Impact of Transformational Leadership on Innovative Work Behavior

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between transformational leadership and innovative work behavior and to examine the unique contributions of its four dimensions—idealized influence, inspirational motivation, individualized consideration, and intellectual stimulation. It further seeks to compare these dimensions to identify which leadership behavior demonstrates the largest unique relationship with innovative work behavior. Using data collected from 400 employees working in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Pakistan through a cross-sectional survey, the results were analyzed using correlation and regression analyses. The findings indicate that overall transformational leadership is positively and significantly associated with innovative work behavior. All four dimensions also demonstrate positive and statistically significant unique relationships with innovative work behavior, with inspirational motivation producing the largest observed standardized coefficient. Supplementary pairwise comparisons showed that inspirational motivation was significantly larger than idealized influence but did not differ significantly from individualized consideration or intellectual stimulation. The findings highlight the value of examining transformational leadership at the dimension level and suggest a balanced transformational leadership approach for fostering employees’ innovative work behavior.