Abstract
Organizational analysts have increasingly identified implementation failure as the main cause of many organizations’ failure to realize the intended benefits of the innovations they adopt. In many cases, innovations are ineffective because organizations do not gain targeted users’ innovation implementation behavior - their consistent and committed use of the particular innovation. The goal of this study was to investigate the effect of transformational leadership on innovation implementation behavior and the psychological mechanisms of this relationship. The sample consisted of 75 employees of a private medical clinic in Norway, which had introduced an electronic patient record (EPR) system 17 months preceding this study. Affective commitment to change, normative commitment to change, and perceived computer self-efficacy were tested as potential mediators of the relationship between transformational leadership and innovation implementation behavior in a multiple mediation model. A bootstrap procedure was used to test for mediation. The results demonstrate that transformational leadership had a positive influence on innovation implementation behavior, and that normative commitment to change was a significant mediator of this relationship. There was, however, no support for the proposed mediators affective commitment to change and perceived computer self-efficacy. The results from this study point out the importance of transformational leadership in promoting employees’ consistent and committed use of a particular innovation, and suggest that employees’ feelings of obligation is a significant psychological mechanism of this relationship. The findings indicate that organizations need to pay close attention to leadership style when an innovation is implemented, and that leaders need to be aware of the psychological mechanisms by which they promote employees’ consistent and committed use of an innovation.