Leadership Styles, Employee Work Behaviours, and Innovation in Pakistani Small and Medium Enterprises Sector

Javed, Ali (2025) Leadership Styles, Employee Work Behaviours, and Innovation in Pakistani Small and Medium Enterprises Sector. Doctoral thesis, Asia e University, Malaysia.

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Abstract

Recognizing the significance of rapid responsiveness and innovation in today’s business climate, a study has been conducted to identify the predictors that drive innovation and responsiveness in the SME sector of Pakistan. The study focused on two leadership styles, “transformational leadership and empowering leadership”, as independent variables to investigate the relationship with two dependent variables, “firm innovativeness and market responsiveness”, through the two employee behaviors as the mediators, “innovative work behavior and proactive work behavior”. The study aimed to fill the gap left by previous studies by examining these relationships from the perspective of employee behaviors as the mediation, which was an area of negligence. The study addresses the literature gap by examining market responsiveness, a less explored construct in innovative marketing. It investigates how leadership and employee behaviors influence this market responsiveness. The study is also unique in a way that it used dimensions of the variables as well as testing the relationships with other variables. The study followed the positivism paradigm as philosophy, deductive as the research approach, and survey method as the research strategy. Data was collected from 384 respondents in 13 cities in Punjab, Pakistan, through stratified random sampling technique. Respondents were both leaders and their followers (subordinates) working in the SME sector of Pakistan. The results showed that transformational leadership is a good predictor variable for innovative and proactive work behavior, firm innovativeness, and market responsiveness. Empowering leadership was also found to be a good predictor of innovative and proactive behavior, but not for innovativeness and responsiveness. Proactive work behavior was found to be a reliable indicator for both firm innovativeness and market responsiveness. Despite assumptions, it is found that innovative work behavior does not significantly influence firm innovativeness and market responsiveness. Moreover, proactive work behavior was found to mediate relationships between leadership styles and innovation, but innovative work behavior does not. Findings suggest that organizations should prioritize the cultivation of transformational leadership, promote proactive work behavior, and prioritize quick market responsiveness and innovation to stay ahead of the competition.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Transformational leadership, empowering leadership, innovative work behavior, proactive work behavior, firm innovativeness, market responsiveness
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor
Divisions:	School of Graduate Studies
Depositing User:	Muhamad Aizat Nazmi Mohd Nor Hamin
Date Deposited:	09 Apr 2026 04:05
Last Modified:	09 Apr 2026 04:05
URI:	http://ur.aeu.edu.my/id/eprint/1455

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