Literature generally believe that transformational leadership helps to build a supportive climate for innovation.

See:

1. Sarros, JC, Cooper, BK & Santora JC (2008) Building a climate for innovation through transformational leadership and organizational culture

2. Gumusluoglu, L & Ilsev, A (2009) Transformational leadership, creativity, and organizational innovation

3. Kim, S & Yoon, G. (2015) An Innovation-Driven Culture in Local Government Do Senior Manager's Transformational Leadership and the Climate for Creativity Matter?

Thank you Stanley. Good articles

 I believe transformational leadership helps to build innovation., Integration , and Invigouration.

In the style of transformational leadership, the leader intends to transform the existing situation to the newer pastures. It means the leader is passionate about the change and when positive change happens, it will create newer edition of the existing situation mean innovation. That way I believe transformational leadership leads to innovation and breeds new pasture.  

The core idea of transformational leadership is creating changes. Every change that brings something new in the organization is an innovation. That’s why we can’t talk about transformational leadership without talking about innovations.

Thank you Liliana,

I don't agree that every change that brings something new in the organization is an innovation.

Innovation requires the creation of new or additional value. There are several changes in organizations that don't create any value.

I do believe that transformation leadership, in its purest form is about transforming others (as well as the environment/organization); hence it encourages and supports originality, 'thinking out of the box' - in general triggers members to think, which is the basis of innovation. I do agree that not every change in an organization is an innovation - it can be the result of a new policy, or unplanned change. But, when transformation leadership is in practice, when everyone is encouraged to think - it triggers new things, or new ways of doing things - which is innovative

A fundamental aspect of this is culture.  Transformational leadership creates the culture in which innovation can happen.  People feel empowered to innovate, they don't worry about efforts to innovate that fail will lead to punishment, they are recognised/rewarded for innovations, and so on.  Underneath that, transformational leadership often generates high levels of engagement, a precursor to innovation.  Transformational leaders are also authentic leaders and earn the trust and respect of their followers, which fosters engagement.  And to come to your point re learning, 

Part 2...yes, you can study learning as a variable, but it will likely be difficult to separate learning out from other elements such as engagement and increased psychological capital.  People learn all the time, regardless of formal learning opportunities, making it difficult to measure the impact of learning.

@ Sylvia Thank you for attempting to underline the two issues Cultural and Learning separately.

Unstructured learning happens as a back end process directly influencing culture, while structured learning can be counted as transformational. 

That is why such impetus may be initiated by a leader.

When the structured learning generates an action (or a response) to intuitively vary the contents, it adds to the  learning inventory.

Yes, i agree, Priyavrat, re unstructured learning.  I think that while unstructured, or informal, learning influences the culture, the reverse is also true.  Transformational leaders work actively and extensively to create organizational cultures that foster, support, and leverage such learning, which in turn supports innovation (among other things).  It's impossible to innovate without learning.  I'm intrigued by your differentiation, though, of structured and unstructured learning in terms of innovation.  Why can unstructured learning not also be transformational?  I can think of many times in my own life where my thinking/behaviour has changed as a result what I've learned in a very unstructured way.

In transformational leadership you first identify the need for change then you create a vision. Innovation is then used to help get to the vision. Innovation is using what we already know in the discipline and in other areas to integrate ideas to solutions. A learning organization creates the vision first and the change happens as a result. If it is broken down to simple terms. Organizations either react to change or they create change. So in that context applied to organizations there is a difference between innovation and creativity.

I think it is worth to study those relationships. The transformational leadership is the source for innovation, where "transformation" initiates creativity and the final stage of creativity ends with the beginning of innovations. So, SMEs should implement the transformational leadership.

However, innovations (like certain procedures) in SMEs are not always necessarily good. Sometimes (depends of a current stage of a firm) it can overwhelm a firm and the firm may loose on time and efficiency on daily activities. 

@ Sylvia,  quoting " I'm intrigued by your differentiation, though, of structured and unstructured learning in terms of innovation.  Why can unstructured learning not also be transformational?"

Sure, unstructured learning can be transformational, but it cannot be addressed as a common,  frequent and ongoing phenomenon, until the cultural environment starts supporting it. The structured learning  is the more sure stimulus where one is planned, directed, and organised..How Jerry puts it aptly "react to change or they create change". Reaction (or a response) can be engineered by systematic reorganisation (unless triggered). While creating change is based upon a pre-requisite of a structured initiative. 

The results are again subject to the clarity of objective (Jerry calls it vision). The objectives possibly use a template of culture, until it (the process) is dictated by transformatiional leadership.

Ah yes, now I see what you meant more clearly. Bi agree with Jerry re reacting to change or creating change.  I have seen this so often in the workplace over the past many years.  Leaders who react to change seem permanently stresses by change, even on the occasions they initiate change.  Employees see this and react accordingly. Where change is created, though, I've usually found an organizations where informal learning is valued, highly encouraged, and acyptively nurtured.  Transformational leaders recognise that innovation comes from the minds of those who are constantly open to new ideas and new ways of thinking and learning from these.  Formal learning adds even more depth.  My experience suggests to me (no research to back this up) that formal learning enhances innovation when founded on a culture of learning and strong informal learning, but likely only generates minimal innovation in the absence of a strong learning culture.  That's why I think it is important that Mahmoud looks at the influence of both types of learning, and of culture.

Good day,

That’s an interesting question. I would approach it from a different angle. The question of what comes first the chicken or the egg is a challenging question.

First what do you mean by organizational learning? Are you referring to second order learning in Peter Senge’s context?

Transformational leadership is not a solid concept. Most textbooks list four dimension of transformational leadership: develop a strategic vision, communicate the vision, model the vision and build commitment. Which one of these most contributes to innovation?

I would approach your question backward. I would investigate the employees of innovative organizations to learn what aspect of transformational learning might contribute to innovation.

Regards,

Caterina

Hi Caterina,

Organizational learning is conceived in the sense of Organizational learning capabilities (OLC), defined as "the organizational and managerial characteristics or factors that facilitate the organizational learning process or allow an organization to learn".

Factors as experimentation, risk taking, interaction with the external environment, dialogue and participative decision making.

(Dibella et al., 1996; Goh and Richards, 1997; Hult and Ferrell, 1997; Yeung et al.,1999).

Good day Mahmoud,

Thanks for the challenge. I find that quoting another researcher's definition in the absence of interpretation is insufficient.

In plain English what the definition of organizational learning that you quoted?

Regards,

Caterina Valentino

I agree with Caterina, plus these are all around 20 years old.  There's been a lot of change in the last two decades.  Does recent research support the older research, challenge it, negate it, or what?