이슈리더십이 조직구성원의 혁신행동에 미치는 영향 : 그릿(grit)의 매개효과와 양면성의 조절효과

Today’s business environment is facing a change in paradigm represented by Fourth Industrial Revolution, which has led to rapidly changing and increasingly complex fusion of products and services. As a result, consistent innovation has become a requirement for the survival and growth of companies, and innovation at the organizational context has been receiving even greater attention than ever in business management research. Innovation allows organizations to find new markets and new ways of competing in the markets or create entry barriers and endow competitive advantages. At the individual level, innovation at organizations arise from the innovative behavior of subordinates, which requires their active and self-initiated communication. Thus, more than ever, the role of the leader to respect the diversity of the subordinates and enhance their creativity has gained importance. In this context, issue leadership which, unlike conventional leadership styles, utilizes issues to influence the workplace alongside the members to exert influence from all directions. By presenting a new perspective on the task on hand, i.e., an issue, issue leadership creates a climate where subordinates can immerse in the issue, freely exchange opinions, and actively participate, thereby encouraging the subordinates to take initiative in their work. Therefore, this study sets out to verify the mechanism through which issue leadership positively affects the innovative behavior of subordinates. In particular, the present study examines whether the grit fostered through issue leadership assist in issue leadership’s positive influence on innovative behavior and whether ambidexterity moderates between grit and innovative behavior. Grit is the passion and perseverance to realize a long-term goal despite difficulties or conflicts which is reported to be a predictor of success. Recently, grit has been gaining attention as an essential non-cognitive personal trait in business management research. Meanwhile, the concept of ambidexterity, proposed for the first time in Duncan(1976), is the ability to pursue two opposite ideas at the same time, such as efficiency and flexibility. At the individual level, ambidexterity refers to the individual’s cognitive capability to transfer between exploration and exploitation appropriately and flexibility to adopt to changing situations and environments. Ambidexterity has been reported to promote organizational performance and innovation, thus, this research identified how ambidexterity moderates between grit and innovative behavior, that is, how ambidexterity interacts with grit to have a positive influence on subordinates’ innovation. For this purpose, a survey was conducted on employees at Korean companies in various industries, and the data collected through the survey was analyzed using PROCESS macro(Hayes, 2013). Two preliminary surveys were conducted to ensure the reliability and validity of the measurement tools, and the main survey was conducted in two parts, separating the measurement of the independent and dependent variables, to overcome the common method bias. Job rank, duration of work under the same supervisor, and size of the team were set as control variables. The results of the analysis confirmed the direct effect of issue leadership on innovative behavior, as well as the positive effect of issue leadership on subordinates’ grit. Grit was also found to impact innovative behavior directly, where the increase of grit led to an increase in innovative behaviors. The analysis on grit as a mediator between issue leadership and subordinates’ innovative behavior showed that grit indeed played the role of positive mediator. When the leader exerts issue leadership, subordinates learn to set clear goals and become motivated to maintain interest in the goal, thereby leading to the increase in their grit, and through grit, including such internal motivation, subordinates exhibit stronger innovative behaviors that they pursue with passion and perseverance, despite facing difficulties or obstacles. Also, ambidexterity was revealed to moderate the relationship between grit and innovative behavior. In other words, with the passion and perseverance associated with grit is at work, subordinates’ ambidextrous use of exploitation and exploration can become a dynamic capability in itself to bring a synergy to their innovative behavior. This research contributes to expanding the existing literature on leadership studies in Korea by verifying the mechanism behind the causal relationship between leadership and grit and identifying the antecedent and outcome variables of grit, both of which are scarcely studied by Korean scholars. By uncovering the synergy that can be created through the interaction between grit and ambidexterity, this study highlights the need to incorporate methods to enhance the grit and ambidexterity of subordinates in training and capacity-building programs to enable their quick responses to increasingly competitive and rapidly changing business environment. Other valuable insights that can be gained from the specific mechanisms behind issue leadership’s impact on subordinates’ innovative behavior through grit and ambidexterity are discussed in detail within, along with the limitations and suggestions for future research.