Leadership and innovation: surfacing synergies among constructs and theories

West’s (1990) theory of group innovation holds that innovation occurs through group processes. The role of leadership in the group innovation process is not clearly defined; rather, group processes are identified without reference to the leader’s influence on those processes. In contrast, theories of leadership suggest that leaders have a major role in achieving innovation and that innovation is a product of transformational leadership style. Nonetheless, the leadership-innovation relationship has not been clearly demonstrated at the group level of analysis. This chapter presents an empirical field investigation of the theoretical linkages between group innovation and leadership style using West’s (1990) typology of group innovation and Bass and Avolio’s Full Range Leadership model (1990, 1994). By examining the points at which the models juxtapose, the chapter contributes to the development of a new perspective on the leadership-innovation connection with respect to groups. The findings demonstrate that theories of innovation and theories of transformational leadership share common conceptual dimensions.