Relationship between leaders’ Bourdieu capitals and subordinates’ creative behaviours in Malaysian landscape architecture firms / Mohd Ruzaini Che Zahari

The increasing globalised trade has prompted Malaysia’s initiatives such as Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and liberalisation of services trade. These had and will place Malaysian professional service providers such as landscape architecture firms in more competitive markets both domestically and i...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Che Zahari, Mohd Ruzaini
Format: Thesis
Language:English
Published: 2020
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Online Access:https://ir.uitm.edu.my/id/eprint/60949/1/60949.pdf
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Summary:The increasing globalised trade has prompted Malaysia’s initiatives such as Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and liberalisation of services trade. These had and will place Malaysian professional service providers such as landscape architecture firms in more competitive markets both domestically and internationally. Enhanced subordinates’ creativity can give landscape architecture firms competitive advantages. Past scholars have documented the role of leaders in fostering subordinates’ creativity. This study adapts Pierre Bourdieu’s “Forms of Capital” concept to study leadership for enhancing subordinates’ creative behaviours in Malaysian landscape architecture firms. The aim of this study is to determine the influence of subordinates’ perceptions of the leaders’ Bourdieu capitals towards the subordinates’ creative behaviours in Malaysian landscape architecture firms. Design subordinates of registered Malaysian landscape architecture firms provided data in a two phased research. The first phase is an exploratory qualitative research to explore the perceptions of 13 subordinates through telephone interviews. The findings contributed to the development of the survey questionnaire for the second phase. The questionnaires were distributed to subordinates of landscape architecture firms registered in the Institute of Landscape Architects Malaysia’s (ILAM) directory (n=73) in the second phase. Ninety usable questionnaires out of the 105 returned questionnaires from 39 firms were obtained. The data was subjected Factor Analysis, Independent-Samples T-Test, One-Way ANOVA, and Multiple Regression tests. Factor analysis generated five leaders’ Bourdieu capitals, namely social, emotional, human, cultural and political capitals. There are significant differences (p<0.05) in mean scores of leaders’ human, emotional and cultural capitals, and subordinates’ creative behaviours among categories of two demographic variables (subordinates’ working position and years of experience). Multiple Regression analysis showed that the leaders’ emotional and social capitals positively influence the subordinates’ creative behaviours (p<0.05). These findings support the use of Bourdieu capitals to replace traits in the Leadership Traits theory in researching leadership effectiveness. Five leadership capitals instead of the original three Bourdieu capitals were found. The findings inform current/potential leaders in Malaysian landscape architecture firms about the leadership capitals needed to influence their subordinates’ creative behaviours. The findings can also help Malaysian landscape architecture firms and ILAM in leadership development interventions of landscape architects.