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This study aims to explore the effect of expatriate supervisors’ managerial coaching behavior on local subordinates’ learning effects through the mediating role of subordinates’ thriving at work under the boundary condition of expatriate supervisors’ cultural intelligence.

This study collected the data form 230 Zambian subordinates and their immediate expatriate supervisors working in the Chinese company in Zambia. Regression analyses and bootstrapping analyses were used to test the authors’ hypothesis.

The results indicated that expatriate supervisors’ managerial coaching behavior was positively related to local subordinates’ learning effects. In addition, the study also found that local subordinates’ thriving at work mediated the linkage between managerial coaching behavior and learning effects. And expatriate supervisors’ cultural intelligence moderated the indirect relationship between managerial coaching behavior and learning effects via thriving at work, such that the indirect effect was stronger for expatriate supervisors with high rather than low cultural intelligence.

This study contributes to a better understanding of how expatriate supervisors’ managerial coaching behavior influences local subordinates’ learning effects by investigating the mediating effect of thriving at work on the managerial coaching behavior–learning effects link. In addition, the study deepens the understanding of the boundary condition of the associations between managerial coaching behavior and subordinates’ learning effects in a cross-cultural context by investigating the moderating effect of expatriate supervisors’ cultural intelligence.

The purpose of the study is to test the effect of relationship managerial behavior (i.e. managerial coaching) on frontline employee performance (i.e. sales performance) and the mediating effect of employee's relationship behaviors (i.e. customer orientation and adaptive selling) in a Chinese banking environment.

Data were collected using a survey from 242 frontline employees working at a large commercial bank in Dalian (China). Measures on managerial coaching, customer orientation, adaptive selling and sales performance were adapted from the literature. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling in AMOS 26.

Results indicate that (1) managerial coaching positively affects employee customer orientation, (2) employee customer orientation positively affects employee adaptive selling behavior and (3) adaptive selling behavior positively affects sales performance. Bootstrap analysis confirmed the significance and stability of all the direct paths (suggesting that every mediator fully mediates the effect of its antecedent on the criterion) but none of the indirect paths found support (full mediation model).

The study makes a contribution to the nomological network of managerial coaching by introducing a construct that has not been used previously (i.e. employee adaptive selling behavior) and testing its relevance in a commercial setting.

The results suggest that (1) managerial coaching is a central managerial behavior for companies that would like to implement a relationship marketing strategy because it helps promote specific employee relationship behaviors like customer orientation and adaptive selling, (2) there seems to be little cultural differences in the banking industry between the Chinese and the Western banks, suggesting that coaching and other management tools can be transferable from one culture to the other and (3) that coaching is an effective tool to help employees achieve higher sales performance.

The paper contributes to the literature on the use of managerial coaching in commercial areas to increase frontline employee relationships behaviors. The identification of adaptive selling as a mediator is an original contribution because it has received little attention in scientific research. Additionally, the use of a Chinese sample of bank employees responds to recent call for more research in cross-cultural settings.

The concept of managers assuming developmental roles such as coaches and learning facilitators has received considerable attention in recent years. Yet, despite the growing body of expert opinion that suggests that coaching is an essential core activity of everyday management and leadership, the literature base remains largely atheoretical and devoid of empirical research. While there is some consensus about what effective coaching looks like, little if any empirical research has examined ineffective coaching behaviours. The purpose of this paper is to compare the empirical findings from three separately conducted studies to derive a comprehensive understanding of the ineffective behaviours associated with managerial coaching.

The current study adopted a cross‐national “etic” methodology based on the empirical findings generated by three previously conducted and purposefully selected “emic” studies. Drawing on Berry's and Lyons and Chryssochoous' “emic‐etic” approach and cross‐cultural comparisons, the researchers employed Guba and Lincoln's file card approach to analyze and compare the three behavioral datasets of the previously conducted studies.

The findings from this cross‐national comparative “etic” study revealed that the vast majority of ineffective coaching behaviours previously identified in the emic studies were held in common with each other. The predominant ineffective behaviours included using an autocratic, directive, controlling or dictatorial style, ineffective communication and dissemination of information, and inappropriate behaviours and approaches to working with employees. Of the 17 ineffective behaviours that were compared only three were not held in common.

Limitations associated with this cross‐national study included minor variations in the use of data collection approaches and samples of managers in the previously conducted emic studies.

The ineffective managerial coaching behaviours derived from the cross‐national comparisons can be integrated as diagnostic tools into coaching training programmes and management and leadership development programmes to improve the practice of managerial coaching. They can also be used to increase managers' awareness of the behaviours that impede their coaching interventions with their respective employees.

The literature base on coaching in general and managerial coaching in particular has been criticized for not being research‐informed and evidence‐based, but rather predominantly practice‐driven and guru‐led. The findings from the current cross‐national etic study not only add to a sparse base of empirical research on managerial coaching, but also illuminate an underdeveloped area, namely that of ineffective managerial coaching practice. Furthermore, the findings provide a foundation on which to compare and contrast future empirical research that may be conducted on managerial coaching behaviours.

How does a manager’s coaching behaviour encourage taking charge behaviour among subordinates? Although prior research has found a positive association between managerial coaching behaviour and employee performance, to date few studies have examined its effect on proactive behaviours in the workplace such as taking charge. Drawing on social exchange theory (SET) and social cognitive theory (SCT), this study develops a theoretical model to examine the mediating effects of work engagement and role breadth self-efficacy (RBSE) in the relationship between managerial coaching and subordinates taking charge. Additionally, drawing on social role theory (SRT), we test whether our proposed relationships are contingent on subordinates’ gender.

We tested our proposed moderated-mediation model using empirical data collected across two waves from 196 employees within a large Malaysian services enterprise. Partial least squares structural equation modelling was used to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results revealed that managerial coaching has a significant, positive relationship with taking charge, work engagement and RBSE. However, only work engagement was found to partially mediate the relationship between managerial coaching and taking charge. Subordinates’ gender was found to positively attenuate the direct effect between managerial coaching and taking charge among females. However, the mediating effects of work engagement and RBSE in managerial coaching and taking charge were found to be not contingent on subordinates’ gender.

Finding from this study reveals that managerial coaching is useful in shaping employees' taking charge behaviour through work engagement. Hence, organisations should focus on strategies aiming to enhance managers' coaching capabilities.

This study extends the nomological networks of managerial coaching by highlighting it as a predictor of taking charge. Moreover, drawing on SET and SCT to explain the mechanism of managerial coaching and taking charge, we provide a novel perspective on how managerial coaching can influence taking charge. Specifically, we highlight the critical role of work engagement as a key mechanism that influences the relationship between managerial coaching and taking charge. Finally, we demonstrate managerial coaching as a means through which organisations can improve individual functioning.

This study aims to investigate the influences of perceived and preferred coaching behaviors and the discrepancy between them on job satisfaction, mediated by the quality of the relationship with the immediate supervisor and adaptive performance.

The research adopted a cross-sectional survey design. A total of 220 Korean employees, small-sized team members, were recruited from the automotive industry for the study. This research explored the relationship between perceived and preferred coaching behaviors using the Pearson correlation. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the relationships among perceived and preferred managerial coaching behaviors, the discrepancy between them, the quality of the relationship with the immediate supervisor, adaptive performance and job satisfaction.

Perceived and preferred coaching behaviors exhibited a weak correlation. Perceived coaching behaviors indirectly influenced job satisfaction through the quality of the relationship with the immediate supervisor and adaptive performance. The discrepancy between perceived and preferred coaching behaviors directly and indirectly influenced job satisfaction via adaptive performance. However, all paths related to preferred coaching behaviors were found to be insignificant.

Although the results of this research may be generalized to the Korean automotive industry, the findings highlight perceived and preferred coaching behaviors and the discrepancy between them as independent variables. The findings shed light on the influences of managerial coaching on the quality of the relationship with the immediate supervisor within Korean workplace cultures and how coaching behaviors contribute to triggering subordinates’ adaptive performance. In addition, the study provides how managerial coaching influences job satisfaction in the workplace.

Based on the findings, an organization should cultivate self-directed learning environments to enhance employees’ adaptive performance. The coaching training session should be added to the leadership development program for new managers. Team leaders need to consider their members’ preferences during managerial coaching.

The variables, such as preferred coaching variables and the discrepancy between perceived and preferred coaching behaviors, along with the research framework, represent a novelty in managerial coaching, as well as within the Korean context.

The purpose of this paper is to test the influence of managerial coaching on frontline employee customer orientation, sales orientation and performance in a Chinese context. Further to this first goal, the authors also aim to compare these results with those obtained with a sample of Canadian bank employees in order to understand to what extent differences between Eastern and Western cultures affect business practices and employee responses in both environments.

This paper replicates a study from 2014 that used a sample of Canadian financial advisors to test the impact of managerial coaching on customer orientation, sales orientation and performance. In this new study, 185 frontline employees from a large insurance company in Chongqing (China) answered a paper-and-pencil questionnaire in Mandarin providing information about the coaching received from their managers, their own customer and sales orientation, as well as performance. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling in AMOS as well as multigroup confirmatory factor analysis to evaluate cross-cultural differences.

The authors found that for the Chinese respondents managerial coaching is positively related to employee performance both directly and through the mediation effect of customer orientation. The authors found no support for the mediation of sales orientation between coaching and performance. These results suggest that managerial coaching might be a good strategy to promote relational behaviors in frontline employees, but not to reduce manipulative behaviors. The authors also found that these results are statistically equivalent for Chinese and Canadian respondents, suggesting that cultural differences are less prevalent than expected in this business sector.

The study makes several contributions to research. First, it suggests that managerial coaching can help employees develop their customer orientation–a central construct for commercial organizations working under a relational marketing approach. Second, it presents one of the first studies that evaluate the efficiency of managerial coaching in an Eastern country. And finally, results underline the equivalence of results for Eastern (China) and Western (Canada) respondents suggesting that in a global environment (like the financial industry) the business logic guiding the development of good customer relationships and employee customer-oriented behaviors prevails over potential cultural differences and makes leader and employee behaviors more similar and comparable across different regions in the world.

First, the use of managerial coaching seems to increase frontline employee relational behaviors, like customer orientation. Accordingly, managerial coaching seems to be a link that can help financial institutions bridge the formulation of a marketing relational strategy in the boardroom and the implementation of such a strategy at the customer interface between frontline employees and customers. Second, given the equivalence of results between the Canadian and the Chinese sample, it seems that the similarities between business models and business logics within the financial services sector are more important—and supersede—the potential cross-cultural differences between Eastern and Western countries.

The study makes a contribution to the limited literature on the use of managerial coaching in financial institutions to increase frontline employee relational behaviors. At the same time, it presents one of the few cross-cultural studies comparing results obtained from Chinese and Canadian respondents.

The purpose of this paper and the contribution to this special issue is to build on Kim and Watkins’ (2018) recent finding that ‘leaders mentor and coach those they lead’ is the item in the Dimensions of the Learning Organization Questionnaire (DLOQ) that is most highly-correlated with performance. Given the criticality of providing strategic leadership for learning and, more specifically, the consistent associations between leaders who mentor and coach and work-related performance outcomes, a better understanding of the associations between the learning organization concept and managerial coaching is warranted. Watkins and Kim (2018, p. 22) contend that ‘future directions for learning organization research include a search for the elusive interventions that would create a learning organization’. In response to this call for research, a research agenda for assessing managerial coaching as a learning organization (LO) intervention is proposed.

This conceptual paper briefly reviews literature on the learning organization and the DLOQ instrument, followed by a more in-depth review of the managerial coaching literature and suggestions for how future research could be conducted that more closely integrates these two concepts.

Existing literature suggests that to ‘provide strategic leadership for learning’, a dimension in the DLOQ, is one of the most pivotal dimensions for creating learning cultures that build learning organizations. Specifically, an item within this dimension, ‘leaders who mentor and coach’ has been recently identified as one of the most critical aspects associated with strategic leadership for learning.

The extant managerial coaching literature offers a solid foundation for more closely integrating and mainstreaming the developmental intervention of managerial coaching into learning organizations. Directions for future research that identifies fine-grained perspectives of the discrete facets of managerial coaching in learning organization contexts are suggested.

The purpose of this study was to apply social exchange and organizational support theories to examine the relationship between mid-level strategic enrollment managers’ perceptions of managerial coaching behaviors enacted by their senior managers and their own reported job engagement, as mediated by perceived organizational support (POS) within the US higher education context.

A quantitative survey-based half-longitudinal design, which used the latent marker variable technique, was conducted with a sponsoring professional organization in the strategic enrollment management (SEM) field in the USA. A total of 301 usable surveys were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The results of this study indicate that SEM managers’ job engagement and the perceived managerial coaching behaviors provided to them by their senior managers were positively correlated, and that POS fully mediated this relationship. These findings highlight how coaching behaviors may allow managers to elicit positive emotional responses and, by fostering enhanced POS, ultimately enhance job engagement among their team members.

This study addresses several calls for research on managerial coaching, job engagement and POS in an under-examined higher education context within the human resource development field.

This study intends to understand if managerial coaching, a sustainable competitive strategy, has an impact on sales performance, through customer and results orientation of the salesforce. It also aims to investigate whether pressure for results, one of the predominant demands in organizations today, and the centralisation of decisions, a traditional management demand still present in several organizations, undermine the effect of coaching on performance.

The 167 responses collected, through the distribution of questionnaires among workers in the commercial area, were analysed through a structural equation model using the partial least square (PLS) technique.

The results of this study confirm that managerial coaching has a positive impact on sales force performance through customer and results orientation, with customer orientation having a greater impact on performance. It was also found that centralised decision-making and pressure for results do not undermine the relationship between managerial coaching and performance, and they even reinforce the positive impact of results orientation on performance.

Managerial coaching practices can impact sales, especially when associated with customer orientation, freeing employees from the pressure for results and the centralisation demands. This scenario favours a more sustainable and emancipatory sales force management.

This study is the first to integrate organizational demands, namely pressure for results and centralisation, to better understand the effect of managerial coaching on sales performance, through customer and results orientation, thereby extending previous research on this topic.

As a part of a larger study, the purpose of this study was to explore the learning outcomes for the “manager as coach” when exemplary managers are engaged in coaching their respective employees.

A qualitative, multi-case study using an adaptation of the critical incident technique (CIT) and semistructured interviews was employed with 12 managers and their respective direct reports totaling 24 interviews. Content and constant comparative analyses were used to analyze the data.

A total of five themes and 19 subthemes were identified regarding managers’ learning outcomes from managers’ perspectives. From the perspectives of their employees as coachees regarding their managers’ learning outcomes, one theme with three subthemes emerged.

Limited empirical research has explored the developmental outcomes for managers who serve as coaches for their employees. This study examined the outcomes associated with managerial coaching from both the perspectives of the managers who coach and their direct reports. The findings of this research provide more insight into the benefits managers derive from coaching their employees.