The Effect Of Leadership Styles And Organizational Structures On Innovation

Alongside the entrepreneur spirit, Innovation is the process of taking new ideas and implementing them into the market. Key word being “new”, an innovation can be sometimes viewed as the application to better solutions that meet new demand-requirements, inarticulated needs or existing market needs. Innovative ideas range from: goods, services, products, processes, services, technologies or ideas that create value for which customers will pay for. For an idea to be an innovation, it must be replicable at an economical cost and must satisfy a specific need. This means is that one must be ready and willing put their new idea to the test. On the other hand, there is recognition that “innovation is also critical to cultural, environmental, social, and artistic progress as well” (Bullinger, 2006). With this stated, high-tech innovation is ultimately the reason why we can be thankful for the many new conveniences of the 21st century. Although we might see the forefront of innovation being very prominent in today’s world, innovation is truly nothing new. From the start of modern man times, innovative ideas have paved the way for civilization to advance and develop into what we are today and at the same time, we have barely begin to chip away at the tip of the iceberg of our true human potential. Some scholars believe that innovation is a

A wise man once said, “The only permanent thing in the world is change,” an adage that rings especially true for organizations in this fast-changing era of technology and communication. Daft very deftly puts the inescapable need for change in three simple words, “Innovate or Perish” in his book “Understanding the Theory & Design of Organizations” [2].

Organizational structure has been set up to facilitate all goal achievements. It is a way to motivate their employees and get them to work together. It also helps its employees to follow the organizations goals, and work together as a team. In order to do this, they need to have an organized structure to be able to run the company smoothly. A main foundation of every organization is to post their mission statement and goals everywhere so that their employees can see them. An organizational culture can consist of common shared beliefs and values that are established by the organization’s leader, and then communicated and reinforce through various methods, this helps shape employee perceptions, behaviors and understanding. Overall, organizational structure and culture can effect progress of many organizations in a positive and negative way.

When developing a template to assess which leadership styles are best suited to mitigate the effects of a decline in financial compensation, it is imperative to understand leadership theory. One of the first pioneers in leadership theory was Kurt Lewin. Kurt Lewin (1890–1947), was a prominent figure in psychology in his generation. He provided a solid foundation to the teachings of organizational development. In many circles he was known as the father of organizational development. He was best known for the development of field theory. Field theory was essential because it allowed business professionals to understand why undesirable behaviors was produced. It also taught how to bring about desirable behaviors. Field theory was developed in part because Lewin wanted to address organizational employee turnover.

Structure is the basis through which an organization seeks to create control the direction of an organization. This is completed through clear definitions of the allocation of work, differentiation, and the coordination of having those responsibilities working together towards the efforts of the organization, integration (Bolman & Deal, 1993, pp). Through these methods, the organization is able to devise a division of labor that collaborates to bring about the missions and goals of an organization. The structure that comes about from this can be varied in their rigidness and flexibility it allows, and to an extent this is a great contribution to its success.

In this ever-changing modern day business environment, organizations should always be ready to adapt to the ever-changing concepts and customers’ needs. Both internal and external factors influence the kinds of changes that take place in any business or organization. As of the complex adaptive systems, in order to keep up with the constant upcoming changes, they need to keep on revising their goals and objectives. They can do this by assimilating to any current changes present in society.

Innovation is an important tool in all companies and organizations. It helps them to create new products or change their current products in a way that brings them huge competitive advantage. It changes how the products are created and delivered and the risks that are undertaken to deliver the products. Regular and focused innovation is thus extremely important in the survival of organizations as is evidenced in the history of many of the successful organizations(Shane & Ulrich, 2004). In the IT sector, innovation is extremely important and is even known to be a priority. Various government agencies as well as private sector companies have stated that lack of innovation is a huge risk to the future of the organization and should be avoided at all costs. These sentiments are shared across the governments of Australia, UK, Canada, US, India and South Africa. This is to show that the importance of innovation cuts across all continents and countries(Bessant & Tidd, 2011).

Being innovative does not only mean inventing. Innovation can mean changing the business model and adapting to changes in the environment to deliver better products or services. Successful innovation should be an in-built part of a business’s strategy to create a culture of innovation and lead the

Change has become necessary for every organisation there is. World is moving rapidly towards better technologies, efficient systems, new techniques, compact profits, different friendlier environments and organisations are always in the race to reach new heights by thriving effectively in this competitive environment (Kotter, 1996).

When it comes to business as any organizations it requires a structure, based on the resources and demands organization can changed or modify their structure. The most common two structures are vertical and horizontal structure which we see every business organization in global market (Bateman & Snell, 2011). In today’s any business organization theirs and important trait is not only the structure, it is the functions within the organization. An organizing function in management highlights the practices individuals use to interact and work with each other. There are many business organizations that are very successful in their own

Tidd and Bessant (2009) argued that “Unless an organization is able to move into further innovation, it risks being left behind as others take the lead in changing their offerings, their operational processes or the underlying models that drive their business”.

Organizational structure is a formal relationship between management and the employees. It is a way to motivate the employees and get them to working. It is also away to get employees to follow the company goals, and work together as a team. To make an organization work they need to have an organized structure to be able to run the company. The mission

Innovation refers to finding new ways to improve the existing products, services, processes, technologies, and employee performance in an organizational setup. In today's competitive business environment, organizations have to focus on bringing innovation in each and every aspect of their business operations; like products or service offerings, enterprise resource planning systems, marketing and promotional efforts, and organizational structure. The market challenges and competitive pressures also force organizations to use a blend of all these innovation processes in their business activities. Therefore, it is vital to give an equal focus on product innovation, process innovation, marketing innovation, and organizational innovation within the limited organizational resources and capabilities.

Innovation is the process by which ideas are created, selected and implemented to bring about profitable change to organisations. Innovations come as a result of an identified need for organisations to change their current processes, activities or operations. Andriopoulos and Dawson (2009) explain that organisational change is ‘new ways of organizing and working’. They explain that change occur in two dimensions – movement of state and scope of change.

Innovation offers the companies a competitive advantage. Presently and within the future, more than any time in history, the key to competitive advantage is innovation. However innovation will facilitate businesses meet all of their strategic challenges, not simply competition; to illustrate, in confronting accelerating rates of change, globalization, apace advancing technology, a additional numerous workforce, associated a modification from an industrial to a knowledge-based economy. Meeting all of those challenges helps the firm attain competitiveness, and meeting these challenges suitably depends on innovation. Innovation allows a firm to workout its challenges in distinctive ways in which build competitive advantage either through relative differentiation, a relative low-priced position, or few acceptable level of each. Innovation cannot assure success, however success cannot be achieved within the end of the day without it.