Leadership, Innovation Among Tunisian ICT SMEs

摘要

Currently, innovation is a major challenge in emerging economies such as Tunisia. Although the influence of leadership seems evident in the implementation of innovations, few studies have investigated this impact; especially for SMEs in the ICT sector. For this purpose, we propose to highlight the impact of leadership on the implementation of innovations in SMEs through exploratory qualitative study of five small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the high-tech sector in Tunisia, to understand the management styles of the chief executive officers (CEOs) and their motivations towards innovative activities. The results of this investigation show that the style of leadership in the ICT sector is both participative and transformational. Only organizational innovation has been detected. Collaborative work and group cohesion are the major cultural aspects of innovation. Items from this exploration allows us to clarify aspects of three basic concepts that make up our conceptual model (leadership, culture of innovation, and innovations) for testing later under a quantitative study by the method of structural equation modeling.