Following this gap, this paper will expand on the existing knowledge by examining the impact of transformational leadership on the creative performance, intrinsic motivation and trust of salespeople in their supervisors, within a sales. Intrinsic motivation and trust in supervisor have not been explicitly theorized as a mediator in previous studies. Specifically, leaders who exhibit transformational leadership can foster creativity in their subordinates' performance, which is accounted for by their level of expertise, creative-thinking skills, and task motivation (Amabile, 1996).
This is an important concept because sales managers who exhibit higher levels of transformational leadership are more likely to develop a stronger relationship with their sales force (Miao & Wang, 2016). Intrinsic motivation is a reflection of an individual choosing to engage in specific activities for their own inherent satisfaction. As previously mentioned, transformational leadership can affect an individual's performance, and there are several reasons to hypothesize a link between transformational leadership and intrinsic motivation.
Intrinsic motivation can encourage the individual to pay more attention to the problem, and it can also help the individual to engage in the creative process through self-regulation (Kanfer, 1990). Podsakoff et al. 1990) report a direct link between transformational leadership and trust in the supervisor, with transformational leaders increasing the trust of their subordinates through the exchange of social relations between superiors and subordinates. In addition, transformational leaders are icons who support their subordinates, as transformational leadership behavior will be relevant in any situation (Yukl, 1999).
With this in mind, this study argues that a salesperson's trust in supervisor and intrinsic motivation play the mediating role in the relationship between transformational leadership and creative performance.
Research Methodology
The companies required to participate in this study were selected based on the random number of each respective location. Only companies employing more than 50 employees were selected for this study as they may have a sales department. Companies that agreed to participate were guaranteed confidentiality and informed that they would receive a summary of the research findings upon request.
In the initial phase of the contact, important information related to the project was forwarded to the managers of HR departments or the sales managers of the target companies. Of the 50 companies that meet the requirement of more than 50 employees, only 31 companies agreed to participate. The most common reasons found for non-participation in this study include: (1) Employees are usually on trips, so they hardly ever come to the office.
The data presented in this study was collected from employees and their supervisors who worked for companies in India between June and September 2012. The distribution of the instruments was spread out in different proportions based on the input from the company's HR manager or sales manager. relevant companies. Based on the information provided by the companies, each supervisor and salesperson was assigned a code to ensure their anonymity, non-bias and better identification of respondents.
A comparison of the respondents' profiles for the different sectors was made by performing an analysis of variance (ANOVA) test to determine any potential bias. The results show a significant effect, but only in the case of age and in the duration of the position currently held by the employees. The rest of the variables analyzed produced similar results for all groups and this suggests that the issue at hand may not be a significant concern.
Of the total number of subordinates, 94.2 percent were men and 5.8 percent were women. As shown in Table 1, the average age of the subordinates was 33.8 years, with the average seniority in the company and in the organization of the current position being 6.97 years and 8.6 years, respectively. The average age of the supervisors was 37.58 years, the average tenure as a supervisor in the organization was 9.98 years, and the average tenure in their current position was 3.8 years.
Analysis and Findings
Although one of the composite reliabilities – creative performance, below the recommended value of 0.6 (Nunnally, 1978), it is very close. Two of the constructs – transformational leadership and creative performance have AVE values of 0.45 and 0.47, respectively, which are lower, but very close to the recommended value of 0.5 (Nunnally, 1978). As shown in Table 3, all scales appear to have a significantly higher AVE value compared to their squared correlation with other constructs, indicating the achievement of discriminant validity.
Assuming that the measurement model meets the psychometric assessment, a structural model was constructed based on the results of the measurement model. The model explained 6 percent variance in intrinsic motivation, 48 percent variance in creative performance, and 13 percent variance in trust in supervisor (Figure 1). In addition, the analysis also reports that trust in supervisor has a positive significant relationship with creative performance (β= 0.58; t = 4.198; p < .001).
Creative Implementation H5 Accepted This study follows Baron and Kenny's (1986) procedure in analyzing the indirect effect of trust in supervisor and intrinsic motivation on the transformational leadership relationship. Third, the mediator must be significantly related to the dependent variable if both mediating variables are predictors of the dependent variable. As shown in Table 4, transformational leadership is significantly related to trust in supervisor and creative performance, thereby satisfying the first and second conditions stated above.
It is also reported that trust in one's manager has a significant relationship with creative performance, satisfying the third condition. The fourth step is to include the mediator, trust in the supervisor, in the model to investigate whether this reduces the effect. It was found that including trust in the supervisor reduced the variance from 0.23 to 0.21, indicating trust in the supervisor as a mediator.
Regarding intrinsic motivation, Table 4 reports that transformational leadership is significantly related to creative performance and intrinsic motivation, thereby fulfilling the first and second conditions above. However, the relationship between intrinsic motivation and creative performance is not supported by this, which shows that the third condition is not realized. This result shows that there is insufficient empirical evidence to support intrinsic motivation as a mediator between transformational leadership and creative performance.
Discussion
The current study fills this gap by building and testing a conceptual model that evaluates the influence of other variables on creative performance. However, there is relatively less information about the underlying mechanisms through which leaders influence the creative performance of their followers. The findings of this study support previous reports on transformational leadership and support the fact that transformational leadership has a positive and direct influence on creative performance.
Furthermore, the results of this study also highlight the importance of the existing relationship between transformational leadership and trust in the manager. This study specifically contributes to the literature on transformational leadership by demonstrating the link between transformational leadership and trust in the leader, as noted by several creative theorists (Casimir et al., 2006; Jung & Avolio 2000; Pillai et al. ., 1999). ). The findings appear to be congruent with previous research and indicate a positive relationship between transformational leadership and intrinsic motivation (e.g., Shin & Zhou, 2003).
In contrast to previous work (Deci & Ryan, 1985; Zhou & Oldham, 2001), this study finds insubstantial evidence reporting on the positive relationship between intrinsic motivation and creative performance. The difference in the findings of this study can plausibly be attributed to cultural context. In this aspect of Indian culture, the role of the superior is to provide guidance and protection to the subordinate, nurturing and care, and the role of the subordinate in return is to be loyal and respectful to the supervisor (Aycan, Kanungo, Mendonca, Yu, Deller, Stahl, & Kurshid, 2000).
Thus, in this context of Indian culture, subordinates would be more motivated to work if their managers or superiors were involved in the process of identifying and solving work-related problems (Mumford, Scott, Gaddis, & Strange, 2002). . In the context of this study, it is possible that the cultural context of India was a contributing factor to the inconsistency of the results. In addition to the cultural effect, other factors that were not included in the model may also contribute, showing a non-significant relationship between intrinsic motivation and creative performance, as reported by the low variance of intrinsic motivation observed in this study.
The outcome of this study suggests that supportive managers or supervisors act as a catalyst for their subordinates in creating intrinsic motivation for their work. This is important in the sales context, since the daily tasks of salespeople are to find new sales channels, identify customer needs, and find new and useful ways of promotion that would improve sales performance. Thus, transformational leadership behavior could increase the creative performance of the salespeople involved.
Future Research and Limitations
The influence of leadership style, job satisfaction and the relationship between employee and superior on work performance and organizational commitment. How to enable employee creativity in a team context: A cross-level mediating process of transformational leadership. Employee learning orientation, transformational leadership, and employee creativity: The mediating role of employee creative self-efficacy.
Psychological capital as a mediator of the relationship between leadership and creative performance behavior: Empirical evidence from the Indian R&D sector. Moderators of the relationship between leadership style and employee creativity: The role of task novelty and personal initiative. Opening the black box: An experimental investigation of the mediating effects of trust and value congruence on transformational and transactional leadership.
Trust in supervisors and trust in customers: Their independent, relative, and joint effects on employee performance and creativity. A Jordanian empirical study of relationships between transformational leadership, transactional leadership, knowledge sharing, job performance, and firm performance. Trust in management and performance: Who minds the store while the employees look at the boss.
Transformational leadership behaviors and their effects on follower trust in the leader, satisfaction, and organizational citizenship behavior. Trust in the employer: The role of high involvement work practices and procedural justice in European organizations.
