The Online Adapted Transformational Leadership and Workforce Innovation within the Software Development Industry

Ioana Gutu, Daniela Tatiana Agheorghiesei and Ionel Ciprian Alecu
Additional contact information
Ioana Gutu: Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Alexandru Ioan Cuza of Iasi, 11 Carol I Boulevard, 700506 Iasi, Romania
Daniela Tatiana Agheorghiesei: Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Alexandru Ioan Cuza of Iasi, 11 Carol I Boulevard, 700506 Iasi, Romania
Ionel Ciprian Alecu: Romanian Academy Iasi Branch—“Gh. Zane” Institute for Economic and Social Research, Teodor Codrescu 2, 700481 Iasi, Romania

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 12, 1-22

Abstract: Leadership and workforce innovation are the two most glazed over universal phenomenon across time within the management literature. Despite the status of the buzz words, few researchers studied if there is a link between the online leadership behaviors and the de(in)creasing innovativeness of the followers at work. The current research aimed for offering a viable solution for the online-adapted leadership–workforce innovation equation, by answering to the following research question: is online transformative leadership able, and if so, are its instruments sufficient for increasing followers’ organizational and personal innovativeness within an exclusively online work environment? Research used a two-tailed questionnaire as a research instrument and applied it within the IT&C Industry in Iasi, Romania, namely the software development branch. Results were gathered during the first months of the social lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic; therefore, the ongoing communication and online work procedures implementation were captured via the subjects’ responses. Data was analyzed by using SemPLS (v3.2.5.) software; results show that transformational leadership instruments, once shifted within an exclusively online working environment, suffer from losing in importance and designated effects. Research provides information in regards to four general hypotheses that prove to be partially supported, sending the reader to the idea that an exclusively online-adapted work environment does not show expected results in terms on transformational leadership, nor workforce innovation. Therefore, online-based transformational leadership instruments need to be reshaped and adapted so that followers correctly perceive their leaders’ actions and behaviors on all the five dimensionalities.

Keywords: IT&C management; innovation; leadership (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/12/7408/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/12/7408/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:12:p:7408-:d:840952

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().