The Role of Participatory Leadership and Employee Innovative Behavior on SMEs’ Endurance

Abstract

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have struggled to survive during the COVID-19 crisis. The factors that contributed to their survival during the period deserve to be investigated. Drawing on social-exchange theory, this study aims to explore the mediating effect of participative leadership on the relationship between employee work innovative behavior (EWIB) and the survival of SMEs after the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. A questionnaire survey was used to collect data from 390 managers randomly selected from 114 medium-sized enterprises in Saudi Arabia. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to examine the hypothesized relationships between the research variables. The results of the study indicate a significant and positive association between EWIB and participatory leadership. There is a positive and important effect of both participatory leadership and EWIB on the endurance of SMEs. Participatory leadership had a partial mediating effect on the relationship between EWIB and the SMEs’ endurance during the COVID-19 pandemic period. The study sheds light on the importance of the innovative behavior of the workers and the participatory leadership for the survival and continuity of SMEs in times of crisis similar to COVID-19. The study’s findings provide suggestions for SMEs’ managers regarding adopting a participatory leadership style to develop employees’ innovative behavior and ensure the enterprise’s endurance.

Rebuilding the Workplace in the Post-Pandemic Age through Human Capital Development Programs: A Moderated Mediation Model

“…Empowering workers may reflect positively on productivity, especially when empowerment is constructed of procedures oriented toward passing on general or job-relevant knowledge, or when empowerment is based on granting employees a sense of power and freedom in accomplishing their work tasks (Bonias et al 2010). Within the context of this study, employee empowerment is deemed critical for ensuring that employees acquire and effectively utilize the necessary job-related knowledge and skills at the level of SMEs (Çakar and Ertürk 2010), particularly in the pandemic and post-pandemic age where the ability of employees to cope rapidly with the contextual and environmental changes taking place is considered highly important (Alarifi and Adam 2023). For instance, Hadjielias et al (2022) argued that knowledge co-production enhances and harmonizes the decision-making process in small businesses and makes employee actions more efficient in the COVID-19 age.…”

Take Action and Innovate! Mediated and Moderated Impact of Psychological Capital on the Innovative Work Behavior

“…However, not only spontaneous or occasional innovation, but also regular and sustained innovation that emerges from employees (Mitchell, 2015;Ullah et al, 2021;Wu & Lin, 2018) and that is met with a structure, adapted and conducive to the generation, promotion, and implementation of such ideas at all levels of the organization. This employee behavior, referred to as innovative work behavior (IWB), is an intentional activity that should produce some benefit to the organization from new and/or improved processes, products, or services (Alarifi & Adam, 2023;. Increasing the knowledge of predictors and their contribution to the development of IWB will help organizations favoring and stimulating such behavior through concrete actions, thus promoting and facilitating the working conditions where it can emerge .…”