Shaping the Skills and Styles of Future Innovative Women Leaders: The Moderating Roles of Self Efficacy and Personal Initiative

Innovative leaders are crucial in the 21st century. In order to effectively manage the rising demands for innovation in many aspects of business organisations, innovative leaders must exhibit multiple skills and styles, particularly in promoting creativity and innovation. This paper critically analyses past literature on the skills and styles of innovative women leaders. Studies in this direction suggest that the boardroom presence of women leads to more innovative performance. Innovative women leaders play a crucial part in closing a significant gap between a stated desire for innovation and capabilities in order to optimise organisational innovativeness to attain business sustainability. Innovative women leaders will bring different perspectives, skills, and innovative ideas to the table, but the combination of these three will help create new perspectives that will lead to better decision-making for the business as a whole. Moreover, an innovative woman leader can bring out the best abilities in team members and motivate them to work together to achieve a shared innovative opportunity by identifying the appropriate skills and style. For this reason, the paper provides a holistic framework that conceptualises the six main variables as the skills and style in shaping innovative women leaders. This will provide new insights for organisations and an edge to utilise innovative women's leaders' resources in penetrating markets faster and provide a better connection to developing markets. Clearly, it could also investigate emerging opportunities and unleash human capital potential, resulting in more innovative female leaders and a greater impact on innovation. Research paper Keywords: Skills; Styles; Innovation; Innovative Women Leaders; Human Capital Development; Top-Management Team; Female Board Members; Malaysia  Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Chellappan, Y., & Muthuveloo, R. (2022). Shaping the Skills and Styles of Future Innovative Women Leaders: The Moderating Roles of Self Efficacy and Personal Initiative. Journal of Entrepreneurship, Business and Economics, 10(1), 177–211