Entrepreneurship & Organization Management

Transformational Leadership and Employee Creativity in an Information Technology (IT) Enterprises: Moderating Role of Openness to Experience

Abstract

Sanjeet Ghimire, Abbott J Haron* and Hassan Shakil Bhatti

The creativity and innovation in an Information Technology (IT) industry are essential for sustainable success, gaining competitive advantages, as well as is vitalfor the survival of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). An employee is the primary source of creativity in any organisation. Although employees are involved in the daily operating task, the style of leadership caninfluencethe generation and execution of creative ideas. Furthermore, an employee's own inclination towards creativity and openness to experience play a role in enhancing the creative environment.However, the role of transformational leadership dimensions in employee creativity as well as the roleemployees' traits of openness to experience,had not been studied abundantly. The lack of study of the relationship of four dimensions of transformational leadership individually with employee creativity will be fulfilled through this study.The focus of this research is on examining the relationship between transformational leadership and employee creativitythrough quantitative researchoffourdimensions of transformational leadership. Furthermore, studying how the employee'sopenness to experience moderate the relation between transformational leadership and employee creativity is examined in this study.

The research design is cross-sectional quantitative research where data will be collected from a survey questionnaire. The survey questionnaire will besentby using survey monkey to the employee and manager of Sydney based IT SMEs. The data will be collected on the response based on fourconstructs of transformational leadership.The collected data will be tested through regression analysis using SPSSversion 27, and the hypothesis will be tested. The test result will be interpreted to check whether the transformational leadership has a positive relationship with employee creativity and whether the relationship is moderated byemployee's openness to experience.