خلاقیت و توسعه سازمانی: نقش رهبری سازمانی Innovation and organizational development: the role of organizational leadership

Introduction Organizational leadership is exercised through top management influence over the effective distribution and utilization of resources to achieve organizational development, thus, financial and non-financial improvement. Leadership offers the needed strategic direction that gives traction to strategy implementation and the subsequent success on the market. The level of significance of leadership in organizational development accounts for the depth of study on leadership impact on firm performance over the past decades (see Awamleh, 1999; Rowe et al., 2005; Jung, et al., 2008; Chung and Luo, 2013; Eisenbeiss, et al., 2015). Leadership has largely being seen and assessed as a significant predictor of firm success through strategy formulation. Upper Echelons Theory posits that “organizational outcomes – both strategies and effectiveness – are…reflections of the values and cognitive bases of powerful actors in the organization” (Hambrick & Mason, 1984, p. 193.) In other words, leaders in the upper echelons of an organization influence organizational performance directly through their characteristics and behaviors and indirectly through the strategic choices they make. In spite of this, the effectiveness of leadership in organizational outcomes can be influence by contextual factors (Anning Dorson, 2017). As per Hofstede’s, (1984, 1991) studies of culture on organizational performance, it is found that in contexts where power distance is high, employees are dependent on the boss or the power holder for direction. Jung et al. (2008) assert that leaders usually play key roles in determining organizational policies/processes as well as resource allocations, yet relatively few studies have examined how they affect strategic implementation at the organizational level in different contexts. Organisational leadership is important in fostering the strategic fit of firm and its environment to create the needed competitive advantage. Organisational leadership must be considered as an internal-firm capability for strategy implementation (Anning-Dorson, 2017). Leadership creates the fit between the innovation implementation and the environment. An observed deficiency in literature seem to be the inattentive consideration on the intermediate role played by leaders in certain cultural contexts with regard to shaping organizational success during strategy implementation. This study therefore assesses the moderation role of organizational leadership on innovation-performance relationship. The study argues that in Ghana where power distance is high, organizational leadership provides the needed impetus for strategies such as innovation to achieve organizational development i.e. enhanced firm performance.