Exploring the impact of transformational leadership on process innovation and product innovation: a case of Iraqi public universities

Abstract

Leadership plays an important role in stimulation of creativity among employees and establishment of innovative environment in organizations. Higher education sector of any country acts as a backbone for that country as it provides skilled human resource. The higher education in Iraq face many challenges, such as brain drain, employee morale and satisfaction that leads to lower innovation. In academic context, the leadership has a critical role in achieving success. The academic leadership of a higher education institution, more specifically transformational leadership, is responsible for process and product innovation by adopting policies and culture that would lead to employee’s creativity and institution’s more innovation. Therefore, the main purpose of the study is to examine the influence of transformational leadership on process and product innovation in higher education in Iraq. The quantitative data was collected through survey instrument. The sample for this study is teaching staff in 10 public universities distributed throughout Iraq. The sample consists of 280 academic staff members selected through random sampling technique. SPSS was used to analyze the data. The results found that there are significant strong relationships between the transformational leadership and the Process innovation. And significant strong relationships between the transformational leadership and the product innovation More importantly, there is significant impact of transformational leadership on both process and product innovation. In addition, transformational leadership plays an important role in determining innovation.