Abstract
This study examines the impact of transformational and transactional leader behaviors on the sales performance and organizational citizenship behaviors of salespeople, as well as the mediating role played by trust and role ambiguity in that process. Measures of six forms of transformational leader behavior, two forms of transactional leader behavior, trust, and role ambiguity were obtained from 477 sales agents working for a large national insurance company. Objective sales performance data were obtained for the agents, and their supervisors provided evaluations of their citizenship behaviors. The findings validate not only the basic notion that transformational leadership influences salespeople to perform “above and beyond the call of duty” but also that transformational leader behaviors actually have stronger direct and indirect relationships with sales performance and organizational citizenship behavior than transactional leader behaviors. Moreover, this is true even when common method biases are controlled. The implications of these findings for future research are discussed.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alexander, S. and M. Ruderman. 1987. “The Role of Procedural and Distributive Justice in Organizational Behavior.”Social Justice Research 1 (2): 177–198.
Avolio, Bruce J. and Bernard M. Bass 1988. “Transformational Leadership, Charisma, and Beyond.” InEmerging Leadership Vistas. Eds. James G. Hunt, B. Ram Baliga, H. P. Dachler, and Chester A. Schriesheim. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 29–49.
Bagozzi, Richard P. 1980. “Salesforce Performance and Satisfaction as a Function of Individual Difference, Interpersonal, and Situational Factors.”Journal of Marketing Research 15 (November): 517–533.
Bass, Bernard M. 1985.Leadership and Beyond Expectations. New York: Free Press.
— and Bruce J. Avolio. 1993. “Transformational Leadership: A Response to Critiques.” InLeadership Theory and Research: Perspectives and Directives. Eds. Martin M. Chemers and Roya Ayman. New York: Academic Press, 49–80.
—, J. G. Seltzer, and R. E. Numerof. 1989. “Transformational Leadership: Is It a Source of More or Less Burnout and Stress?”Journal of Health and Human Resources Administration 12 (1): 174–185.
Becherer, Richard C., Fred W. Morgan, and Lawrence M. Richard. 1982. “The Job Characteristics of Industrial Salespersons: Relationship to Motivation and Satisfaction.”Journal of Marketing 46 (Fall): 125–135.
Behrman, Douglas N., William J. Bigoness, and William D. Perreault, Jr. 1981. “Sources of Job Related Ambiguity and Their Consequences Upon Salespersons’ Job Satisfaction and Performance.”Management Science 27 (11): 1246–1260.
Bennis, Warren G. and Burt Nanus. 1985.Leaders: The Strategies for Taking Charge. New York: Harper & Row.
Bentler, Peter M. 1990. “Comparative Fit Indexes in Structural Models.”Psychological Bulletin 107 (2): 238–246.
Boal, Kimberly B., and J. M. Bryson. 1988. “Charismatic Leadership: A Phenomenological and Structural Approach.” InEmerging Leadership Vistas. Eds. James G. Hunt, B. Ram Baliga, H. P. Dachler, and Chester A. Schriesheim. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 5–28.
Bommer, William, Jonathan L. Johnson, Gregory A. Rich, Philip M. Podsakoff, and Scott B. MacKenzie. 1995. “On the Interchangeability of Objective and Subjective Measures of Employee Performance: A Meta-Analysis.”Personnel Psychology 48:587–605.
Brown, Steven P. and Robert A. Peterson. 1993. “Antecedents and Consequences of Salesperson Job Satisfaction: Meta-Analysis and Assessment of Causal Effects.”Journal of Marketing Research 30 (February): 63–77.
Bryman, Alan. 1992.Charisma and Leadership in Organizations. London: Sage.
Burns, James M. 1978.Leadership. New York: Harper & Row.
Chonko, Lawrence B., Roy D. Howell, and Danny N. Bellenger. 1986. “Congruence in Sales Force Evaluations: Relation to Sales Force Perceptions of Conflict and Ambiguity.”Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management 6 (May): 35–48.
Churchill, Gilbert, Jr., Neil M. Ford, Steven W. Hartley, and Orville C. Walker, Jr. 1985. “The Determinants of Salesperson Performance: A Meta-Analysis.”Journal of Marketing Research 22 (May): 103–118.
——, and Orville C. Walker, Jr. 1976. “Organizational Climate and Job Satisfaction in the Salesforce.”Journal of Marketing Research 13 (November): 323–332.
Conger, Jay A. and Rabindra N. Kanungo. 1987. “Toward a Behavioral Theory of Charismatic Leadership in Organizational Settings.”Academy of Management Review 12 (4): 637–647.
Cordes, Cynthia L., and Thomas W. Dougherty. 1993. “A Review and Integration of Research on Job Burnout.”Academy of Management Review 18 (4): 621–656.
Cote, Joseph and M. Ronald Buckley. 1987. “Estimating Trait, Method, and Error Variance: Generalizing Across 70 Construct Validation Studies.”Journal of Marketing Research 24 (August): 315–318.
Cron, William L., Alan J. Dubinsky, and Ronald E. Michaels. 1988. “The Influence of Career Stages on Salespeople’s Job Attitudes, Work Perceptions, and Performance.”Journal of Marketing 52 (January): 78–92.
Farh, Jing Lih, Philip M. Podsakoff, and Dennis W. Organ. 1990. “Accounting for Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Leader Fairness and Task Scope Versus Satisfaction.”Journal of Management 16 (4): 705–721.
Folger, Robert and Mary A. Konovsky. 1989. “The Effects of Procedural and Distributive Justice on Reactions to Pay Raise Decisions.”Academy of Management Journal 32 (1): 115–130.
Fornell, Claes and David F. Larcker. 1981. “Evaluating Structural Equation Models With Unobservable Variables and Measurement Error.”Journal of Marketing Research 18 (February): 39–50.
Ganesan, Shankar. 1994. “Determinants of Long-Term Orientation in Buyer-Seller Relationships.”Journal of Marketing 58 (February): 1–19.
— and Ron Hess. 1997. “Dimensions and Levels of Trust: Implications for Commitment to a Relationship.”Marketing Letters 8 (4): 439–448.
Hollander, Edwin P. and James W. Julian. 1978., “Studies in Leader Legitimacy, Influence, and Innovation.” InGroup Processes. Ed. Leonard Berkowitz. New York: Academic Press, 115–151.
House, Robert J. 1977. “A 1976 Theory of Charismatic Leadership.” InLeadership: The Cutting Edge. Eds. James G. Hunt and Lars L. Larson. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
— and Boas Shamir. 1993. “Toward the Integration of Transformational, Charismatic, and Visionary Theories.” InLeadership Theory and Research: Perspectives and Directions. Eds. Martin M. Chemers and Roya Ayman. San Diego: Academic Press, 81–107.
Howell, Jane M. and Peter J. Frost. 1989. “A Laboratory Study of Charismatic Leadership.”Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 43 (April): 243–269.
Ingram, Thomas N. and Danny N. Bellenger. 1983. “Personal and Organizational Variables: Their Relative Effect on Reward Valences of Industrial Salespeople.”Journal of Marketing Research 20 (May): 198–205.
Jackson, Susan E. and Randall S. Schuler. 1985. “A Meta-Analysis and Conceptual Critique of Research on Role Ambiguity and Role Conflict in Work Settings.”Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 36 (1): 16–78.
Jaworski, Bernard and Ajay K. Kohli. 1991. “Supervisory Feedback: Alternative Types and Their Impact on Salespeople’s Performance and Satisfaction.”Journal of Marketing Research 28 (May): 190–201.
Jöreskog, Karl G. and Dag Sörbom. 1993.LISREL 8: Analysis of Linear Structural Relations by the Method of Maximum Likelihood. Chicago: International Education Services.
Kahn, Robert L. 1973. “Conflict, Ambiguity and Overload: Three Elements in Job Stress.”Occupational Mental Health 3 (1): 2–9.
Kelman, Herbert C. 1958. “Compliance, Identification and Internalization: Three Processes of Opinion Change.”Journal of Conflict Resolution 2:51–60.
Kohli, Ajay K. 1985. “Some Unexplored Supervisory Behaviors and Their Influence on Salespeople’s Role Clarity, Specific Self-Esteem, Job Satisfaction, and Motivation.”Journal of Marketing Research 22 (November): 424–433.
— 1989. “Effects of Supervisory Behavior: The Role of Individual Differences Among Salespeople.”Journal of Marketing 53 (October): 40–50.
Kouzes, James M. and Barry Z. Posner. 1987.The Leadership Challenge: How to Get Extraordinary Things Done in Organizations. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Kuhnert, Karl W. and Philip Lewis. 1987. “Transactional and Transformational Leadership: A Constructive/Developmental Analysis.”Academy of Management Review 12 (4): 648–657.
MacKenzie, Scott B., Philip M. Podsakoff, and Richard Fetter. 1991. “Organizational Citizenship Behavior and Objective Productivity as Determinants of Managerial Evaluations of Salespersons’ Performance.”Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 50 (October): 123–150.
——, and —. 1993. “The Impact of Organizational Behavior on Evaluations of Salesperson Performance.”Journal of Marketing 57 (January): 70–80.
——, and Julie Beth Paine. 1999. “Do Citizenship Behaviors Matter More for Managers Than for Salespeople?”Journal of Academy of Marketing Science 27 (October): 396–410.
Moorman, Christine, Rohit Deshpande, and Gerald Zaltman. 1993. “Factors Affecting Trust in Marketing Research Relationships.”Journal of Marketing 57 (January): 81–101.
—, Gerald Zaltman, and Rohit Deshpande. 1992. “Relationships Between Providers and Users of Marketing Research: The Dynamics of Trust Within and Between Organizations.”Journal of Marketing Research 29 (August): 314–328.
Morgan, Robert M. and Shelby D. Hunt. 1994. “The Commitment-Trust Theory of Relationship Marketing.”Journal of Marketing 58 (July): 20–38.
Netemeyer, Richard G., James S. Boles, Daryl O. McKee, and Robert McMurrian. 1997. “An Investigation Into the Antecedents of Organizational Citizenship Behaviors in a Personal Selling Context.”Journal of Marketing 61 (July): 85–98.
Nunnally, Jum C. 1978.Psychometric Theory. 2d ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Organ, Dennis W. 1988.Organizational Citizenship Behavior: The Good Soldier Syndrome. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.
Pacetta, Frank. 1994.Don’t Fire Them, Fire Them Up: A Maverick’s Guide to Motivating Yourself and Your Team. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Podsakoff, Philip M., Michael Ahearne, and Scott B. MacKenzie. 1997. “Organizational Citizenship Behavior and the Quantity and Quality of Work Group Performance.”Journal of Applied Psychology 82 (April): 262–270.
—, and Scott B. MacKenzie. 1994. “Organizational Citizenship Behavior and Sales Unit Effectiveness.”Journal of Marketing Research 31 (August): 351–363.
——, and William H. Bommer. 1996a. “Meta-Analysis of the Relationships Between Kerr and Jermier’s Substitutes for Leadership and Employee Job Attitudes, Role Perceptions, and Performance.”Journal of Applied Psychology 81 (4): 380–399.
——, and —. 1996b. “Transformational Leader Behaviors and Substitutes for Leadership as Determinants of Employee Satisfaction, Commitment, Trust, and Organizational Citizenship Behaviors.”Journal of Management 22 (2): 259–298.
——, and Richard Fetter. 1993. “Substitutes for Leadership and the Management of Professionals.”Leadership Quarterly 4 (1): 1–44.
——, Robert H. Moorman, and Richard Fetter. 1990. “Transformational Leader Behaviors and Their Effects on Followers’ Trust in Leader, Satisfaction, and Organizational Citizenship Behaviors.”Leadership Quarterly 1 (2): 107–142.
—, Brian P. Niehoff, Scott B. MacKenzie, and Margaret L. Williams. 1993. “Do Substitutes for Leadership Really Substitute for Leadership? An Empirical Examination of Kerr and Jermier’s Situational Leadership Model.”Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 54: 1–44.
— and Dennis W. Organ. 1986. “Self-Reports in Organizational Research: Problems and Prospects.”Journal of Management 12 (4): 531–544.
—, William D. Todor, Richard A. Grover, and Vandra L. Huber. 1984. “Situational Moderators of Leader Reward and Punishment Behaviors: Fact or Fiction?”Organizational Behavior and Human Performance 34 (1): 21–63.
Porter, Lyman W. and Edward E. Lawler. 1968.Managerial Attitudes and Performance. Homewood, IL: Dorsey-Irwin.
Rizzo, John R., Robert J. House, and S. I. Lirtzman. 1970. “Role Conflict and Ambiguity in Complex Organizations.”Administrative Science Quarterly 15 (1): 150–163.
Sashkin, Marshall. 1988. “The Visionary Leader.” InCharismatic Leadership: The Elusive Factor in Organizational Effectiveness Eds. Jay Conger and Rabindra Kanungo. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Schuler, Randall S., Ramon J. Aldag, and Arthur P. Brief. 1977. “Role Conflict and Ambiguity: A Scale Analysis.”Organizational Behavior and Human Performance 20 (October): 111–128.
Scott, William E. 1977. “Leadership: A Functional Analysis.” InLeadership: The Cutting Edge. Eds. James E. Hunt and Larry L. Larson. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Shamir, Boas, Robert J. House, and Michael B. Arthur. 1993. “The Motivational Effects of Charismatic Leadership: A Self-Concept Based Theory.”Organization Science 4 (November): 577–594.
Singh, Jagdip, Jerry R. Goolsby, and Gary K. Rhoads. 1994. “Behavioral and Psychological Consequences of Boundary Spanning Burnout for Customer Service Representatives.”Journal of Marketing Research 31 (November): 558–569.
— and Gary K. Rhoads. 1991. “Boundary Role Ambiguity in Marketing-Oriented Positions: A Multidimensional, Multifaceted Operationalization.”Journal of Marketing Research 28 (August): 328–338.
Sujan, Harish, Mita Sujan, and James R. Bettman. 1988. “Knowledge Structure Differences Between More Effective and Less Effective Salespeople.”Journal of Marketing Research 25 (February): 81–86.
—, Barton A. Weitz, and Nirmalya Kumar. 1994. “Learning Orientation: Working Smart and Effective Selling.”Journal of Marketing 58 (July): 39–52.
Teas, R. Kenneth. 1983. “Supervisory Behavior, Role Stress, and the Job Satisfaction of Industrial Sales People.”Journal of Marketing Research 20 (February): 84–91.
— and James F. Horrell. 1981. “Salespeople Satisfaction and Performance Feedback.”Industrial Marketing Management 10 (February): 49–57.
—, John G. Wacker, and R. Eugene Hughes. 1979. “A Path Analysis of Causes and Consequences of Salespeople’s Perceptions of Role Clarity.”Journal of Marketing Research 16 (August): 355–369.
Trice, Harrison M. and Janice M. Beyer. 1991. “Cultural Leadership in Organizations.”Organizational Science 2 (May): 149–169.
Tyagi, Pradeep K. 1982. “Perceived Organizational Climate and the Process of Salesperson Motivation.”Journal of Marketing Research 19 (May): 240–254.
— 1985. “Relative Importance of Key Job Dimensions and Leadership Behaviors in Motivating Salesperson Work Performance.”Journal of Marketing 49 (Summer): 76–86.
Waldman, D. A., Bernard M. Bass, and Francis J. Yammarino. 1990. “Adding to Contingent Reward Behavior: The Augmenting Effect of Charismatic Leadership.”Group & Organization Studies 15:381–394.
Walker, Orville C., Jr., Gilbert A. Churchill, Jr., and Neil M. Ford. 1975. “Organizational Determinants of the Industrial Salesman’s Role Conflict Ambiguity.”Journal of Marketing 39 (January): 32–39.
——, and —. 1977. “Motivation and Performance in Industrial Selling: Present Knowledge and Needed Research.”Journal of Marketing Research 14 (May): 156–168.
Walz, Sarah M. and Brian P. Niehoff. 1996. “Organizational Citizenship Behaviors and Their Effect on Organizational Effectiveness in Limited-Menu Restaurants.” InAcademy of Management Best Papers Proceedings. Eds. J. B. Keys and L. N. Dosier. Madison, WI: Omnipress, 307–311.
Williams, Larry J. and Shiela E. Anderson. 1991. “Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment as Predictors of Organizational Citizenship and In-Role Behaviors.”Journal of Management 17 (3): 601–617.
Yukl, Gary A. 1989.Leadership in Organizations. 2d ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
Scott B. Mackenzie (Ph.D., UCLA, 1983) is the IU Foundation Professor of marketing at the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. His research on advertising effectiveness, organizational citizenship behavior, and leadership issues can be found in theJournal of Marketing Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, Journal of Applied Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Personnel Psychology, Journal of Management, andThe Leadership Quarterly. Currently, he serves on the editorial boards of theJournal of Marketing Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, andJournal of Consumer Psychology.
Philip M. Podsakoff (DBA, Indiana University, 1980) is a professor of organizational behavior and human resources and the John F. Mee Chair of Management at the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. He is the author or coauthor of more than 65 articles and/or scholarly book chapters that have appeared in such journals as theJournal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Academy of Management Journal, Psychological Bulletin, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Journal of Applied Psychology, The Leadership Quarterly, Organizational Dynamics, Research in Organizational Behavior, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, and theJournal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology. He serves on the Board of Editors of theJournal of Applied Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, andThe Leadership Quarterly.
Gregory A. Rich (Ph.D., Indiana University, 1996) is an assistant professor of marketing at Bowling Green State University. His primary research interest is in the application of leadership theory to issues of sales management, and his work has been published in theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, Personnel Psychology, Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing, and several conference proceedings.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
MacKenzie, S.B., Podsakoff, P.M. & Rich, G.A. Transformational and transactional leadership and salesperson performance. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. 29, 115–134 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1177/03079459994506
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/03079459994506