Leadership Style, Employee Innovation Behavior, And Psychological Empowerment: An Example Of Z Corporation

The full-range leadership theory has gained wide attention since it was raised by Bass and Avolio in 1991. While the theories before that time mainly focused on the research on the relationship between transformational leadership and organizational innovation. Few of them studied the impact of leadership style on employee innovation behavior. And these days, we also don't see much in-depth study on the topic like what type of leadership style can effectively promote employee innovative behaviors.Through in-depth analysis of the relationship between the three leadership styles (Transformational leadership, Transactional Leadership and Laissez -faire Leadership) and'employee innovation behaviors, and the Psychological empowerment's effect as an intermediary role, we establish an interaction model among leadership style - Psychological empowerment - employee innovation behavior. An Empirical analysis of this model was conducted through a questionnaire survey on 437 R&D personnel of a large domestic IT communications company. The study conducted reliability analysis, correlation analysis and regression analysis through SPSS statistical software and verified the assumption and model raised in this article as following:1) Transformational leadership and Transactional leadership have remarkable positive effect on employee innovative behaviors. While Laissez-faire leadership has remarkable negative effect on employee innovative behaviors. In term of the impact level, the effect of Transformational leadership is slightly stronger than that of Transactional leadership, but both were stronger than that of Laissez-faire leadership.2) Transformational leadership and Transactional leadership both have a remarkable positive effect on Psychological empowerment, and the effect of Transformational leadership is slightly stronger than that of Transactional leadership.3) Psychological empowerment has a remarkable positive effect on the employee innovative behaviors, and acts as an intermediary role in transformational leadership's remarkable effect on employee innovation behavior.4) Idealized Influence (Behavior) and Management-by-Exception (Active) have a remarkable positive effect on the employee innovative behaviors. While Idealized Influence (Attributed) has a remarkable negative effect on the employee innovative behaviors.5) Intelligence Stimulation, Idealized Influence (Behavior) and Contingent Reward have a remarkable positive effect on Psychological empowerment. While Idealized Influence (Attributed) has a significant negative effect on Psychological empowerment.6) Psychological empowerment can act as the intermediary role for the remarkable positive effect of both the Idealized Influence (Attributed) and Idealized Influence (Behavior) on the employee innovative behaviors. The former is the negative factor, and the latter is the positive factor.The study reveals that:In order to improve the employee innovative behaviors, the company management should not only adopt the transformational leadership style, but also create for their employees an atmosphere of psychological empowerment, to realize employee self-management capability and improve their self-esteem.