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Creativity And Innovation: Contribution of Employee Empowerment And Asta Brata
Leadership
Desak Ketut Sintaasih
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; Ayu Desi Indrawati; Ni Wayan Mujiati
3 1,2,3
Teaching Staff of Management Department, Faculty of Economics and Business, Udayana University, Indonesia
e-mail: sintaasihyahoo.com
ABSTRACT
Creativity plays a very important role in the implementation of innovation. It is part of innovation, and innovation is the implementation of the outcome of creativity. This present
study is intended to explore and analyze what employee empowerment and asta brata
leadership contribute to creativity and innovation. It was conducted in the small, micro and middle manufacturers ‘usaha kecil, mikro dan menengah hereinafter referred to as
UMKM in Gianyar Regency, Bali Province. The sample was determined based on a 30- UMKM quota and the sample in each type of UMKM was proportionally determined. The
respondents of the study totaled 90, 3 from each UMKM. The data were analyzed using PLS.
The result of the study shows that the structural empowerment and asta brata
leadership proved to positively and significantly contribute to creativity. The psychological empowerment proved to positively but insignificantly contribute to creativity. Creativity
proved to positively and significantly contribute to innovation. The structural empowerment positively but insignificantly contributed to innovation. The psychological
empowerment and
asta brata leadership proved to positively and significantly contribute to innovation. The implication of the study, as far as the attempt made to inspire creativity
and innovation is concerned, is that it is important to empower the key employees by making them free to develop their innovative ideas when designing products and having
access to the information needed for doing their works. Keywords: structural empowerment, psychological empowerment,
asta brata leadership, creativity and innovation
1. Introduction
As far as the Indonesia’s economic structure is concerned, the small, micro and middle businesses can importantly strengthen the people’s economy to face the economic
crisis. They should be perpetually strengthened through creativity and innovation in order to maintain their competitiveness, face the globalized competition which is getting tighter,
the rapid technological development, and the rapid change in the consumer need and desire.
Similarly, the UMKM in Gianyar Regency, especially those which are involved in the processing industry manufacturer, are one of the five sectors which have significantly
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contributed to the local economy 18.11per cent. As a business sector which uses the local input and is competitive enough to face the economic crisis, various steps should be taken
to inspire high creativity and innovation especially in presenting the design as the superiority of UMKM, especially if related to the Balinese local wisdom. It is important for
the manufacturing UMKM to give more attention to the intangible assets such as the human resources, and the other intellectual assets Zuhal, 2010. The most successful
company is the one which can create creativity and innovation Vicenzi, 2000. Creativity has proved to positively and significantly contribute to innovation Reychav et al., 2012. It
is also affirmed by Alves et al. 2007 that creativity is part of innovation, and that innovation is the implementation of the outcome of creativity.
The human resources employees of a company can be affected by several factors. Sun et al. 2012 proved that empowerment significantly contributes to the employee
creativity. In several studies, empowerment is explored from two aspects; they are structural and psychological aspects Yang and Choi, 2009; Ayupp and Chung, 2010; Sun
et al., 2012. From the structural perspective, empowerment cannot be separated from the managerial practices which are intended to delegate power, making decision authority and
responsibility to the lower level in an organization. From the psychological perspective, empowerment is conceptualized in four cognitions Spreitzer, 1996 in Sun et al., 2012;
they are meaning, competence, self-determination, and impact. Apart from the employee empowerment, Garcia-Morales et al. 2008 proved that
transformational leadership positively contributes to innovative behavior. Furthermore, it was also stated that the transformational leadership contributes to the intrinsic motivation,
and stimulates creativity through a transformational leader, who more effectively and creatively stimulates hisher subordinators to be creative as well Robbins Judge, 2015.
The transformational leadership which gives emphasis on individuals is the behavior which empowers the leader’s subordinators individually to develop and improve their capabilities
and effectiveness. The study conducted by Reuvers et al. 2008 which explored the relationship between the transformational leadership with the innovative working behavior
also proved that the transformational leadership is positively and significantly related to the innovative working behavior. In an organization, a leader may contribute to the employee
creativity and the company’s innovation Jung et al., 2003
One of the Hindu teachings which contains the highly meaningful leadership philosophy is what is referred to as the
Asta Brata teaching, the eight great natures of
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Gods. It is guidance to the teaching of leadership; in other words, it is the humanity-based governing teaching, through which a leader may attain authority. It can be understood that
the basic nature which a leader should have based on Asta Brata is that heshe should be a
model to hisher subordinates. In addition, heshe should be honest, fair and side with hisher subordinates. This indicates that the leadership concepts which the
Asta Brata leadership contains do not become into existence as a scientific-academic theory; instead,
they have strong roots in regard to both the societal-human relationship and transcendental relationship with God. As claimed by Dharmanegara et al. 2013 that the
asta brata leadership significantly contributes to the employee performance.
The human resources play a key role in the success achieved by UMKM; therefore, they should innovate in such a way that they can cope with all the internal affairs of the
company and improve the competitiveness of the products they produce in the market. Soleh 2008 affirms that the manufacturing UMKM can be improved by implementing the
innovative strategy. The better the innovative strategy is implemented, the better the performance will be.
Based on the empirical studies described above, this present study is intended to analyze the contribution of empowerment and the
asta brata leadership to the creativity and innovation of the manufacturing UMKM in Gianyar Regency to encounter the
globalized competition which is getting tighter and the rapid change in the consumer need and desire. In this relation, the human resources of a company play a key role in to what
extent the UMKM can face such a change. The problems of the study can be formulated as follows:
1 To what extent the creativity of employees contributes to the manufacturing
UMKM; 2
To what extent the employee empowerment and asta brata leadership contribute to the employee creativity of the manufacturing UMKM;
3 To what extent the employee empowerment and asta brata leadership contribute to
the innovation made by the manufacturing UMKM. Paying attention to the problems of the study formulated above, the objectives of the
present study are: 1 exploring and analyzing the contribution of the employee creativity to the innovation of the manufacturing UMKM, 2 exploring and analyzing the
contribution of the employee empowerment and asta bratha leadership to the employee
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creativity; 3 exploring and analyzing the contribution of the employee empowerment and asta brata leadership to the innovation of the manufacturing UMKM.
In the following sub sections, the relevant literature review used as the framework of the hypothesis of the study, the research method, and the discussion of the result of the
study are presented.
Micro-Small —medium Enterprises MSEs
2. Literature and Hypothesis 2.1 Creativity and Innovation
