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Management
Transformational leadership style is described as leaders who inspire followers’ ambitions for success and self-improvement and support the growth of groups and organizations. Transformational leaders are considered reliable, realistic, and influential leaders, and such merits may enable them to achieve their goals and promote innovative work behavior. Innovative work behavior was defined as activities related to an employee’s development, promotion, and adoption of helpful innovation at any organizational level.
- transformational leadership
- innovative work behavior
- thriving at work
- mediator
1. Introduction
Human resources are essential for organizations’ sustainability, in addition to the economic and environmental aspects as the triple bottom line of organizational sustainability [1]. However, the human aspect of sustainability has received considerably less attention than the environmental and economic aspects [2]. According to Spreitzer, Porath [2], thriving at work is an essential mechanism for comprehending the human aspect of sustainability. Thriving at work is a growing concept that has gained considerable attention in organizational behavior as a component of human sustainability and long-term performance [3]. Thriving is a psychological state in which individuals feel both alive and learning at work. [4]. It is a desirable self-regulatory subjective state with two dimensions: vitality (affective) and learning (cognitive) [4]. Vitality refers to feeling alive, energized, enthusiastic, and excited at work [5]. Learning is about developing through gaining knowledge, skills, and other qualities [4]. Thriving is widely believed to be essential in improving short-term individual performance and long-term workplace adaptability [4]. For instance, thriving at work has been proven to be related to various essential organizational outcomes such as job satisfaction, self-development, organizational commitment, organizational citizenship behavior, and inventive work behavior [6,7,8,9,10].
The primary model of thriving at work was called the socially embedded model of thriving, and it was developed by Spreitzer, Sutcliffe [4]. This model explained how certain contextual features, such as decision-making autonomy and a climate of respect and trust, may enable employees’ agentic behaviors, such as task focus and exploration. These behaviors, as well as the additional job resources, promoted employees thriving at work. Further, thriving leads to positive outcomes for employees, such as in their development and health [4].
The literature on employees’ thriving at work has significantly expanded since Spritzer and her colleagues established the socially embedded model of thriving [11]. However, literature on thriving at work is still scarce [3,12]. For instance, Abid and Contreras [12] did a meta-analysis. They found that most studies on thriving at work were done in developed countries like the US, China, Australia, Belgium, and France. Abid and Contreras [12] said that researchers should add regional studies from emerging economies to make management and business studies more valuable, in-depth, and broad. In addition, previous studies highlighted that, in thriving studies, transformational leadership needed to be investigated in different contexts [13,14]. Furthermore, although several studies have examined the impact of transformational leadership on innovative work behavior [15,16], to the best of the researchers’ knowledge, limited studies have been conducted to understand the mediating effect of thriving at work in the relationship between transformational leadership and innovative work behavior.
2. Linking Transformational Leadership and Innovative Work Behavior
Transformational leadership style is described as leaders who inspire followers’ ambitions for success and self-improvement and support the growth of groups and organizations [17]. After conducting a literature review on transformational leadership, Podsakoff, MacKenzie [24] indicated that the concept of transformational leadership could be described through six basic behaviors: defining and articulating a vision, providing a suitable model; promoting group goal acceptance; developing high-performance expectations; providing individual support; and providing intellectual stimulation to employees. Based on this study, Carless, and Wearing [25] indicated that transformational leaders articulate a vision, develop employees, provide support, empower employees, innovate ideas, act as role models, and have a charismatic style.
Transformational leaders are considered reliable, realistic, and influential leaders, and such merits may enable them to achieve their goals and promote innovative work behavior [26,27]. Innovative work behavior is activities related to an employee’s development, promotion, and adoption of helpful innovation at any organizational level [28]. Innovative work behavior involves the creation of new ideas, technology, and methods, as well as the trial and utilization of new techniques related to business processes, mainly work aspects [15]. The innovation process comprises ideas' generation and implementation [29]. As a result, it requires a wide range of unique behaviors from individuals [29].
Transformational leaders are positively associated with enhancing organizational innovation [30]. Qu, and others [31] conducted a study of 420 leader–follower pairs from a Chinese energy provider, and they discovered that transformational leadership positively impacts employees’ innovative performance. Another empirical study, conducted by [15], with a sample size of 338 employees and their supervisors from 35 service and manufacturing organizations, found that transformational leadership positively influenced employees’ innovative work behavior [15].
3. Linking Transformational Leadership and Thriving at Work
Spreitzer, and others [4] provide a socially embedded model of thriving built on the concept that its two components, learning and vitality, are firmly embedded in social systems. Thriving is a psychological state when individuals feel both alive and like they are learning at work [4]. The first component of thriving, vitality, is defined by Spreitzer and colleagues [4] as the positive sense of having energy and a sense of being “alive”. The second component, learning, refers to employees’ perceptions of obtaining and using valuable knowledge and skills. According to Spreitzer, Sutcliffe [4], thriving is a personal experience that makes employees better assess their work, such as what they are doing, how they are doing it, and how they might improve it. Porath, Spreitzer [32] argued that thriving differs across work and non-work contexts, as well as responding to changes in the work environment and that thriving was related to burnout, health, job performance, and career growth.
While the fundamental assumption of thriving at work is that high levels of vitality and learning are essential for employees to thrive [4]. Transformational leaders enhance employees’ experiences of feeling “alive” and vital at work by acting as role models and motivating followers with exciting visions [11]. Additionally, transformational leaders can improve employees’ learning experiences by working on supporting them in adopting a proactive learning environment, which promotes their learning ambitions and desire for development [33]. Lin, Xian, Li [33] conducted a study of 542 ordinary employees, grassroots medium, and senior managers from China and concluded that transformational leadership is significantly and positively associated with employees thriving at work. Meanwhile, transformational leadership involves aspects that encourage and challenge employees to improve themselves, such as developing standard goals, enhancing acceptance and positivity, innovating ideas, supporting, training, and influencing thriving at work [34].
4. Thriving at Work as a Mediator
Regarding the impact of thriving at work as a mediator, transformational leadership might positively affect innovative work behavior for employees [15,31]. This research expects this impact through the influence of thriving at work as a mediator. From the one hand, the researcher in this study claims that there is a positive impact of transformational leadership style on thriving at work. On the other hand, employees’ thriving at work is expected to influence innovative work behavior for employees. Thriving at work serves as a criterion for monitoring employees’ growth and assists in improving workplace effectiveness and flexibility [4]. An employee’s innovative behavior is associated with their learning and development at the workplace, which allows them to identify problems and create solutions [35,36]. Thus, an employee needs to obtain the necessary knowledge and skills in order to comprehend the process, identify problems, and create an innovative solution [36]. In addition, employees must be willing to invest their time in adopting the new process, while social and psychological factors enable employees to thrive and be more innovative [35]. Employees who thrive more are more likely to participate in innovative behavior [10,36,37]. The pieces of evidence from previous empirical studies confirm the relationship between thriving at work and employees’ innovative behavior [10,36,38].
This entry is adapted from the peer-reviewed paper 10.3390/su151511540
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