Strategic leadership and executive innovation influence: an international multi-cluster comparative study

This study investigates the relationship of strategic leadership behaviors with executive innova-tion influence and the moderating effects of top management team (TMT)’s tenure heterogeneity and social culture on that relationship. Using survey data from six countries comprising three social cultures, strategic leadership behaviors were found to have a strong positive relationship with executive influence on both product–market and administrative innovations. In addition, TMT tenure heterogeneity moderated the relationship of strategic leadership behaviors with executive innovation influence for both types of innovation, while social culture moderated that relationship only in the case of administrative innovation. Copyright 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Strategic leadership and innovation strategy are crucial for achieving and maintaining strategic competitiveness in the 21st century (Ireland and Hitt, 1999). Strategic leaders have been repeat-edly recognized for their critical role in recogniz-ing opportunities and making decisions that affect innovation processes (Drucker, 1985; Finkelstein and Hambrick, 1996; Quinn, 1985). Strategic lead-ers ’ opportunity recognition and exploitation add considerable business value (Yukl, 1998). The interactions between leadership and inno-vation variables have attracted increasing atten-tion in empirical studies (e.g., Halbesleben et al.