Linking Paradoxical Leadership to Team Innovation: A Social Cognitive Perspective on the Role of Innovation-Supportive Climate

Abstract

Team innovation is a lynchpin and play crucial role in delivering the high quality service which is indispensable for competitive advantages, economic prosperity and sustainability for the tourism and the hospitality industry in rapidly changing environment. Emerging research increasingly acknowledge that innovation inherently involve paradoxes often involves navigating conflicting demands and divergent perspectives. The inherent paradoxes in the process of innovation have turned the scholar intention towards paradoxical leadership behavior as potential driver for nurturing the innovation. Drawing upon the social cognitive theory, the study aims to explore the relationship between paradoxical leadership behavior and the team innovation particularly focusing on innovation supportive climate as mediator. Data assembled from 20 hotels and restaurants by adopting cross sectional approach through purposing sampling techniques from 720 employees including leader of the team and the employees working under their supervision. Using AMOS and SPSS for data analysis, it was found that paradoxical leadership behavior positively related to team innovation. Besides, supportive innovation climate was also observed, playing a significant role as mediator between paradoxical leadership behavior and the team innovation. The research is novel in the way that it investigates the relationship between paradoxical leadership behavior and team innovation with innovation supportive climate as mediator and provide theoretical and practical insights in to relationship between paradoxical leadership behavior and team innovation and revealed valuable implications for the practitioners in the hospitality industry.

Keywords : Paradoxical leadership behavior (PLB), Innovation supportive climate (ISC), Team innovation (TI)