The mediating role of sports entrepreneurship in the effects of positive leadership strategies on innovative behaviors

The present study was conducted with the aim of explaining the pattern of positive leadership strategies' impact on explaining innovative behaviors with the mediating role of sports entrepreneurship. The research is applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-correlation in terms of data collection. The statistical population was 320 managers and employees of the General Department of Sports and Youth of Kermanshah province, and 175 people were selected as a sample according to Cochran's formula. The research tools were standard questionnaires: Cameron's positive leadership (2008), Eskanderzadeh et al.'s innovative performance (2015), and Peters et al.'s (2018) entrepreneurial tendency questionnaire. In this research, PLS statistical software, structural equation method and confirmatory factor analysis were used to analyze the data. The results showed that positive leadership strategies on innovative behaviors with an impact factor of 0.32 and a critical value of 3.94, positive leadership strategies on sports entrepreneurship with an impact factor of 0.62 and a critical value of 10.48, and sports entrepreneurship on innovative behaviors with a coefficient The impact of 0.52 and the critical value of 6.73 have had a positive and significant impact. Also, the results of the Sobel test showed that the Z-value is 10.899, which is more than 1.96, which confirms the effect of positive leadership strategies on innovative behaviors with the mediating role of sports entrepreneurship. Finally, using positive leadership strategies and encouraging innovative behaviors among managers and employees can have a significant impact on the development and creation of sports entrepreneurship.