthesize current knowledge on leadership and a culture of innovation relationship. The findings will help offer an in-depth insight into leadership practices and behaviours and how they foster an innovative-friendly environment. The research represents a theoretical advancement contribution and provides a practical understanding of how leadership should be approached to foster a culture of innovation across sectors.
Objectives:
The research will aim to meet the following objectives:
- Investigate the role that leadership plays in fostering a culture of innovation
- Analyze the current literature on leadership and a culture of innovation relationship
- Explore how leaders and managers influence innovative culture development in organizations
- Offer relevant recommendations on how leaders can enhance an innovative culture based on systematic literature review findings.
Literature Review:
A solid theoretical framework is present, showing that leadership significantly determines the culture of innovation in an organization. Many studies have discussed how leadership pivotally influences innovation stimulation by shaping organization climate and fostering adaptation, creativity, and experimentation (Maldonado et al. 2021). An organization’s innovation focuses on an idea creation or editing process to produce a service, product, policy, or structure it considers new. According to Lathong, Phong, and Saeheng (2021), leadership theories like servant and transformational leadership approaches have been touted as conducive to promoting and fostering innovation. A climate that supports and encourages continuous learning, experimentation, and collaboration is critical to building an innovative culture (Khalifa et al., 2013). Innovation is considered a growth engine and a crucial tool for economic and organizational growth, prosperity and competitiveness. In the rapidly changing and modern competitive world, an organization that fails to embrace innovation will most likely stay caught up. According to Saeed, Som and Mahmood (2022), leaders can directly or indirectly influence the innovation process of followers or employees. Direct influence can be informed of higher-level needs and motivation. The indirect impact is via creating and maintaining a supportive environment, allowing employees the space and climate to think outside the box without significant fear about the outcomes (Alwahhabi, Dukhaykh and Alonazi, 2023). The volatile and highly competitive business environment has seen innovation rapidly become a source of competitive advantage and a cornerstone for success and survival. There is an increased pressure for organizations to consistently innovate through various approaches, including product development, business model innovation, or process improvement, to exceed market demands.
Theoretical Framework:
The research proposal’s theoretical foundation is formed by organizational innovation, organization culture and leadership theories. Leadership theories (Saeed et al. 2022; Raoush 2023) state that leaders in a corporate setup enhance followers’ motivation and beliefs, offer opportunities and support others to be innovative. According to Alwahhabi, Dukhaykh and Alonazi (2023), the innovation theory, an organization’s strategy, structure, resources and its human resources behaviour and approach impact its innovation ability. The organization culture theory states that assumptions and values artefacts in an organization comprise its culture.
Culture as a Mediator:
Organizational culture represents a mediating variable analyzed by many studies. According to Groselj et al. (2020), the consistency between leadership in an organization and the embraced culture will impact staff members’ innovative behaviour. Mutmainnah et al. (2022) add that human resources demonstrate high innovation levels when operating in a more robust organizational culture. The findings indicate leaders and managers’ integral roles in improving and promoting creativity and innovation. They show that organizational culture represents the most critical element in innovation strategy. Therefore, if leaders embrace and follow an innovation strategy to meet organizational objectives, they should prioritize corporate culture (Mutmainnah et al., 2022). Organizations with the right combination of cultural elements possess a greater innovation rate. Therefore, the leadership-innovation association may be mediated by organizational culture.
Methodology:
The systematic literature review methodology will be utilized for leadership and a culture of innovation literature gathering, synthesis, and analysis—the inclusion-exclusion criteria concerning relevant articles selection of peer-reviewed articles in reputable databases and professional publications. The research search strategy will be to access databases, including Google Scholar, ProQuest, Science Direct, PubMed, and PsycINFO. The keywords utilized to help meet research objectives will include “Leadership”, “Organization Innovation”, and “Innovative Culture”. A standardized form will be embraced to extract data with the criteria established critical in selecting the studies’ quality. Thematic analysis will be adopted to perform data synthesis and establish relationships, patterns, and themes.
The Eligibility Criteria:
Sample: Peer-reviewed journals and professional publications not older than ten years
Phenomena of Interest: The role leadership plays in fostering a culture of innovation
Evaluation: Focus on gaining an insight into leadership strategies and behaviours role and influence on innovative culture
Design: Will review quantitative, qualitative and mixed-methods studies to attain theoretical insight and obtain empirical evidence concerning leadership role in fostering innovative culture
Research Type: A systematic literature review representing a secondary research
Expected Outcomes:
The following outcomes are expected as a result of performing the systematic literature review:
- An in-depth insight into the leadership and a culture of innovation relationship
- Effective leadership behaviors and best practices are needed to foster and promote an innovative culture
- Implications for leaders and managers in organizations across sectors seeking to foster an innovative culture
Study Significance:
The research will add to the current knowledge concerning leadership’s role in fostering a culture of innovation by providing relevant literature synthesis. The research findings will give practical insight that researchers, leaders and policymakers can utilize to improve innovation within their respective setups. Furthermore, it will help guide future researchers investigating leadership and organizational culture relationships.
Conclusion:
The research proposal investigates leadership’s role in fostering a culture of innovation. The systematic literature review will help synthesize relevant and reliable literature to offer valuable insight into leadership roles in enhancing an organization’s innovative culture. It will recommend to researchers, leaders, and policymakers the best ways to cultivate innovation, with organizational culture being an important mediator.
List of References
Alwahhabi, N., Dukhaykh, S. and Alonazi, W.B., 2023. Thriving at Work as a Mediator of the Relationship between Transformational Leadership and Innovative Work Behavior. Sustainability, 15(15), p.11540.
Groselj, M., Cerne, M., Penger, S. and Grah, B., 2020. Authentic and transformational leadership and innovative work behaviour: the moderating role of psychological empowerment. European Journal of Innovation Management, 24(3), pp.677-706.
Huang, Z., Sindakis, S., Aggarwal, S. and Thomas, L., 2022. The role of leadership in collective creativity and innovation: Examining academic research and development environments. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, p.1060412.
Khalifa Alhitmi, H., Shah, S.H.A., Kishwer, R., Aman, N., Fahlevi, M., Aljuaid, M. and Heidler, P., 2023. Marketing from leadership to innovation: A mediated moderation model investigating how transformational leadership impacts employees’ innovative behaviour. Sustainability, 15(22), p.16087.
Lathong, L., Phong, B.L. and Saeheng, P., 2021. Transformational leadership, knowledge sharing and innovation capability: An empirical study from Lao Firms. Journal of International Business Management, 4(9), pp.1-10.
Leso, B.H., Cortimiglia, M.N. and Ghezzi, A., 2023. The contribution of organizational culture, structure, and leadership factors in the digital transformation of SMEs: a mixed-methods approach. Cognition, Technology & Work, 25(1), pp.151-179.
Maldonado, T., Carden, L., Brace, C. and Myers, M., 2021. Fostering innovation through humble leadership and humble organizational culture. Journal of Business Strategies, 38(2), pp.73-94.
Mutmainnah, D., Yuniarsih, T., Sojanah, J., Rahayu, M. and Nusannas, I.S., 2022. The Impact of Directive Leadership on Innovative Work Behavior: The Mediation Role of Continuance Commitment. Journal of Indonesian Economy & Business, 37(3).
Raoush, A., 2023. Transformational leadership impact on innovative behaviour as perceived by healthcare workers in private hospitals in Jordan. Cogent Business & Management, 10(3), p.2265606.
Saeed, H., Som, H.M. and Mahmood, R., 2022. Leadership Styles, Organizational Culture, and Innovation in Healthcare: A Conceptual Framework. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 12(8), pp.1390-1408.
Weintraub, P., McKee, M., 2019. Leadership for innovation in healthcare: an exploration. Int J Health Policy Manag. 8(3):138–144. doi:10.15171/ijhpm.2018.122
Yas, H., Othman, B., Mohammad, A.J. and Agala, S.R., 2022. Investigating the role of leadership and organizational culture in fostering innovation.
write