Linking leadership style to firm performance: the mediating effect of the learning orientation

Abstract

Turkey has undergone a series of recent crises in 1994, 1999 and 2001. Firms that manage the crises successfully survived and become high performing organizations of Turkey. This high performing organization which survived in crises has attracted attention of so many researchers and characteristics of those firms began to be surveyed. In this context this survey is being started to examine and reveal the characteristics of those high performing firms. Leadership has been subject to so many studies examining the high performing organizations in literature. Besides leadership style, cultural competitiveness is emphasized as another high performing factor in literature. Within the framework of cultural competitiveness, our study focuses on the notion that learning orientation as one of the cultural based elements that effect firm performance mediates the relationship between leadership style and firma performance. The survey of this study is conducted on 343 middle and senior managers of 125 high performing firms operating in manufacturing industry in Turkey, between the years of 2008-2010. Firms fulfilling the criteria that (1) being indicated in the list of "Fortune 1000 of Turkey" between the years of 1997-2007, and (2) not being undergone a loss for those 10 years, are indexed as high performing firms. The obtained data from the questionnaires are analyzed through the SPSS statistical packaged software. Factor analysis, reliability analysis, correlation and regression analyses are used to evaluate the data. Analyses results revealed that both dimensions of learning orientation (commitment to learning and shared vision and open-mindedness) mediate the effects of the relations-oriented and task-oriented leadership on the firm performance.