Collective entrepreneurship: Employees’ perceptions of the influence of leadership styles

Collective entrepreneurship (CE) is the ability of several individuals to jointly innovate and create within organisations. In this exploratory study, we investigate whether the relationship between some specific leadership styles and more effective CE is affected by moderator variables. The unit of analysis were staff members of a Portuguese group of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). A total of 204 questionnaires were returned, representing almost half the employee population we approached. For measurement, we employed 19 items to gather the six latent variables related to our model. For data analysis, we used partial least squares. We found that participative leadership style had the highest joint and indirect effect on more effective CE. Job satisfaction appears to be an important moderator for the occurrence of CE. The impact of employees’ organisational commitment and collaboration on CE is rather weak. Our study contributes to advancing knowledge in the fields of organisational psychology and entrepreneurship. We combine and extend previous research, which allows us to reconcile the sometimes contradictory findings so far concerning leadership and CE in the realm of small- and medium-sized enterprises.