Abstract
Innovation is a crucial concept for organizational sustenance and development. The study investigated the impact of servant leadership on employee innovative work behavior by examining the mediating role of employee voice in Ghana. This was done to contribute to fostering innovation in the nation and stimulate the idea of servant leadership behavior in Ghanaian organizations where generally, power appears to be distant.Data from 200 full-time Ghanaian workers were used in this cross-sectional study. Pearson’s correlation, linear regression, and SEM were utilized in the data analysis. The empirical findings from the study demonstrate that servant leadership and employee voice correlate significantly and positively with innovative work behavior. However, employee voice failed to mediate the effect of servant leadership on employee innovative work behavior. Servant leadership in Ghana also failed to exert positive influence on employee voice.The implication of this research infers that organizational leaders in Ghana can have confidence in putting on servant leadership behavior to increase innovative work behavior in employees as is critical for organizational productivity and survival. The deliberate attempt to augment innovation also means that organizations necessitate the intentional creation of atmospheres (climate for innovation) for breeding and nurturing practical, innovative concepts. This study also gives employers the assurance that encouraging employee voice in the workplace is critical since it keeps the lines of communication open and serves as a deterrent to operational behaviors that hamper organizational advancement. The study further elaborates a detailed discussion of the research results, implications, limitations, and prospects for future studies. Keywords: Servant leadership, innovative work behavior, employee voice, Ghana DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/14-2-08 Publication date: January 31 st 2022
Highlights
Innovation, by implication, innovative performance and work behavior is central to organizational development
Nikolaou et al, (2007) made some profound discoveries that two personality characteristics, i.e., emotional stability and conscientiousness, are ominously linked with employees' voice behavior towards their immediate supervisor, but not towards the company's top management. Based on these compounded empirical findings relating to servant leadership and voice behavior, we propose that servant leadership will positively influence employee voice
This result is at variance with the work of Yan & Xiao (2016) whose work discovered that servant leadership was positively related to employee voice
Summary
Innovation, by implication, innovative performance and work behavior is central to organizational development. Some of the key driving factors for innovation is to enhance the financial, marketing, product, and service performance of enterprises. This helps organizations in the retention of clients and the attraction of new ones to ensure profitability and sustainable continuity of service delivery. It provides organizations with a competitive edge necessary for long-term survival in Ghana's free-market system (Oduro & Nyarku, 2018). Recent studies on innovation discovered that innovation was positively associated with organizational productivity (Nair et al, 2011; Oduro & Nyarku, 2018; YuSheng & Ibrahim, 2020). Similar studies like that of Arthur (2016) investigated the influence that authentic and transactional leadership styles sustain on employee creativity (a vital component of innovation) in Ghana’s telecommunication industry
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