Higher-order goals, trust-in-leader, and self-efficacy as mediators of transformational leadership performance: The case of multi-level marketing organizations in China

Abstract

Although former scholarly studies mostly focus on exploring leadership effectiveness under the traditional hierarchical leader-subordinate relationship, the research of leadership performance for non-hierarchical organizational structures, particularly the mediating factors of higher-order goals, trust-in-leader, and self-efficacy have been ignored. This study, therefore, makes an attempt to ascertain the impacts of transformational leadership on the performance of subordinates through the mediating effects of higher-order goals, trust-in-leader, and self-efficacy and the differences of these effects in the context of multi-level marketing (MLM). Like the small-sample studies adopted by Barling, Weber, and Kelloway [1996], Barling, Slater, and Kelloway [2000] and Bass, Avolio, Jung, and Berson [2003], this study adopts a sample of 123 MLM distributors of an MLM company in Hong Kong, with a high response rate of 80.4%. The results indicate that the mediating effect of self-efficacy between transformational leadership and performance is significant under non-hierarchical organizational structures such as MLM in China.