Leadership styles and organizational innovation in hybrid work environments
Keywords:
Leadership styles, Organizational innovation, Hybrid work environment, Transformational leadership, Adaptive leadership, Employee engagement, Remote work, Innovation cultureAbstract
The emergence of hybrid workspaces and the corresponding boost in the trend contributed to by the COVID-19 pandemic has transformed the role of leadership as the factor driving organizational innovation. This paper analyses the impact of different leadership styles, transformational, transactional, servant leadership, and adaptive leadership styles, on innovation in hybrid workplaces where workers continue to work remotely and physically at the workplace. The current research spans both the theory and research results to understand the interaction between the leadership behavior and the innovation result. By conducting hybrid mixed-method research (including the survey of 210 employees of tech, education, and healthcare industries and 20 managers) we discovered that the transformational and adaptive styles of leadership play a very important role in the promotion of innovation in mixed work settings. We found that our results anticipate that flexible communication, empowerment, trust and psychological safety are essential mediators in this relationship. The paper ends with workable suggestions as to how leaders should approach innovation by imbuing a leadership approach to the hybrid workspace.
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