Leadership Styles and Entrepreneurial Orientation

The style and form of leadership is critical to the organization’s inclination and engagement in entrepreneurial activities and behaviour. This is as leadership styles offer either support and encouragement for entrepreneurial orientation or a stifling of innovativeness and pro-activeness through strict policies which emphasize conformity and unequivocal adherence to standards and norms. This paper is a critical review of leadership styles and their relationship with entrepreneurial orientation. The paper assessed five leadership styles – autocratic, democratic, laissez-faire, transactional and transformational leadership styles; and their impact on entrepreneurial orientation. The discourse revealed that the democratic and transformational leadership styles both share qualities and content which encourage and support entrepreneurial orientation characteristics such as aggressive competitiveness, innovativeness, pro-activeness, risk-taking and autonomy. The paper concluded that both leadership styles – democratic and transformational leadership style; evidently support and enhance organization’s capacity and tendency for entrepreneurial orientation. Keywords: Entrepreneurial orientation, leadership style, autocratic, lasses-faire, democratic, transactional, transformational. DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/11-8-11 Publication date:March 31st 201