The impact of entrepreneurial/creative leadership on opportunity recognition: Regulatory focus as a mediating factor and entrepreneurial/creative self-efficacy as a moderating factor

This empirical research considered integrating the areas of leadership, self-regulation and social cognition theories. Specifically, this study advances prior theoretical research by scrutinizing the impacts of two types of leadership behaviors entrepreneurial and creative leaderships on opportunity recognition with the introduction of regulatory focus (promotion and prevention focus) as a mediating factor and task specific self-efficacy (entrepreneurial and creative self-efficacy) as a moderating factor. Additionally, in this quantitative study a pilot study was first conducted to ensure the reliability of the translated constructs with a sample of 50 employees from high technology small and medium size enterprises (SMEs). Next, concerning the final study, data were collected from 402 participants in telecommunication companies in Turkey. The findings support direct and positive relationships between both leadership styles entrepreneurial and creative leaderships and opportunity recognition. They also indicate that both entrepreneurial and creative leaderships have a significant and positive relationship with promotion focus, but negative relationship with prevention focus. Promotion focus is positively and significantly related to opportunity recognition, whereas prevention focus is negatively related to opportunity recognition. Moreover, the impacts of both leadership styles on opportunity recognition were mediated by promotion focus. Furthermore, the relationship between promotion focus and opportunity recognition is moderated by the level of both entrepreneurial and creative self-efficacy such that the relationships will be stronger when entrepreneurial and creative self-efficacy are low rather than high. The findings also support the moderation effect of entrepreneurial self-efficacy on the relationship between entrepreneurial leadership and opportunity recognition, and the moderation effect of creative self-efficacy on the relationship between creative leadership and opportunity recognition. This current study set a path for future directions in leadership behaviors and opportunity recognition.