Are entrepreneurial leadership competencies, impacting innovation work behaviour, moderated by age? A study of Indian startups
Shambhavi Pandey, Abhijit P. DeshpandePurpose
Innovation is widely recognized as a key driver of organizational performance, while leadership competencies serve as a crucial enabler in shaping and promoting employees’ innovative work behaviour. Drawing on the upper echelon theory where the cognitive framework and values of the CEO/senior executives play a critical role in projecting organizational performance (Yang et al., 2025), this study aims to examine the moderating influence of age on entrepreneurial leadership (EL) competencies which impact innovation work behaviour.
Design/methodology/approach
Primary data was collected using a purposive random sampling and responses were obtained using the Multi Factor Leadership Questionnaire 6s, a widely recognized and pre-validated instrument for assessing leadership styles. Select respondents who met the pre-defined selection criteria for becoming an entrepreneur were contacted online, and MANOVA was used to analyse responses. This study ascertained age moderating the EL competencies impacting innovation work behaviour.
Findings
The analysis suggests that the leadership style of Indian entrepreneurs closely resembles the transformational leadership (TL) style and does not correlate with transactional or contingency styles of leadership as cited by previous researchers for other geographies (Hensellek et al., 2023; Bagheri, 2017). Findings suggest that age is a significant covariate associated with EL competencies, which impact innovation work behaviour.
Research limitations/implications
Due to limitations of time and a small data set, this research concentrates on validating the moderation effect of age on entrepreneurial leadership competencies of Indian entrepreneurs. However, there is a need to further calibrate the findings as per the stage of the venture – seed, pilot, scaling and maturity. This would help organizations and incubators make robust teams which plug in the gaps as well as can be used for training and development of entrepreneurs in the start-up eco system.
Practical implications
A common leadership competency model could emerge out of the findings of this study which would help gauge the entrepreneur’s pain points with respect to the right alignment of competencies and the business goals. Hiring relevant people with respect to filling the competency gap would be easier with reference to a leadership competency map where the findings of this study would contribute. Knowing the TL competencies which are affected the greatest vis-à-vis the age of the entrepreneur would help in designing age relevant training programmes for entrepreneurs incubated at various government and private accelerators in India.
Originality/value
This paper draws on upper echelon theory to uniquely supplement the literature on EL impacting innovation work behaviour, examining the effect of entrepreneur’s age. The paper drills down the EL competencies impacting innovation work behaviour which is an important indicator for further research in the same direction. This study could be a precursor to measure effects of other demographical and environmental variables on EL leading to innovation work behaviour.