Transformation leadership and marketing performance : the mediating role of organizational learning and customer orientation

Abstract

The making and breaking power of leadership has never been disputable. It is believed to be the single most important factor by which organizations used to exploit opportunities and survive hardships. Despite the fact that all functional areas are not immune to the consequences of good and bad leadership, marketing is uniquely sensitive. Unarguably, all leadership styles are not expected to equally impact marketing performance. A leader of character who inspires followers, helps employees to use their potentials, allows employees to make and fix errors, and pave ways for employee advancement is a one typically needed by organizations. This kind of leader is even more critical for those organizations operating in a brutally competitive market; like the brewing one in Ethiopia. This study is designed to investigate the direct and indirect impact of Transformational Leadership on marketing performance. Moreover, the moderating effect of leaders’ experience and the impact of group difference in leaders’ gender, leaders position and brewery sizes are studied. The unit of analysis are managers and decision makers (committee members) from the four sample breweries (St. George Brewery, Meta Abo Brewery, Raya Brewery, and Habesha Brewery). The data are collected from 211 respondents. In the study, in addition to the data cleaning procedures, all the multivariate data analysis assumptions are ensured. A model is developed and tested using a survey methodology. Four properly validated instruments, one selfdesigned (for marketing performance construct) and three adopted (for transformational leadership, organizational learning, and customer orientation constructs) are used. The validation work is ensured through factor analysis (exploratory and confirmatory). Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) are worked out using SPSS 21 and AMOS 21 packages respectively. Data is analysed through the structural equation modelling technique. Results show that, Transformational Leadership style is positively and significantly associated with marketing performance, organizational learning and customer orientation. Moreover, it is found that Transformational Leadership indirectly and positively impacts marketing performance. Nevertheless, the hypothesized moderation effect of experience for the impacts of Transformational Leadership on customer orientation is failed to be significant. The study contributes a lot by narrowing the wide literature gap existed in the topic area in the context of the developing world. Secondary evidences are strongly discussed on the antecedents and outcomes of Transformational Leadership and marketing performance. Thus, it is the researcher’s belief that now because of this study; value is added to the body of knowledge and the study can benefit practitioners and academicians alike.