The effects of transformational leadership on followers’ creativity and innovation

Abstract

Today, the revolution of knowledge, innovation, and information is considered as important factors for psychological, technological, economical, and social world. Organisations are facing big challenges such as globalisation, emergence of knowledge based economies, intense competition, and rapid technological developments. The literature reveals controlling these challenges through innovative and creative abilities of organisation with the support of their leadership. This study examines the relationship between transformational leadership and innovation at the organisational level and creativity at the individual level in Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is facing the problems because of being a young, wealthy and a developing country. The current state of innovation in its public sector and human resources creativity provides insights to policy makers with reference to the leadership approaches in this country. With the support of the relevant literature gap, a theoretical framework has been developed that explains how transformational leaders of the public sector organisations influence followers’ creativity and organisational innovation. To investigate this relationship, the researcher adapted a survey instrument to obtain the date from Public Security organisation. A Self-administrated questionnaire was distributed to employees who were randomly selected from the organisation. After screening, final sample of 503 was selected for the study data analysis. The results show that transformational leadership is positively and significantly correlated to the follower’s creativity and organisational innovation. Furthermore, positive and significant relationships were found between follower’s creativity and organisational innovation. In addition, the relationship between the transformational leadership and follower’s creativity through the mediating role of employee psychological empowerment, support for innovation, workplace relationship, and employee learning were found positive and significant. However, intrinsic motivation does not significantly mediate the relationship between transformational leadership and creativity. The findings of this research contribute to the behavioural and psychological literature in general and for transformational leadership literature in particular. They provide supportive insights into the state of transformational leadership for field experts, policy makers, and administration of the public security organisations especially from the Gulf countries.