Effect of Paternalistic Leadership Styles on Employees’ Creativity Through Innovation Orientation

Abstract

Creativity and voice of employees have been identified as important elements in resolving organization issues and improving innovation in the current competitive business world. The paper focuses on how the paternalistic nature of leadership impact the creativity of employees by means of innovation orientation among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) employees in Pakistan. The cross-sectional research design has been used and the data collection was conducted using a structured survey questionnaire to employees of the manufacturing SMEs. The results received in the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) show that there is a positive and significant connection between paternalistic leadership and employee creativity. Moreover, the innovation orientation was also observed to have a positive mediation role in the relationship between leadership styles and creativity of the employees. This paper gives a logical comprehension of the role played by leadership styles in order to promote creativity and innovation through promotion of employee engagement, ideas as well as problem solving skills. The implications of the findings to the SME managers and the policymakers are quite practical since they show the value of leadership styles to facilitate organizational performance that is based on innovation. The study is also one of the first studies that examine the paternalistic leadership and employee creativity using mediated variables in the framework of manufacturing SMEs in Pakistan.