An empirical test of CEO transactional leadership on organizational performance in Chinese transitional economy context

Under economic transition period, Chinese firms need not only the adaptive ability responsive to external environment, but also the basic exercise of scientific management. In terms of leaders in the firm, except for higher innovation capability, more importantly, they require for the ability of contingency rewards and management by exception. Recognizing the importance of transactional leadership in Chinese context, the paper tries to unpack the effect of transactional leadership on firms, specifically, we try to distinguish the different effect of CEO transactional leadership on exploitive innovation and organizational performance, then we use Chinese data to test the hypothesis, and find there is different influence process, which means that CEO should take different leadership styles in the process of improving innovation capability and organizational performance.