Organizations are relying on their leaders to demonstrate effective leadership behavior that positively affects employee innovation. However, discrepancies are often found between leaders’ self-perception and followers’ perception of leadership. Understanding the discrepancies is critical for narrowing the leader–follower perception gap and achieving congruence between leaders and followers. This forms the motivation of this study, which aims to compare and contrast the direct and mediated (through psychological empowerment) impact of transformational leadership behavior on employee innovation performance from the perspective of both leaders and followers. Multisource data using questionnaires were collected from 66 leaders and 220 followers in the United Arab Emirates. The results show that leaders’ self-perception scores were significantly lower than that of their followers. Also, discrepancies in perceptions of the direct impact of transformational leadership behavior on employee innovation were found such that a positive and significant relationship was found for followers while no significant relationship was found for leaders. Finally, psychological empowerment mediates the relationship between transformational leadership and employee innovation performance for both leaders and followers, though leaders perceive the mediation of psychological empowerment to be stronger than followers perceive it to be. The study findings show the importance of obtaining multiple-source feedback to first assess the perceptions of both leaders and followers and then make necessary interventions (if required) to narrow perception gaps between leaders and followers since discrepancies could lead to poor organizational culture.

This study seeks to explore the effects of the COVID-19 crisis on the business resilience of SMEs in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as an emerging economy, and specifically in Dubai, a thriving global business hub. Our objective is to examine the challenges experienced by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in this region and how business leaders respond to the unprecedented crisis to stay afloat. We obtained rich descriptions from 26 respondents comprising SME owners and managers, using semi-structured interviews and a reflective process model to discern different aspects of business volatility, leadership roles, and financial management. All respondents endured the crisis periods by implementing numerous changes and initiatives to explore new norms of working, uncharted business territories, fulfill current projects, and develop innovative solutions and diversification in their businesses. Many have turned challenges into opportunities, progressing successfully through the three challenging periods of crisis using diverse approaches to stay resilient. The paper concludes with a discussion of theoretical and practical implications and future research directions.

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