The Role of Leadership Styles and Entrepreneurial Orientation in Distingushing more from less Succcessful Organizations

Competitive advantage has an extremely important place in strategic thinking both within the organization and the country. The international competitiveness of a country is a reflection of the ability of the organizations within it to achieve success both on the national and international markets. The latest scientific researches attribute organizational performance and consequently competitive advantage to its leaders and their ability to optimally use available resources. Sources have shown that leaders facing the ongoing globalization market challenges through their behaviour can improve the organization's performance. Effective leaders enable it by increasing the level of entrepreneurial orientation of the organization (nurturing its proactive, innovative and risk-taking characteristics) through the interrelationships among its workers as well as their commitment, confidence and motivation for greater work quality. All these favourable effects are primarily enabled by transformational leadership style, first described by Burns (1978), and elaborated in detail by Bass (1985a), whose implementation is dominantly advocated in modern organizations. This paper explores which leadership characteristics can be used to improve the organization's performance, and whether less successful organizations can be distinguished from the ones that are more successful. The results of this study show that there are specific characteristics that the organization should nurture if it wants to be successful and that less successful organizations can be distinguished from the ones that are more successful according to leadership style they use.