Impact of Leadership Styles on Innovative Performance: The Mediating Role of Task Engagement

Abstract

Leadership style plays a critical role in shaping the organizations’ innovation outcomes. Effective organizational leadership encourages employees to think innovatively, enhancing the overall innovation performance.  This quantitative, survey based research study was conducted to measure the impact of transformational and authentic leadership styles on innovative performance, with focus on the mediating role of task engagement among employees in the Pakistani telecom sector. The survey was conducted with 393 telecom employees, and findings confirmed that both- transformational and authentic leadership styles exert significant positive impact on the innovative performance, and task engagement partially mediates effect of both leadership styles on innovative performance. Transformational leadership style drives innovation by fostering empowerment and intellectual stimulation. Authentic leaders encourage engagement and innovation by emphasizing over ethical alignment and relational trust. Pakistani telecom companies are encouraged to implement the hybrid leadership models that may blend both- transformational and authentic leadership characteristics along with targeted interventions to foster the engagement.

Keywords- Impact of Leadership Styles on Innovative Performance: The Mediating Role of  Task Engagement