The Impact of Leadership Styles on Innovative Behavior and Their Components

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of transformational leadership and leader-member
exchange (LMX) on innovative behaviour and its components. The study was quantitative in nature
and used a sample of 559 respondents from eight South African companies. Two main hypotheses
and ten sub-hypotheses were tested using multiple regression analysis. The results show that both
transformational leadership and LMX impact positively on innovative behaviour and the associated
components. LMX was found to have more positive and significant impact on innovative behaviour
and its components relative to transformational leadership. Furthermore, the results reveal that among
the components of innovative behaviour, LMX has a greater impact on championing, followed by
application. In contrast, the results indicate that transformational leadership has a greater positive and
significant impact on formative investigation, followed by generativity. This study contributes to the
current literature on leadership and innovation, which is generally limited in emerging countries such
as South Africa. Recommendations and suggestion for future research are presented.