Abstract
An increased engagement in innovative activities has become an essential requirement for modern ventures to respond to the threats and opportunities they face. Due to increased globalisation and digitalisation, SME ventures are currently looking for ways to cultivate innovation at different levels such as individual, team and organisational levels to remain competitive. SME ventures need to focus on employee creativity in order to stimulate innovation at the individual level. Moreover, a favourable working environment is required for such cultivation. This short commentary aims to conduct an extant literature review proposing that Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) impacts employee creativity and workplace innovation mediates the relationship between them. Based on the social exchange theory, the literature on LMX, employee creativity, and workplace innovation is reviewed. This study's conceptual model opens new avenues for empirical studies and may help leaders cultivate innovation for improved organisational performance. The current study suggests that SME ventures should implement better LMX practices and better interaction with employees to cultivate ideas aimed to improve employee creativity.
Highlights
Unique factors, work process, and creativity may help an SME venture stand out among its competitors and acquire the competitive edge required to achieve its goals
The literature review indicates that Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) can increase the creativity of employees
Future researchers have the opportunity to find out the impact of LMX on employee creativity by taking employee self-value as the moderator, or they can take leaders' and followers' expectations of creativity as the mediator instead of workplace innovation
Summary
Work process, and creativity may help an SME venture stand out among its competitors and acquire the competitive edge required to achieve its goals. Creativity can be enhanced by establishing an innovative workplace (Agarwal, 2014; Montani, Vandenberghe, Khedhaouria, & Courcy, 2020). Leaders play a significant role in improving their employees' creativity and innovation to improve their performance (Jyoti & Dev, 2015). The researchers empirically tested the relationship between leadership, innovation and creativity and argued for a significant positive relationship among them (Khalili et al, 2016). There still exists a gap in the literature, and no previous research has examined the relationship between LMX, workplace innovation and employee creativity, simultaneously. This study conceptualises workplace innovation's mediating role between LMX and employee creativity in SME ventures
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