A Research on the Relationship between Leadership Orientations and the Innovativeness of Owner-Managers in Turkish Businesses

Abstract

Relevant literature notes that leadership in business contexts inspires innovativeness. This study considers this insight as a starting point but moves beyond the existing literature by focusing only on leaders to understand how leadership inspires a leader’s own innovativeness. The author chose the people who own and manage a business (owner-managers) and used the perceptions of workers in businesses to evaluate the existence of leadership as well as leadership orientations of owner-managers. The key objectives of this study – namely, evaluating how perceived leadership and leadership orientations of owner-managers affect their own innovativeness – reveal remarkable results. There are two leadership orientations, one focusing on the work and the other that focuses on people. There are many factors related to owner-manager innovativeness. The perceived leadership of owner-managers moderately affects their innovativeness in a positive direction. The factors related to people-oriented leadership can also affect their innovativeness positively at a moderate level.