The Impact of Transactional Leadership on Management Innovation: An Empirical Research in Turkey

Abstract

The number of academic researches on innovation has been steadily on the rise. Yet these researches focus primarily on economic impacts of product and process innovations based on technology (Damanpour, 2014). The number of researches and academic publications about management innovation are relatively low with respect to technological innovation. Yet organizational innovations occurred as a result of management innovations, are considered as a prerequisite for technological innovations (Sanidas, 2005). In this regard, the aim of this study is to analyze the impact of transactional leadership sub-components such as contingent reward, active management by exception, passive management by exception and laissez-faire leadership on management innovation. The research data are obtained through 198 Turkish public managers. The analyses reveals that contingent reward has a positive and significant impact on management innovation, whereas other sub-components such as active management by exception, passive management by exception and laissez-faire leadership do not cause a significant impact.