Transactional leadership as a moderator between self-leadership strategies and innovative behavior

Abstract

Leadership in organizations is important in shaping workers’ perception and increase employee work performance. There are several types of leadership style that are important in affecting employee work performance and one of it is transactional leadership. Transactional leadership, in contrast to transformational leadership, is based more on reinforcement and exchanges approach. Previous studies that explored about the transactional leadership effect in terms of direct effect or moderating effect relating to organizational behavior such as innovative behavior are scare. Innovation is a complex process and not happened in a vacuum situation, interaction between each of the organizational members is very important. Addressing this issue, this study proposes that transactional leadership moderates the relationship of self-leadership strategies (behavior-focused, constructive thought pattern, natural reward and physical vitality) with innovative behavior. In a field study with 485 engineers from Electrical and Electronics (E&E) manufacturing in Malaysia, this study showed that behavior-focused strategies, constructive thought pattern strategies, natural reward strategies and physical vitality strategies of self-leadership positively related to innovative behavior when transactional leadership is high. Transactional leadership positively and significantly moderates the relationship between each of self-leadership strategies with innovative behavior. The finding contributes to the enrichment of innovative behavior concept by including the transactional leadership as moderator in helping the researcher to explore on how leadership differences contribute to difference research outcomes.