DISCUSSION OF THE RESULTS

Prior research has shown that top managers' leadership styles can substantially impact an organization's creativity and innovation ability. Fundamentally, the establishment of the positive climate that stimulates and encourages employees' empowerment and provides support for innovation is a major pathway through which this positive transformation occurs. This research has integrated extant discussions of the leadership demonstrated by managers and supervisors in various corporations. The findings based on the organizations offer support for the expectations of this study, which a direct and positive relationship exists between the transformational leadership, employees' creativity, and the organizational innovation. With a particular focus, this study finds positive and significant relationships between transformational leadership and empowerment as well as the support for the innovation and positive correlation between support for innovation and the organizational innovation.

The frequency distribution analysis revealed positive results to the 15 statements on the employee survey. The table below offers a representation of the statements with the higher percentage of agree and strongly agree responses.

Statement Percentage

My current position is a good fit for my personal skill set-Creativity

Learning different positions enables employees to discover better ways of performing tasks

My company encourages all employees to give improvement suggestions

I have been well trained in my job duties

The information I need to perform my duties is readily available

I am challenged by the work I am doing

I enjoy coming to work most days

My supervisor cares for my personal well-beings

My supervisor empowers me to make decisions

My supervisor has developed a healthy working relationship with me.

My supervisor values individual contributions to projects.

My supervisor is open to new ideas

My supervisor inspires me to come up with creative ideas

My supervisor regularly asks how I can improve the process or product

My company's employees are encouraged to solve problems creatively

My creative ideas have an influence at my company 79

92

90

64

73

63

57

61

73

67

66

66

53

55

55

41

Various commonalities were observed from the survey participants' responses. The responses for 15 questions generated the themes which further provided the valuable insights in regard to transformational leadership and perception for innovation, transformational leadership and organizational innovation, transformational leadership and psychological empowerment and individuals' creativity and organizational innovations.

From the survey, it becomes evident that characteristics of an organization substantially affect the followers' creativity. Fundamentally, an organizational climate is a crucial factor that enhances creativity and integrates the perceptions of the employees to the extent in which creativity is encouraged at the workplace as well as the extent to which organizational resources are allocated to support the creativity to influence the creative performance. Notably, an employee's perception of an innovative climate encourages risk taking and the challenge to utilize the creative approaches at work. The findings of this study validate the proposition in research and Development, where employee's perception of an innovative climate or workplace environment encourages their creativity.

The survey also included the questions that aimed at understanding the effects of leadership on employee's perception of the environment that is supportive of innovation. Undeniably, leaders have the ability to establish appropriate work environment with the aim of supporting and encouraging creativity. Many foundational studies have proven that leaders can build an organizational climate that serves as a guiding principle for a more creative work and processes. As observed in the survey, the majority of the employees agreed and strongly agreed that their leaders (transformational leaders in this case) intellectually stimulated their followers, championed innovation and articulated appropriate vision throughout their organizations. In the same way, they helped establish an organizational climate where the employees who feel challenged in their duties can be energized to seek innovative approaches to their daily activities.

The findings of this research also reflect those of Mumford et al. (2012), who reported that the organizational climate and culture offers a representation of composite social construction, over which leaders have substantial control and influence. According to Jung (2001), managers play crucial roles in developing, transforming and institutionalizing the culture. Jung asserts that organizational leaders and founders often embrace what they believe to be appropriate and wrong. In this way, the personal beliefs become an integral part of the organization's climate. As discussed by Mumford et al. (2012), a primary characteristic of a transformational leader is the ability to stimulate and change the followers' propensity for more creative and long-term perspective. Notably, when a leader encourages his followers' efforts to be innovative and creative through interrogating their assumptions, reframing challenges and approaching the old problems through the use of new strategies, they help establish an organizational culture among the employees who value creative processes, risk taking procedures as well as the innovative work approaches. Usually, the establishment of working environment or climate serve as a sense-making device and guiding principle for more creative work processes that could consequently enhance innovative services and products.

In line with the in findings of Shin and Zhou (2003), this research carried out in real-work settings offers a positive relationship between the leadership and employees or followers creativity. Organization innovation refers to the creation of the valuable and useful new products or services within organizational contexts. The employee's survey given used by the researcher helped to elicit relevant information from the employees regarding the relationship between leadership and innovation. From a variety of responses, certain commonalities were demonstrated by the replies given by the employees regarding the precise questions. As observed, the organizational change was a tendency through which majority of the corporations used to develop new or improved products or services, as well as its success in bringing those products to the market. As per the responses, the majority of the employees agreed that their leaders enhanced innovation within their companies. Previous studies have shown that transformational leaders often use inspirational motivation and intellectual stimulation which is critical for innovation. The respondents agreed that their leaders promoted ideas within their organizations, and as such reflecting the championing role of transformational leaders. In another study, Chao et al. (2011) reported that a good supervisor's leadership and employee innovative work behavior linked to each other. This study demonstrated similar results as those reported by Tiemey et al. (1999), who found that that higher quality relationship with leaders' results in higher level of innovative work behavior by employees. These two studies also co-align with the findings of Janssen (2005), who found that the employees will opt to participate in more innovative activities at all the stages of innovative work behavior (idea generation, idea promotion, and realization) if they perceive their leaders as supportive. Regarding the current study, the employees working within the chosen companies presented the relational quality of their leaders, and therefore depict innovative behavior. That support and strengthen the claim of this research study.

The survey responses further indicated that leaders within these corporations possessed visions that motivated their workers, and promoted their willingness to perform beyond the expectations. Some participants further recognized that their leaders challenged them to embrace innovative approaches to their tasks. The resulting increased motivation is likely to enhance the organizational innovation. The responses and the findings of the survey reflect those of previous studies which examined the relationship between transformational leadership and innovation mostly in R&D units. Transformational leaders also have the ability to have a positive influence on the success of the market success of the innovations. Undeniably, the leaders who generate the clear vision of innovation and thereby being able to demonstrate a sense of power and confidence often develop to ensure the market success of the innovation. As observed, the leaders mobilize their workers to facilitate the success of the innovation and enhance professional developments among the employees. In addition to the internal organizational roles, the transformational leader may be effective in increasing the external functions such as entrepreneurship spanning and championing.

At the organizational level analysis, in line with the findings of Jung et al. (2003), this study reports that leadership has a significant positive association with the organizational innovation. As stated before, a substantial number of the previous studies were focused on examining the effects of leader's on the tendency of the companies to innovate. As per this study, innovation is defined and treated as the success of innovations and the propensity to innovate. From the survey responses, this study finds that leaders have the capacity to promote both the innovative activities in the organization and further ensure the market access of the innovations.

Because the innovation under the examination in this study has a greater relationship with the development work, the impact of this kind of innovation is identified on the incremental innovation. However, a closer look at these findings reveals a slight contradiction with the results reported by Keller's (1992). Keller purported that developmental projects which utilize the available information and knowledge to generate incremental innovations might need more of a transactional leader to stimulate the allocation and coordination of tasks. On the other hand, research projects which need originality and importation of technical information to produce radical innovation might be achieved by the transformational leaders. While this study was not aimed at investigating the transformational leadership, the survey responses provide sufficient suggestions that as the transformational traits of leader an increase, employees' innovative abilities in creative works also increases.

This study also found a substantial link between the empowerment and organizational innovation active as expected, but with some negative elements. In this study, an implication that corporations that delegate more autonomy to employees are less rather than more innovative is noted. In reality, there are two factors which can stimulate and enhance our understanding of our expected finding within this context of the study. First, the companies used in this study came from China where cultural values are relatively high in power distance (Hofstede, 1997). Just like as depicted in the survey responses, the employees tend to prefer having their supervisors take more control of their tasks and consequently lead by example within these types of cultures. In this way, workers with a high power cultural disposition may feel confused when left alone to meditate about what they are required to do as well as the ways of accomplishing their goals. Based on the fact that the process of carryin...