The Impact of Transformational Leadership on Innovation Quality of Digital Enterprises in Kunming
TL;DR
Empirical findings indicate that transformational leadership has a strong, positive and significant direct effect on innovation quality and higher levels of market and technological uncertainty enhance the positive effect of transformational leadership on organizational learning process.
Abstract
The fast development of digital economy has dramatically changed the competition situation for contemporary organizations. Under such volatile circumstances, digital companies are more and more relying on their continuous innovation capability, strategic knowledge integration and flexible leadership behavior to obtain and maintain competitive advantages. Nevertheless, many regional digital companies encounter severe operational bottleneck when they try to effectively convert their digital and intellectual assets into high-quality innovation outcomes. Bridging this important gap, this study empirically examines the influence of transformational leadership on the innovation quality of digital companies in Kunming digital economy context. Moreover, this study also explores organizational learning as a fundamental mediating mechanism and environmental dynamism as a contextual moderator which changes the leadership-learning trajectory. With rigorous quantitative research methodology, empirical data was collected through structured questionnaire from N=200200N=200 technical staffs and managers of 35 digital companies in Kunming area with effective response rate reaching 80%. Multiple linear regression and bootstrapping procedure were conducted to test the proposed hypotheses. Empirical findings indicate that transformational leadership has a strong, positive and significant direct effect on innovation quality. Furthermore, organizational learning partially mediates the relationship between transformational leadership and innovation quality. Finally, environmental dynamism significantly and positively moderates the relationship, suggesting that higher levels of market and technological uncertainty enhance the positive effect oftransformational leadership on organizational learning process. These findings have important theoretical and practical implications for leadership development and knowledge management in regional digital economy.