RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EMPOWERING LEADERSHIP AND INNOVATIVE WORK BEHAVIOR AMONG DIGITAL ENTERPRISE EMPLOYEES IN INDONESIA

The competitiveness between companies becomes more rigorous because of the increasing development of digital enterprises. Therefore, one of the most important things that employees in digital enterprises can do is to innovate. Based on previous research, the most important factor that could increase innovation among employees is the leadership style. Over time, there have been several changes on leadership styles to adjust with the demands of times. However, no company has found an effective leadership style to improve innovative work behavior among its current employees. In previous research, it has been found that innovative work behavior will increase if a leader supports freedom for employees. Leader behavior is a characteristic of empowering leadership. Nevertheless, there is still little research on empowering leadership and innovative work behavior. Therefore, this research aims to examine the relation between empowering leadership and innovative work behavior among employees in Indonesia’s digital enterprises. There were 217 respondents from several digital enterprises in Indonesia within this research. The method used in this research is a quantitative method in which the author uses Janssen’s (2000) innovative work behavior instruments and Amundsen and Martinsen’s (2014) empowering leadership instruments to measure the data. The analysis technique used in this research is Pearson’s Product Moment. The result shows that there is a significant relationship between empowering leadership and innovative work behavior among employees in Indonesia’s digital enterprises, autonomy support and innovative work behavior, and development support with innovative work behavior. Thus, the conclusion is that the more a leader shows empowering characteristics, the more frequently the employees will show innovative work behavior.