Relationship between Leadership Styles and Organizational Performance by Considering Innovation in Manufacturing Companies of Guilan Province

The purpose of this research is to investigate the relationship between leadership styles (transformational and transactional styles) and organizational performance by considering innovation (exploratory and exploitative) in manufacturing companies of Guilan province. The present research is a descriptive study with an emphasis on the causal model in terms of execution and it is an applied research in terms of purpose. It is also a field research in terms of data collection. The statistical population of the research includes the manufacturing companies of Guilan province. The sample size was estimated to be 401 by using Cochran formula. Questionnaire was distributed among the managers of the manufacturing companies after confirming the validity and reliability of the research. In order to analyze the data and to test the hypotheses, the structural equation modeling was used by LISREL software. The test results show that there is a relationship between transformational leadership and exploratory innovation; but there is a negative relationship between transformational leadership and exploitative innovation. In addition, it was found that there is a negative relationship between transactional leadership and exploratory innovation and there is a relationship between transactional leadership and exploitative innovation.