Predicting the relationship between leadership styles and entrepreneurial orientation and innovative behaviour in Indian immigrant firms

Abstract

This research is salient because of its unique inquiry into one of America's fastest growing entrepreneurial populations: Indian immigrants. Examining leadership styles and their relationship with employees' response behaviours in a cross-cultural context is important to researchers and academics alike. Through a quantitative analysis and cross-sectional research design, we found that leadership styles-transformational and transactional-indeed, predicted employees' innovative behaviour (IB) and entrepreneurial orientation (EO) at the firm level. This paper has three significant findings: 1) transformational style is positively and significantly related to employee IB and EO; 2) transactional style is positively and significantly related to EO; 3) laissez-faire style is shown to be negatively and not significantly related to IB and EO. These findings have theoretical and practical implications to better understand the nature of Indian immigrant leaders' behaviours and the inter-film cultural factors that could either facilitate or impede employees' IB and EO.