ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Organizational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1615515
Innovation through Individual-Focused Transformational Leadership in China: Mediation by Leader Identification and Cross-Level Moderation by Team-Focused Leadership and Innovation Climate
Provisionally accepted
- 1College of Business Administration, Dong-A University, Busan, Republic of Korea
- 2College of Business, Gachon University, Seongnam, Gyeonggi, Republic of Korea
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In the new phase of economic transformation and social development, innovation has emerged as a critical issue. Corporate innovation largely depends on the innovative behavior of its members, making it crucial to understand the impact of transformational leadership on employees' innovative behavior. We conducted a study from the perspective of relational identity theory. Questionnaire data were collected from April to June 2024 through a professional survey company in China that recruited 640 members and leaders of 160 teams. The analysis results are as follows: First, individual-focused transformational leadership was found to have a positive effect on individual innovative behavior. Second, leader identification played a significant mediating role in the relationship between individual-focused transformational leadership and individual innovative behavior. Third, team-focused transformational leadership exhibited a significant negative cross-level moderating effect on the relationship between individual-focused transformational leadership and leader identification. Lastly, team innovative climate showed a significant positive cross-level moderating effect on the relationship between leader identification and individual innovative behavior.
Keywords: Individual-focused transformational leadership, Team-focused transformational leadership, Innovative behavior, Leader identification, Team innovative climate, Cross-level analysis
Received: 21 Apr 2025; Accepted: 04 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Park and Kim. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Heetae Park, College of Business Administration, Dong-A University, Busan, Republic of Korea
Hee Jin Kim, College of Business, Gachon University, Seongnam, Gyeonggi, Republic of Korea
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