Abstract
Purpose
This study clarifies the mediating effects of job satisfaction and knowledge sharing on the relationship between leadership humility and salesperson creativity. It also shows how job satisfaction mediates between leadership humility and knowledge sharing.
Design/methodology/approach
This study sampled 380 salespeople in Japan’s financial sector to participate in a two-wave online survey. The partial least squares structural equation modeling was applied to test the research hypotheses.
Findings
The results of the partial least squares structural equation modeling showed that the serial mediating effect of leadership humility on salesperson creativity through job satisfaction and knowledge sharing was statistically significant. The supplementary analysis showed that leadership humility had a curvilinear effect on salesperson creativity.
Research limitations/implications
The findings were restricted to salespeople employed in Japan’s financial sector.
Practical implications
Contrary to previous meta-analytic studies, the mere presence of humble leaders is insufficient to induce salesperson creativity.
Originality/value
This study is the first to deeply elucidate the underlying mechanism between leadership humility and salesperson creativity and examine the curvilinear relationship between leadership humility and salesperson creativity.
Keywords
Citation
Fujii, M. (2024), "Does leadership humility foster salesperson creativity? The serial mediating role of job satisfaction and knowledge sharing", International Journal of Bank Marketing, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJBM-03-2024-0169
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2024, Makoto Fujii
License
Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
1. Introduction
As competition intensifies and customer needs become more complex, many companies seeking competitive advantage are increasingly focusing on offering creative solutions to customers (Locander et al., 2023). Accordingly, academics and practitioners have recognized the value of salesperson creativity (Kalra et al., 2022). Salesperson creativity is “the amount of new ideas generated and novel behaviors exhibited by the salesperson in performing his or her job activities” (Wang and Netemeyer, 2004, p. 806). In enhancing customer satisfaction and fostering customer relationships, creative salespeople have the potential to bolster competitive advantage through their identification of latent customer needs and generation of alternative solutions to customer problems (Wang and Netemeyer, 2004). Numerous studies have primarily addressed the causal factors of salesperson creativity from personal and situational perspectives (Kalra et al., 2022), including subjective well-being, salesperson coping (Lyngdoh et al., 2018), emotional intelligence, competition inspired by coworkers (Kalra et al., 2022), perceived time pressure (Rostami et al., 2019), customer/selling orientation (Locander et al., 2023), and sales control (Park et al., 2023).
Among several situational antecedents, leadership seems particularly influential in the sales context (Miao and Wang, 2016), and several studies have examined its impact on salesperson creativity. Some of them have explored leader–member exchange (Martinaityte and Sacramento, 2013), manager feedback (Agnihotri et al., 2014), sales managers’ transformational leadership (Miao and Wang, 2016), abusive leadership (Jiang and Gu, 2016), responsible leadership (Castro-González et al., 2019), and ethical leadership (Gabler and Kalra, 2024) (Table 1). While these studies have improved our understanding of how leaders foster or inhibit salesperson creativity, several important gaps in the literature on salesperson creativity and leadership need to be addressed. First, while recent research on salesperson creativity has shed light on moral leadership (e.g. responsible leadership and ethical leadership), only recently has leadership humility—a unique and less traditional type of moral leadership—attracted considerable interest (Bin et al., 2021; Kelemen et al., 2023). However, the research examining the impact of leadership humility on salesperson creativity remains scant. Leadership humility refers to “an interpersonal characteristic that emerges in social contexts that connotes (a) a manifested willingness to view oneself accurately, (b) a displayed appreciation of others’ strengths and contributions, and (c) teachability” (Owens et al., 2013, p. 1518). Past research on leadership humility has examined several outcomes from behavioral, attitudinal, and performance perspectives (Chandler et al., 2023; Kelemen et al., 2023). More specifically, prior research in the sales context has examined the effects of leadership humility on customer orientation (Kirkland et al., 2021) and adaptive selling (Luu, 2020). Despite prior research examining the role of moral leadership and the increasing focus on leadership humility, the impact of leadership humility on salesperson creativity has not been examined empirically. Although recent meta-analytic studies have shown that leadership humility positively correlates with employee creativity (Chandler et al., 2023; Luo et al., 2022), the following question remains unanswered: How do humble leaders foster creativity in the sales context?
Second, past research has recognized the essential role of leadership in encouraging individuals to share their knowledge (Nguyen et al., 2020). However, how humble leaders facilitate knowledge sharing among salespeople has yet to be empirically examined. In particular, while Nguyen et al. (2020) examined the mediators of leadership humility on knowledge sharing intention, they focused on the attitudinal outcomes (Kelemen et al., 2023) and did not shed light on the behavioral aspects of knowledge sharing. Additionally, Chandler et al. (2023) showed that leadership humility positively correlates with knowledge sharing and highlighted the importance of further inquiry into the fundamental process that links leadership humility and knowledge management.
Addressing these gaps, the present study aims to clarify the mediating effects of job satisfaction and knowledge sharing on the relationship between leadership humility and salesperson creativity, as well as the role of job satisfaction as a mediator between leadership humility and knowledge sharing. Social exchange theory (SET) provides the overarching foundation for the development of the research framework (Blau, 1964; Cropanzano et al., 2017). SET is widely known as a theory that explains a series of reciprocal interactions between parties and is prevalent in the examination of humble leadership (Kelemen et al., 2023). Thus, SET seems suitable for the research context.
This research enriches the current knowledge base on salesperson creativity and leadership in two important ways. First, it addresses the paucity of literature on salesperson creativity by focusing on leadership humility, which is a unique and less traditional type of moral leadership (Kelemen et al., 2023) and investigating the underlying relationship between leadership humility and salesperson creativity. With the generational shift to millennials and Gen Zs and call for what type of leadership will be effective (Rapp and Beeler, 2021), this study provides a nuanced understanding of how leadership humility fosters salesperson creativity. Second, this study propels knowledge in the leadership literature by responding to the call of Chandler et al. (2023) to delineate the process between leadership humility and knowledge sharing. This study suggests that sales managers with humility can facilitate knowledge sharing among salespeople in a knowledge-centered business environment where it is important for many organizations to increase the ability of employees to learn (Owens et al., 2013).
2. Conceptual background and hypotheses
2.1 Leadership humility
Leadership humility is composed of three interpersonal traits: (1) accurate self-evaluation, (2) recognition of the strengths and contributions of others, and (3) openness to learning and accepting new ideas (Owens et al., 2013). Earlier research on leadership humility can be categorized into micro-oriented (e.g. organizational behavior, human resource management) and macro-oriented (e.g. strategic management, entrepreneurship) research streams and has been studied at multiple levels (organizational, team, and individual levels) (Chandler et al., 2023; Kelemen et al., 2023). The current work focuses on micro-oriented research streams and the phenomenon at the individual level.
The concept of leadership humility has been accumulated primarily in the organizational domain, and past research has focused on several outcomes of leadership humility, which have been categorized as (1) attitudinal (e.g. job satisfaction, emotional exhaustion), (2) behavioral (e.g. knowledge sharing, feedback seeking behavior), and (3) performance outcomes (e.g. employee creativity, performance) (Chandler et al., 2023; Kelemen et al., 2023). In addition, recent studies have investigated the impact of leadership humility on customer orientation (Kirkland et al., 2021) and adaptive selling (Luu, 2020) in the sales context. Despite the gradual spread of the leadership humility concept in marketing (Bin et al., 2021; Fujii, 2024; Sok et al., 2021), the question of how leadership humility fosters salesperson creativity remains unanswered. To sum up, based on SET and the extant research on leadership humility (Chandler et al., 2023; Kelemen et al., 2023), this study focuses on both job satisfaction as an attitudinal variable and knowledge sharing as a behavioral variable and explicates the process by which leadership humility affects salesperson creativity through these variables.
2.2 Leadership humility, knowledge sharing, and job satisfaction as antecedents of salesperson creativity
The current research posits that leadership humility will affect salesperson creativity, knowledge sharing, and job satisfaction.
According to SET, in the context of sales, leaders are considered an important actor in a series of social exchange relationships with salespeople and provide them with various resources (Martinaityte and Sacramento, 2013). Characteristics of humble leaders include being open to disclosing their limitations and weaknesses, accepting their errors, seeking input from others, and attempting to uncover and value others’ competencies and accomplishments (Owens et al., 2013). Exhibiting these behavioral tendencies lead to increased trust from subordinates and mutual disclosure, which in turn creates quality relationships between leaders and subordinates (Owens et al., 2013). In turn, salespeople working under humble leaders are more likely to trust them and show a positive attitude toward their organization (e.g. affective commitment), which is known to be an important antecedent of job satisfaction (Cropanzano et al., 2017; Luo et al., 2022). In fact, humble leaders have been found to be one of the primary determinants of employee job satisfaction (Bin et al., 2021). Additionally, such leaders attempt to involve subordinates in decision-making and are receptive to new ideas from others, thereby increasing salespeople’s work engagement (Bin et al., 2021). Earlier research has suggested that work engagement is a key factor in enhancing salesperson creativity (Park et al., 2023). Thus, based on SET (Cropanzano et al., 2017), salespeople who receive various resources from their leaders will feel a sense of obligation to return, and reciprocal attitudes and behaviors will emerge (Nguyen et al., 2020). As a result, they are more committed to their organization and are more likely to generate new ideas for their leaders. Moreover, because humble leaders are eager to absorb knowledge from others and are receptive to fresh perspectives, salespeople working under humble leaders view them as trustworthy and feel themselves to be in a positive relationship (Owens et al., 2013). Consequently, salespeople working with humble leaders are more satisfied with their jobs, are inclined to show favorable attitudes toward their organization, and share knowledge with their colleagues in order to contribute to their organization (Luo et al., 2022; Nguyen et al., 2020).
In support of these arguments, extant literature has demonstrated that leadership humility promotes service creativity, knowledge sharing intention, and job satisfaction (Lei et al., 2023; Nguyen et al., 2020; Owens et al., 2013; Tariq et al., 2023). Meta-analyses provide further evidence that leadership humility has a positive correlation with employee creativity, knowledge sharing, and job satisfaction (Chandler et al., 2023; Luo et al., 2022). Thus, the following hypotheses are suggested:
Leadership humility is positively related to salesperson creativity.
Leadership humility is positively related to knowledge sharing.
Leadership humility is positively related to job satisfaction.
2.3 Job satisfaction and knowledge sharing as a mediator
Given H1–H3, one could logically predict that leadership humility has indirect effects on salesperson creativity and knowledge sharing through job satisfaction and that leadership humility positively affects salesperson creativity through knowledge sharing.
As noted above, salespeople’s positive perceptions of leaders lead to increased job satisfaction (Owens et al., 2013). In accordance with SET (Cropanzano et al., 2017), satisfied salespeople are more committed to their firms (Charni et al., 2019) and work more vigorously in return (Owens et al., 2013). Specifically, because of the norm of reciprocity (Cropanzano et al., 2017), they will cooperate with each other and engage in reciprocal behaviors such as sharing knowledge with colleagues, generating new ideas, and exhibiting novel behaviors. Past studies have illustrated that job satisfaction positively affects salespeople’s creativity (Castro-González et al., 2019) and knowledge sharing (Wang, 2019) and that it plays an intermediary role in the association between supervisor humility and employee creativity (Miao et al., 2020). Thus, the following hypotheses are suggested:
The relationship between leadership humility and knowledge sharing is positively mediated by job satisfaction.
The relationship between leadership humility and salesperson creativity is positively mediated by job satisfaction.
The relationship between leadership humility and salesperson creativity is positively mediated by knowledge sharing.
Given H4 and H5, one can logically predict that leadership humility serves as a serial mediator of salesperson creativity through job satisfaction and knowledge sharing.
Based on SET, salespeople who are engaged in a series of social exchange relationships receive a variety of resources from their leaders, and repeated resource exchanges build trust and satisfaction (Cropanzano et al., 2017; Nguyen et al., 2020). Satisfied salespeople are likely to be engaged in their jobs in return and actively share their knowledge with colleagues, as humble leaders do (Nguyen et al., 2020). Sharing knowledge among salespeople enables them to broaden their perspectives and foster the creativity of salespeople. Thus, the following hypothesis is suggested:
The relationship between leadership humility and salesperson creativity is serially mediated by job satisfaction and knowledge sharing.
On the basis of these hypotheses, the research framework is outlined in Figure 1.
3. Method
3.1 Data collection and sample
This study administered a two-wave online survey of salespeople employed in Japan’s financial sector with the help of ASMARQ, which is a major marketing research company in Japan. Online surveys provide an opportunity to access a variety of samples, and prior sales research has often utilized this method in leadership studies (Johnson, 2016), which are aligned with the current work. Meanwhile, a two-wave survey design allows researchers to mitigate common method bias and endogeneity concerns when they have difficulty obtaining data separately (Podsakoff et al., 2012). The population in this study consisted of full-time salespeople who work in the financial sector in Japan. Potential participants were randomly selected from the research panel pool. This sample was chosen given that previous studies have recognized the importance of salesperson creativity for employees working in the financial sector (De Clercq and Pereira, 2021) and have examined the creativity of financial salespeople (Park et al., 2023; Tseng, 2019). In adherence to the ethical standards of the author’s institution, the intention of the study was comprehensively conveyed to the participants, and this study included only individuals who consented to participate. Two pretests were administered prior to the main tests to refine the wording and instructions.
In the first wave, 1,604 people accessed the screening test, and 783 of them were found to be qualified for the main test. Of the 783 participants, 659 took and completed the main test. The participants were asked to answer questions regarding leadership humility and demographic variables. After one month, the second wave survey was conducted with 659 potential participants who had completed the first wave survey. Following a reminder, 536 of the 659 participants accessed and completed the second survey. The participants answered questions about job satisfaction, knowledge sharing, and salesperson creativity. The marketing research firm combined the data from the first and second surveys, resulting in 536 responses.
Each survey randomly included an attention check question (Johnson, 2016). The numbers of respondents who failed this question were 99 and 53, respectively (first study: “Please select ‘strongly disagree’”; second study: “Please select ‘strongly agree’”), and these responses were excluded accordingly. Additionally, data from 4 respondents were excluded because of their straight-line responses (Johnson, 2016). Thus, 380 valid responses were obtained for the study [1]. Among the respondents, 55.8% were male, and the average age, tenure, and sales experience were 42 years, 13 years, and 12 years, respectively (Table 2). Most respondents were highly educated (65.5%), and employed in business-to-customers sectors (51.6%) and by life insurance companies (47.6%). Additionally, most of the respondents worked an average of 35 h per week (SD = 15) and served an average of 261.3 customers (SD = 579.4).
To assess non-response bias, this study compared the data to the sample population (Johnson, 2016). The early and late respondents showed no statistical difference in the second survey (Armstrong and Overton, 1977). Regarding sample representativeness, the data were almost comparable to the sample population with respect to gender and marital status but not with respect to age. These results indicated that non-response bias in this study was of minimal concern.
3.2 Measurement
This study employed scales that have been legitimized in prior literature and were developed in English. According to Brislin (1986), the author translated the original English items into Japanese, which were then retranslated into English by a professional translator. Subsequently, the semantic equivalence of the meanings of the item wordings was assessed by two marketing researchers. Several items were slightly modified in response to their feedback. A 7-point Likert-type scale was utilized to rate each measure, where 1 = “strongly disagree” to 7 = “strongly agree.” (Table 3).
Leadership humility was assessed by Owens et al.'s (2013) nine items. Job satisfaction was measured using Hackman and Oldham’s (1975) three item scale, which is one of the major scales and has been adapted to the financial employee context (Dang and Pham, 2020). Knowledge sharing was assessed with De Clercq and Pereira’s (2021) four item scale, which they used in their recent study of knowledge sharing at the individual level in the context of financial employees. Salesperson creativity was assessed by using Wang and Netemeyer’s (2004) seven items.
3.3 Control variables
Following prior research (Lei et al., 2023; Park et al., 2023), several demographics–age, gender, educational level, tenure in years, and sales experience in years–were incorporated into the model to address omitted variable bias. The model also included company size, industry type, and customer type, as these variables may impact the results.
3.4 Assessment of common method bias
A self-administered survey could cause concerns about common method bias. The current study employed various recommended approaches to handle this issue (Podsakoff et al., 2012). With regard to procedural remedies, this study included the introduction of a temporal separation of measurements, protection of respondents’ anonymity and confidentiality, assurance to respondents that questions have no correct or incorrect answers, a request to respondents to answer according to their own thinking, randomization of the sequence of measurements, use of multi-item scales and pretests, and incorporation of reverse-coded items. These procedures helped to alleviate the risk of social desirability bias (De Clercq and Pereira, 2021).
Statistically, Machiavellianism, included as a marker variable in the partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), has insignificant or even small correlations with other variables, and the magnitudes of the path coefficients for the model with the marker variable were interchangeable with the model without the marker variable (Rönkkö and Ylitalo, 2011). Additionally, the results of a full collinearity assessment method yielded a variance inflation factor (VIF) value below the threshold of 3.3 (Kock, 2015). In summary, these procedures indicated that the presence of common method bias was negligible.
4. Results
The current study tested the research hypotheses by applying PLS-SEM with SmartPLS 4.0 (Ringle et al., 2022). This technique was considered valid as while this study achieved a certain sample size, the structural model was relatively complex given the inclusion of serial mediation and many indicators (Hair et al., 2022).
4.1 Validation of measurement model
This study assessed the reflective measurement models with internal consistency reliability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity through the computation of Cronbach’s alpha, composite reliability (CR), and average variance extracted (AVE) (Hair et al., 2022). All factor loadings of the indicator, the alpha coefficients, and CR values exceeded 0.70, thus meeting internal consistency reliability (Table 4). Moreover, Table 4 illustrates that each of the AVE values exceeded 0.50, thereby meeting the criteria for convergent validity. Finally, using the Fornell–Larcker criterion, the square root of the AVE exceeded its highest correlation coefficients of the constructs, and each heterotrait–monotrait value was less than 0.85, indicating that discriminant validity was met.
Descriptive statistics and intercorrelations are presented in Table 4.
4.2 Endogeneity
Given the violation of the precondition of the Gaussian copula approach and the lack of suitable instrumental variables, including suitable control variables in the model was valid methods for endogeneity (Hult et al., 2018). The PLS-SEM with the control variables displayed results almost identical to those of the model without them. Endogeneity was a minor concern in this study, due to the use of reliable measures and the two-wave survey design.
4.3 Hypotheses testing
Prior to hypothesis testing, VIF values were computed to determine whether collinearity confounded the results. Based on the computation of the VIF values, tenure was dropped due to the VIF values surpassing the threshold of 5 when it was incorporated into the model. Furthermore, tenure had a strong correlation with sales experience (Table 4). This study implemented a bootstrap technique (5,000 subsamples) for verifying the hypotheses. The results are illustrated in Table 5.
H1 states that leadership humility is positively related to salesperson creativity. The results found no significant influence of leadership humility on salesperson creativity (β = −0.01, t = 0.09, p > 0.10), suggesting that H1 was not supported. According to H2 and H3, leadership humility is positively related to knowledge sharing and job satisfaction. As expected, leadership humility had positive effects on knowledge sharing (β = 0.23, t = 3.88, p < 0.001) and job satisfaction (β = 0.26, t = 4.82, p < 0.001), indicating that H2 and H3 were supported.
As predicted by H4 and H5, the 95% confidence interval (CI) for the mediating effect of leadership humility on salesperson creativity and knowledge sharing through job satisfaction did not include zero (H4: β = 0.05, t = 2.76, p < 0.01, 95% CI [0.02, 0.10]; H5: β = 0.05, t = 2.06, p < 0.05, 95% CI [0.02, 0.10]). Thus, H4 and H5 were supported. As predicted by H6, the 95% CI for the mediating effect of leadership humility on salesperson creativity through knowledge sharing did not include zero (β = 0.07, t = 2.82, p < 0.01, 95% CI [0.03, 0.13]), indicating that H6 was supported. Given the results of H1, the results indicated that job satisfaction and knowledge sharing fully mediated the association between leadership humility and salesperson creativity (Hair et al., 2022). As predicted by H7, the 95% CI for the serial mediation of leadership humility on salesperson creativity through job satisfaction and knowledge sharing did not include zero (β = 0.02, t = 2.05, p < 0.05, 95% CI [0.01, 0.03]), indicating that H7 was supported.
Finally, the model explained the variance in job satisfaction, knowledge sharing, and salesperson creativity at 0.16, 0.15, and 0.19, respectively (Table 5). Although these values were below the recommended value, the R2 value was acceptable relative to prior research on salesperson creativity (Miao and Wang, 2016; Rostami et al., 2019). In addition, most of the Q2predict values were above zero, and the comparison between PLS-SEM root mean square error (RMSE) values and linear regression model (LM) values showed that all, except for two, RMSE values were below the LM values (Table 6) (Shmueli et al., 2019). These results indicated that the model has moderate predictive power.
4.4 Supplementary analysis
While not formally proposed, the quadratic effect of leadership humility on salesperson creativity was explored in accordance with the recommendation of Chandler et al. (2023). According to Hair et al. (2017), the product indicator approach was usually applied when the quadratic term was created. The result suggested that the quadratic term had a positive sign and that the 95% CI for the quadratic term excluded zero (β = 0.14, t = 3.09, p < 0.01, 95% CI [0.05, 0.23]) (Figure 2).
5. Discussion
5.1 Theoretical implications
This study contributes to the current body of literature in three important ways. First, this study enlarges the current body of knowledge in sales studies by uncovering a detailed mechanism for how leadership humility fosters salesperson creativity. With the absence of support for H1, job satisfaction and knowledge sharing fully mediated the relationship between leadership humility and salesperson creativity. These findings partially align with those of Castro-González et al., 2019, who showed the full mediation effects of responsible leadership on creativity. More importantly, the present study found that the effect of leadership humility on salesperson creativity was serially mediated through job satisfaction and knowledge sharing. There is a general agreement that salesperson creativity is beneficial to sales performance, and research interest has shifted to the antecedents of salesperson creativity (Gabler and Kalra, 2024). Among several antecedents of salesperson creativity that have been identified (Kalra et al., 2022), research has examined the impact of leadership on salesperson creativity because it is one of the most influential positions for salespeople (Gabler and Kalra, 2024; Miao and Wang, 2016). Recent studies have focused on moral leadership, including responsible leadership (Castro-González et al., 2019) and ethical leadership (Gabler and Kalra, 2024). However, opposed to these types of leadership, which are concerned with ethics or adherence to normative standards, humility leadership is distinct type of moral leadership, although a partially related, because it consists of self-awareness and teachability (Castro-González et al., 2019; Kelemen et al., 2023). Furthermore, Castro-González et al. (2019) and Gabler and Kalra (2024) only focused on attitudinal (organizational identification and job satisfaction) or individual ability (social power) variables as mediators. In contrast, drawing on SET, this study expands the existing literature on salesperson creativity by integrating the different research streams into a coherent model and explicating how leadership humility fosters salesperson creativity through both attitudinal (i.e. job satisfaction) and behavioral (i.e. knowledge sharing) variables.
Second, this study expands research on leadership by delineating the fundamental mechanism between leadership humility and knowledge sharing. This study showed that the positive relationship between leadership humility and knowledge sharing is mediated by job satisfaction. Chandler et al. (2023) showed that leadership humility and knowledge sharing are positively correlated; however, they did not empirically examine the process between the two, highlighting the need for further investigation. Nguyen et al. (2020) identified affective trust in supervisor, work engagement, and organizational citizenship behaviors directed toward the individual as serial mediators between leader humility and knowledge sharing intention. However, Nguyen et al. (2020) focused on knowledge sharing intentions as an attitudinal outcome (Kelemen et al., 2023), while few studies have clarified how leadership humility promotes salesperson knowledge sharing from a behavioral perspective. Thus, responding to Chandler et al. (2023), the current study enlarges the body of research on leadership by delineating the process between leadership humility and knowledge sharing.
Third, this study sheds new light on whether leadership humility is always useful (Bin et al., 2021; Chandler et al., 2023). Based on supplemental analysis, leadership humility had a curvilinear effect on salesperson creativity. Interestingly, this result is inconsistent with Chandler et al.’s (2023) assumption of an inverted U-shaped relationship. Moreover, this result may provide an explanation for the lack of support for H1. Several studies have examined the outcomes of leadership humility (Chandler et al., 2023; Kelemen et al., 2023). However, most of them have mainly investigated the linear effect of leadership humility, and few studies have examined its curvilinear effect (Chandler et al., 2023), with the work of Bin et al. (2021) being an exception. Although Bin et al. (2021) examined the curvilinear relationship between leadership humility and frontline service employees’ performance, the curvilinear relationship between leadership humility and salesperson creativity is understudied. Therefore, this is the first study to examine the curvilinear relationship between leadership humility and salesperson creativity and encourages further investigations on the functional types of these two variables.
5.2 Managerial implications
For sales managers seeking practical ideas to encourage their subordinates’ creativity, this study will provide valuable insights. First, the findings indicate that the mere presence of humble leaders is insufficient to induce salesperson creativity. Moreover, supplementary analysis suggests that while recruiting and promoting candidates who possess a high degree of leadership humility remains important, sales managers should also pay attention to subordinates’ job satisfaction and knowledge sharing among salespeople. As leadership humility emerges in the social interactions (Owens et al., 2013) within the sales context, subordinates can observe and experience leader humility behaviors during such interactions as one-on-one or regular meetings. For instance, in one-on-one meetings, supervisors can demonstrate their own humility to subordinates by disclosing their own past mistakes and properly identifying subordinates’ strengths and contributions. Additionally, to realize the benefits of teachability, supervisors can listen actively to subordinates’ ideas, provide them with constructive feedback, and instruct them on how to behave in sales situations (Kelemen et al., 2023). These meetings provide an opportunity for salespeople to recognize their own strengths and contributions, leading to job satisfaction. As a result, salespeople with job satisfied are more likely to engage in reciprocal behaviors, such as sharing knowledge with their colleagues and exhibiting novel behaviors.
Second, the findings suggest that humble leaders can contribute both directly and indirectly to salespeople’s knowledge sharing. In today’s knowledge-centered business environment, it is crucial for many organizations to improve the learning capabilities of each employee (Owens et al., 2013). However, salespeople with internal competition tend to hide their own knowledge, and how to overcome this is a highly managerial issue (Chaker et al., 2021). Based on the findings, sales managers should provide opportunities for each salesperson to share his or her knowledge to encourage knowledge sharing. For example, sales managers with a high degree of humility can facilitate knowledge sharing among salespeople through sales training and regular meetings. In such situations where salespeople make presentations on how they perform in customer interactions, sales managers can demonstrate their own humility toward subordinates by acknowledging their knowledge, recognizing their strengths in selling, and showing openness to new ideas, and a willingness to learn from others. Salespeople who work under humble sales leaders feel that their ideas are accepted, and their contributions are properly valued, which leads to job satisfaction. As a result, they are more likely to be committed to their organization and share knowledge with colleagues. Specifically, this approach may be well-suited to millennial and Gen Z salespeople, who are becoming a large part of the workforce (Rapp and Beeler, 2021) because they have different work values and motivations than other generations and hope to have access to more coaching and training (Rapp and Beeler, 2021). Therefore, leadership humility can be an effective leadership style for them.
5.3 Limitations and directions for further research
Notwithstanding its important implications, this study contains limitations that should be addressed in future studies. First, although having a broad range of salespeople in the sample seemed to help increase the external validity, the findings were restricted to salespeople employed in Japan’s financial sector. Moreover, the sample may be skewed toward life insurance salespeople as opposed to the population. This can be partially explained by the fact that some participants declined to participate in the first survey (n = 171) while others did not participate in the second survey (n = 123). It is also widely known that when researchers conduct online research, the sample population in the research panel is not necessarily the same as the population (Johnson, 2016). Hence, future research should conduct replication studies in different contexts to not only examine whether industrial and cultural factors confound the findings but also increase the findings’ generalizability.
Second, although the two-wave survey provided more reliable empirical evidence, this study has the limitation of employing a self-administered survey. Thus, future research is recommended to gather data from multiple outlets (e.g. supervisors) and measure knowledge sharing and salesperson creativity using a three-wave survey to infer causality. Moreover, while this study employed several procedures to reduce the risk of common method and social desirability bias, future research should also consider measuring and controlling for social desirability bias from a statistical perspective.
Third, this study included a quadratic term in the model to clarify why the hypothesis regarding the link between leadership humility and salesperson creativity failed to support. While this attempt yielded interesting results, the reasons why the hypothesis was not supported remain unclear. Thus, a worthwhile undertaking is to unveil the fundamental process between leadership humility and salesperson creativity. For example, emotional exhaustion negatively affects leadership humility (Chandler et al., 2023). Given the model’s explanatory power in this study, not including this variable in the model might have inflated the results. Furthermore, in accordance with prior research, this study used an established and reliable scale of leadership humility as a single-order construct. However, each dimension may have had conflicting effects on the results. Accordingly, future research should examine this possibility by examining each dimension of leadership humility separately.
Fourth, based on prior research, this study incorporated suitable control variables in the model. However, it must be sincerely acknowledged that there are possibly other variables that affect knowledge sharing and salesperson creativity. For example, given that this study draws on SET (Cropanzano et al., 2017), affective commitment (Chandler et al., 2023), affective trust and work engagement (Nguyen et al., 2020; Owens et al., 2013), and leader-member exchange (Kelemen et al., 2023) are attitudinal variables that may be associated with knowledge sharing and salesperson creativity. Therefore, future research should investigate these alternative interpretations for more robust research.
Finally, although this study gathered statistical data by examining the relationships between variables such as leadership humility, job satisfaction, and knowledge sharing, the conditions under which leadership humility fosters or reduces these relationships remain unclear. Therefore, examining the boundary conditions of these relationships is an interesting direction for future research.
Figures
Figure 1
Research framework and hypotheses
Figure 2
Supplementary analysis
Overview of the empirical research on the relationship between leadership and salesperson creativity
| Authors | Focus | Sample | Antecedents | Moderators | Mediators | Consequences | Curvilinear |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Martinaityte and Sacramento (2013) | Antecedent and consequence of creativity, and boundary condition of sales effectiveness | 151 sales agents and 26 supervisors drawn from five pharmaceutical and insurance companies – Lithuania | Leader-member exchange (LMX) | LMX | Creativitya | Creativity Sales effectiveness | No |
| Agnihotri et al. (2014) | Antecedents, consequences, and moderating effects of boundary spanner creativity | 107 boundary spanners and 19 managers from a B2B telecommunications organization – USA | Knowledge Emotional intelligence (EI) Manager feedback | Knowledge EI Manager feedback | Boundary spanner creativitya Customer problem solvinga | Customer problem solving Performance | No |
| Jiang and Gu (2016) | Antecedents and the mechanisms of salesperson creativity from the negative side (at the team level) | 319 salespeople and 102 managers from a chain of pharmacies – China | Abusive supervision Abusive supervisory climate | – | Psychological safety Salesperson creativity Sales team creativity | Sales team performance | No |
| Miao and Wang (2016) | Antecedents and consequences of salesperson creativity, and boundary conditions of salesperson creativity and sales performance | 192 salespeople from 80 B2B firms – USA | Functional customer orientation Relational customer orientation | Sales manager transformational leadership Sales unit outcome interdependence | Salesperson creativitya | Salesperson creativity Sales performance | No |
| Castro-González et al. (2019) | Antecedents and the mechanisms of salesperson creativity from the corporate social responsibility (CSR) perspective | 176 salespeople and 105 supervisors across 96 a variety of companies – Spain | Responsible leadership | – | CSR perception Organizational identification Job satisfaction | Salespeople’s creativity | No |
| Gabler and Kalra (2024) | Antecedents and the mechanism of salesperson creativity, and boundary condition of social power | 100 salespeople from a global 3PL service firm – USA | Ethical leadership | Job autonomy Internal competitive work environment | Social power | Creative performance | No |
| This study | Antecedents and the mechanisms of salesperson creativity | 380 salespeople across a variety of financial sectors – Japan | Leadership humility | – | Job satisfaction Knowledge sharing | Salesperson creativity | Yesa |
Note(s): aNot formally hypothesized
Source(s): Created by author
Characteristics of the study sample
| Items | Category | Frequency | Percentage (%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Age | 20–29 | 49 | 12.9 |
| 30–39 | 106 | 27.9 | |
| 40–49 | 115 | 30.3 | |
| 50–59 | 110 | 28.9 | |
| Gender | Male | 212 | 55.8 |
| Female | 168 | 44.2 | |
| Marital status | Single | 137 | 36.1 |
| Marriage | 243 | 63.9 | |
| Education | High school or below | 73 | 19.2 |
| Vocational school | 34 | 8.9 | |
| College | 24 | 6.3 | |
| Undergraduate or above | 249 | 65.5 | |
| Tenure (years) | 1–5 | 102 | 26.8 |
| 6–10 | 88 | 23.2 | |
| 11–15 | 70 | 18.4 | |
| 16–20 | 43 | 11.3 | |
| >20 | 77 | 20.3 | |
| Sales experience (years) | 1–5 | 116 | 30.5 |
| 6–10 | 96 | 25.3 | |
| 11–15 | 65 | 17.1 | |
| 16–20 | 36 | 9.5 | |
| >20 | 67 | 17.6 | |
| Customer | B2B | 90 | 23.7 |
| B2C | 196 | 51.6 | |
| Both | 94 | 24.7 | |
| Company size | <101 | 30 | 7.9 |
| 101–200 | 12 | 3.2 | |
| 201–300 | 14 | 3.7 | |
| 301–500 | 14 | 3.7 | |
| 501–1,000 | 30 | 7.9 | |
| >1,001 | 280 | 73.7 | |
| Industry | Bank | 72 | 18.9 |
| Credit union | 20 | 5.3 | |
| Life insurance | 181 | 47.6 | |
| Property insurance | 44 | 11.6 | |
| Brokerage | 15 | 3.9 | |
| Other | 48 | 12.6 |
Source(s): Created by author
Constructs and measurement items
| Constructs | Items | Mean | Factor loadings |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leadership humility | My supervisor actively seeks feedback, even if it is critical | 4.16 | 0.83 |
| My supervisor admits it when s/he does not know how to do something | 4.42 | 0.88 | |
| My supervisor acknowledges when others have more knowledge and skills than himself or herself | 4.84 | 0.87 | |
| My supervisor takes notice of others’ strengths | 4.51 | 0.91 | |
| My supervisor often compliments others on their strengths | 4.52 | 0.88 | |
| My supervisor shows appreciation for the unique contributions of others | 4.68 | 0.88 | |
| My supervisor shows a willingness to learn from others | 4.34 | 0.90 | |
| My supervisor shows s/he is open to the advice of others | 4.42 | 0.91 | |
| My supervisor shows s/he is open to the ideas of others | 4.44 | 0.90 | |
| Job satisfaction | Generally speaking, I am very satisfied with this job | 4.05 | 0.94 |
| I am generally satisfied with the kind of work I do in this job | 4.14 | 0.94 | |
| I frequently think of quitting this job. (r) | 4.03 | 0.78 | |
| Knowledge sharing | There is a high level of knowledge sharing between my colleagues and myself | 4.53 | 0.90 |
| My colleagues and I regularly communicate with each other | 5.07 | 0.93 | |
| My colleagues and I provide each other with a lot of feedback | 4.79 | 0.94 | |
| There is a lot of two-way communication between my colleagues and myself | 4.8 | 0.92 | |
| Salesperson creativity | I make sales presentations in innovative ways | 3.68 | 0.74 |
| I carry out sales tasks in ways that are resourceful | 4.96 | 0.81 | |
| I come up with new ideas for satisfying customer needs | 4.21 | 0.86 | |
| I generate and evaluate multiple alternatives for novel customer problems | 4.96 | 0.74 | |
| I have fresh perspectives on old problems | 4.26 | 0.86 | |
| I improvise methods for solving a problem when an answer is not apparent | 4.05 | 0.74 | |
| I generate creative selling ideas | 3.75 | 0.82 |
Note(s): All items were measured on a 7-point Likert scale, where 1 = “strongly disagree” and 7 = “strongly agree”
r means reverse-coded
All factor loadings were significant at p < 0.001
Source(s): Created by author
Descriptive statistics and correlations
| Constructs | Mean | SD | Cronbach’s α | CR | AVE | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. LH | 4.49 | 1.52 | 0.97 | 0.97 | 0.78 | 0.88 | 0.28 | 0.32 | 0.14 | 0.15 | 0.08 | 0.02 | 0.17 | 0.02 | 0.02 | 0.09 | 0.09 | 0.02 |
| 2. JS | 4.07 | 1.54 | 0.87 | 0.92 | 0.79 | 0.26*** | 0.89 | 0.23 | 0.33 | 0.07 | 0.17 | 0.20 | 0.15 | 0.04 | 0.03 | 0.08 | 0.06 | 0.04 |
| 3. KS | 3.74 | 1.09 | 0.94 | 0.96 | 0.85 | 0.30*** | 0.22*** | 0.92 | 0.32 | 0.09 | 0.08 | 0.12 | 0.07 | 0.03 | 0.02 | 0.14 | 0.08 | 0.06 |
| 4. SC | 4.37 | 1.13 | 0.91 | 0.92 | 0.64 | 0.14*** | 0.31*** | 0.32*** | 0.80 | 0.08 | 0.12 | 0.15 | 0.10 | 0.06 | 0.07 | 0.06 | 0.04 | 0.06 |
| 5. Marker | 4.23 | 1.69 | 0.79 | 0.83 | 0.63 | 0.04 | 0.21*** | 0.10*** | 0.04 | 0.79 | 0.23 | 0.11 | 0.34 | 0.06 | 0.08 | 0.06 | 0.07 | 0.12 |
| 6. Age | 42 | 9.9 | – | – | – | −0.08 | 0.16*** | −0.07 | 0.12* | −0.19*** | – | 0.35 | 0.22 | 0.56 | 0.58 | 0.10 | 0.18 | 0.08 |
| 7. Gender | – | – | – | – | – | 0.01 | −0.18*** | 0.11* | −0.14*** | −0.08 | −0.34*** | – | 0.21 | 0.35 | 0.36 | 0.25 | 0.07 | 0.06 |
| 8. Education | – | – | – | – | – | 0.17*** | 0.14*** | 0.07 | −0.18*** | 0.32*** | −0.23*** | −0.21*** | – | 0.03 | 0.06 | 0.01 | 0.16 | 0.10 |
| 9. Tenure | 13 | 9.6 | – | – | – | 0.01 | −0.04 | −0.01 | 0.10* | −0.04 | 0.56*** | −0.35*** | −0.03 | – | 0.94 | 0.17 | 0.06 | 0.14 |
| 10. Sales experience | 12 | 8.7 | – | – | – | −0.01 | −0.01 | −0.01 | 0.06 | −0.06 | 0.58*** | −0.36*** | −0.06 | 0.94*** | – | 0.16 | 0.00 | 0.11 |
| 11. Company size | – | – | – | – | – | 0.09 | −0.05 | 0.01 | −0.05 | 0.01 | −0.10* | 0.25*** | −0.01 | 0.17*** | 0.16*** | – | 0.19 | 0.17 |
| 12. Industry type | – | – | – | – | – | −0.01 | −0.03 | −0.08 | −0.03 | 0.14*** | 0.18*** | −0.07 | −0.16*** | −0.06 | 0.00 | −0.19*** | – | 0.12 |
| 13. Customer type | – | – | – | – | – | 0.01 | 0.00 | 0.06 | 0.05 | −0.05 | 0.08 | 0.06 | −0.10* | −0.14*** | −0.11* | −0.17*** | 0.12* | – |
Note(s): LH = leadership humility; JS = job satisfaction; KS = knowledge sharing; SC = salesperson creativity. The numbers in the diagonal elements represent the square root of the average variance extracted. The numbers in the above diagonal represent the heterotrait–monotrait ratio
–: Not applicable
Significance level: *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001
Source(s): Created by author
Result of hypotheses
| Relationships | Standardized estimate (without marker variable) | Standardized estimate (with marker variable) | t-value | p-value | 95%CI | VIF | f2 | R2 | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hypothesized relationship | |||||||||
| H1: LH → SC | −0.01 | −0.01 | 0.09 | 0.93 | [−0.13, 0.12] | 1.19 | 0.00 | 0.19 | Not supported |
| H2: LH → KS | 0.23*** | 0.22 | 3.88 | 0.00 | [0.11, 0.35] | 1.12 | 0.06 | 0.15 | Supported |
| H3: LH → JS | 0.26*** | 0.26 | 4.82 | 0.00 | [0.15, 0.36] | 1.04 | 0.08 | 0.16 | Supported |
| H4: LH → JS → KS | 0.05** | 0.05 | 2.55 | 0.01 | [0.02, 0.10] | – | – | – | Supported |
| H5: LH → JS → SC | 0.05** | 0.05 | 2.60 | 0.01 | [0.02, 0.10] | – | – | – | Supported |
| H6: LH → KS → SC | 0.07** | 0.07 | 2.83 | 0.01 | [0.03, 0.13] | – | – | – | Supported |
| H7: LH → JS → KS → SC | 0.02* | 0.02 | 2.07 | 0.04 | [0.01, 0.03] | – | – | – | Supported |
| Non-hypothesized relationship | |||||||||
| Marker → JS | – | −0.02 | 0.18 | 0.86 | |||||
| Marker → KS | – | 0.06 | 0.76 | 0.45 | |||||
| Marker → SC | – | 0.00 | 0.01 | 1.00 | |||||
| Controls | |||||||||
| Age → JS | 0.30*** | – | 4.97 | 0.00 | |||||
| Age → KS | −0.10 | – | 1.20 | 0.23 | |||||
| Age → SC | 0.10 | – | 0.78 | 0.44 | |||||
| Gender → JS | −0.28* | – | 2.43 | 0.02 | |||||
| Gender → KS | 0.26* | – | 2.21 | 0.03 | |||||
| Gender → SC | −0.19 | – | d1.65 | 0.10 | |||||
| Education → JS | 0.11* | – | 1.96 | 0.05 | |||||
| Education → KS | 0.03 | – | 0.45 | 0.65 | |||||
| Education → SC | 0.05 | – | 0.82 | 0.41 | |||||
| Sales experience → JS | −0.24*** | – | 3.69 | 0.00 | |||||
| Sales experience → KS | 0.09 | – | 1.33 | 0.18 | |||||
| Sales experience → SC | 0 | – | 0.01 | 0.99 | |||||
| Company size → JS | 0.01 | – | 0.24 | 0.81 | |||||
| Company size → KS | 0.10 | – | 1.51 | 0.13 | |||||
| Company size → SC | −0.05 | – | 0.87 | 0.39 | |||||
| Type of customer → JS | −0.03 | – | 0.59 | 0.56 | |||||
| Type of customer → KS | 0.09 | – | 1.84 | 0.07 | |||||
| Type of customer → SC | 0.04 | – | 0.78 | 0.44 | |||||
| Industry type → JS | −0.04 | – | 0.90 | 0.37 | |||||
| Industry type → KS | −0.02 | – | 0.39 | 0.70 | |||||
| Industry type → SC | −0.03 | – | 0.76 | 0.45 | |||||
Note(s): LH = leadership humility; JS = job satisfaction; KS = knowledge sharing; SC = salesperson creativity; CI = confidence interval
Significance level: *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001
Source(s): Created by author
The result of model’s predictive power
| PLS-SEM | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Item | Q2predict | RMSE | LM RMSE | PLS-SEM – LM RMSE |
| CRE1 | −0.017 | 1.52 | 1.519 | 0.001 |
| CRE2 | 0.004 | 1.443 | 1.479 | −0.036 |
| CRE3 | 0.002 | 1.4 | 1.432 | −0.032 |
| CRE4 | 0.023 | 1.345 | 1.376 | −0.031 |
| CRE5 | 0.022 | 1.358 | 1.387 | −0.029 |
| CRE6 | 0.003 | 1.496 | 1.514 | −0.018 |
| CRE7 | −0.028 | 1.49 | 1.503 | −0.013 |
| JS1 | 0.08 | 1.584 | 1.591 | −0.007 |
| JS2 | 0.077 | 1.581 | 1.585 | −0.004 |
| JS3 | 0.087 | 1.856 | 1.843 | 0.013 |
| KS1 | 0.051 | 1.414 | 1.439 | −0.025 |
| KS2 | 0.049 | 1.415 | 1.439 | −0.024 |
| KS3 | 0.076 | 1.399 | 1.427 | −0.028 |
| KS4 | 0.042 | 1.426 | 1.442 | −0.016 |
Note(s): RMSE = root mean square error; LM = linear regression model
Source(s): Created by author
Notes
Even when 25 respondents for the first survey and 20 respondents for the second survey were removed from the model because of a short response time, the results did not greatly differ from those of the model that included this sample. Thus, this result provides the additional evidence of the representativeness of the sample (Johnson, 2016).
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI (Grant Number JP19K01949). I would like to thank the associate editor and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.