The Impact of Leadership on Innovation Management

Abstract

The study sought to evaluate the influence of leadership on innovation management taking into consideration the predominant leadership styles, the leadership effectiveness, and the relationship between leadership effectiveness and innovation management of a group of executives of several organizations in a BRIC country (Brazil). To identify the predominant leadership styles, as well as the leadership effectiveness of the 400 involved executives, it has been used an instrument available in the market. To compute the innovation management performance, an existing model, the Value Innovation Model, has been applied leading to the value innovation index for each one of the 48 involved organizations. To investigate the relationship between leadership effectiveness, taken the average value per organization, and the value innovation index, it has been used the linear regression statistics computing the linear correlation coefficient between the before mentioned variables. The study has uncovered lack of flexibility regarding the leadership styles, presenting styles of selling and sharing ideas as dominants. The study also showed that the leadership effectiveness of the involved executives was at a moderate level. Finally, the research pointed out a high positive relationship between leadership effectiveness and innovation management success, measured by the value innovation index.