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 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.