Leaders’ bourdieu capitals and subordinates’ creative behaviours: Empirical study in malaysian landscape architecture firms

• Published in: Malaysian Construction Research Journal
• Main Author: Zahari R.; Ariffin M.H.; Othman N.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Construction Research Institute of Malaysia 2019
• Online Access: https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85081552483&partnerID=40&md5=d28b755394d567c8ac03f98229b701fe

This study investigated the influence of Bourdieu capitals possessed by leaders in Malaysian landscape architecture firms towards the creativity of their subordinates. Three design subordinates from each of the 73 landscape architecture firms in the database of Institute of Landscape Architects Malaysia were surveyed by mail. These design subordinates were asked to rate their leaders’ Bourdieu capitals and their resulting creativity motivations. Ninety acceptable completed questionnaires from 39 surveyed firms were analysed. Factor Analysis on the data generated five leaders’ Bourdieu capitals. The capitals are Social, Human, Emotional, Cultural and Political. Stepwise Multiple Regression Analysis ascertained the relationship of the leaders’ Bourdieu capitals and their subordinates’ creativity. The regression equation showed that Leader’s Social and Emotional capitals are directly related to the subordinate’s creativity. The mean rating scores between landscape architects (x=4.04) and assistant landscape architects (x=3.70) in their perceptions of leaders’ emotional capital were significantly different (p<0.05). This study contributes to a novel approach of measuring the leader’s personal ‘resources’ and their influence on subordinates’ creativity in Malaysian landscape architecture firms. The findings show that there are more than the three original capitals proposed by Bourdieu (1986). The samples of different design occupations with larger populations and paired data sets of leaders and subordinates in future researches can further validate this study’s findings. © 2019, Construction Research Institute of Malaysia. All rights reserved.