Creative leadership, innovation climate and innovation behaviour: the moderating role of knowledge sharing in management

Innovation, in most enterprises, originates from employees. In this study, how organizational climate, creative leadership ability and emotional reaction to imposed change impact on innovative behaviour of employees vis-à-vis knowledge sharing within the workplace is explored.

Adopting a social cognitive perspective, a model is constructed to explain factors influencing the innovation behaviour of employees along two key aspects, that is, organizational climate (innovation vs risk-taking climate) and creative leadership ability (leadership skills, vision incentive) vis-à-vis other moderating factors. A survey questionnaire, administered to a total of 311 manufacturing employees in China, was used to verify the proposed research model via Smart PLS.

Results unveil several key factors impacting positively on creative leadership in organizations. Specifically, creative leadership ability, emotional reaction to imposed change, innovation climate and knowledge sharing are found to impact positively on innovation behaviour while supportive versus risk-taking climate as well as emotional reaction are found to impact positively on innovation climate. Additionally, knowledge sharing is found to regulate the relationship between innovation climate and innovation behaviour.

While offering insights into the antecedent factors of innovation behaviour, the study extends research on the intermediary role of innovation climate and employees' innovation behaviour. Additionally, it improves one's understanding on the moderating role between knowledge sharing and innovation behaviour.

The study findings will assist enterprises in diagnosing the implementation environment of innovation strategy, thereby providing a reference for training enterprise leadership while improving the employees' understanding of innovation and reform in the workplace.

The study contributes both theoretical and managerial thinking on the extent in which organizational climate and creative leadership ability may and/or should be evolved appropriately to support, encourage and nurture employees' innovation behaviour in the workplace.