Leadership styles and innovation

"Leaders tend to shape organisational culture by signalling what are the important priorities and values for the organisation"(Amed,P,2010)The leadership styles that a company chooses to follow will affect the innovation in a company. If you look at the difference between autocratic style of management and a laissez-faire style of management they are very different. An autocratic style of leadership "is where the focus of power is with the manager and all interactions within the group move towards the manager."(Mullins,L,2010). If a business follows this style of management it will be very hard for anyone but the manager to be innovative as they have all the power and therefore tend not to see the employees as people who would be able to come up with innovative ideas to improve the company. Whereas laissez-faire style of leadership "is where the manager observes that members of the group are working well on their own. The manager consciously makes a decision to pass the focus of power to members, to allow freedom of action"(Mullins,L,2010). This style of management will allow for more creativity as employees are not always being told what to do. They will see the manager or their leader someone they can go to with an idea that will help them to implement it.

The lassie- faire style of management makes it a lot easier for everyone in the company to be innovative this is the style of management that is adopted in company’s such as Google "Google is also an extremely employee friendly company. There are many initiatives at Google that originate with the employees. Some things Google has instituted are prayer and meditation rooms, companywide volunteer days. They have also invited presidential candidates to their campus to talk about the issues with their employees. Many of these candidates did respond and visited Google's Campus in San Jose, CA. Google has borrowed a lot of the environment that is found in Universities and provides all the things you would find in a PHD or graduate program."(Mance,A,2012) They care about their staff and give them freedom and in turn the staff repay them with loyalty and feel like they can give innovative ideas for the company as they will be listened to because at Google as employees they have power.

Ahmed,P and Shepard,C (2010). Innovation Management. Essex: Pearsons Education Limited. p 314-317.

Mance,A. (2012). What Makes the Number One Innovative Company So Innovative?. Available: http://andymanca.hubpages.com/hub/What-Makes-the-Number-One-Innovative-Company-So-Innovative-. Last accessed 17th January 2012.

Mullins,L (2010). Management and organisational behaviour. 9th ed. Essex: Pearsons Education Limited. 380-381.