The Impact of CEOs’ Transformational Leadership on Sustainable Organizational Innovation in SMEs: A Three-Wave Mediating Role of Organizational Learning and Psychological Empowerment

Abstract

The sustainable organizational innovation is of paramount importance for enhancing productivity in firms and provides organizations with the strategic direction needed to allow them to perform at an international level. The leadership styles play a key role in their firms’ potential to consistently innovate. Using data from a time-lagged design with three waves, CEOs of Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) participated in the study. The findings reveal that psychological empowerment mediated the relationship between transformational leadership and sustainable organizational innovation. Organizational learning was found to indirectly effect the relationship between transformational leadership and sustainable organizational innovation. It also demonstrated that psychological empowerment had a positive impact on organizational learning. The findings indicate the strategic significance of transformational leadership and its influence on sustainable organizational innovation for SMEs. Theoretical contributions and practical implications were also discussed.