Creativity and Leadership in Sales Management: A Comparative study of Private and Public sector Organization (Indian context)

Resumen En las ultimas dos decadas, la mayoria de los teoricos han definido la creatividad como el desarrollo de las ideas acerca de los productos, servicios, practicas o procedimientos que son (a) nuevos y (b) potencialmente utiles para la organizacion (Amabile, 1996; Zhou&Shalley, 2003). La investigacion sobre la creatividad de los empleados en ventas tenia una historia relativamente corta, pero aun en la ultima decada algunas investigaciones empiricas en esta area han sido encontradas. Los investigadores habian hallado una variedad de factores contextuales y organizacionales que facilitan y dificultan el desempeno creativo en el lugar de trabajo (por ejemplo Amabile 1988, 1996, Amabile y Conti 1999, Lazenby y Herron 1996, Eisenberger y Armeli 1997, Eisenberger y Selbst 1994, George &Zhou 2001, 2002, Madagar, Oldham, y Pratt 2002, Shalley& Perry Smith-2001, Tierney y Farmer 2002, Zhou y Oldham, 2004). La base de la investigacion de la creatividad comenzo entre finales de los anos 1980 hasta mediados de 1990. La creatividad florecio primero a traves de la obra seminal de Amabile (1983). Ella fue el primer investigador en proponer un marco teorico con apoyo empirico para comprender los conocimientos personales (por ejemplo, conocimiento y habilidades de dominio relevantes, habilidades creativas y estrategias pertinentes) y factores ambientales (por ejemplo --- contratado por recompensas) que podrian facilitar o inhibir empleado la creatividad. Rendimiento creativo centrado principalmente en las caracteristicas de la personalidad y los rasgos asociados a los resultados creativos. Por ejemplo, las investigaciones han encontrado que los individuos creativos tienden a ser mas flexibles en la absorcion de la informacion, demostrablemente mas alto en el nivel de motivacion intrinseca y estan abiertos a nuevas experiencias. Sin embargo, muy poco se conoce en la literatura existente como influir en los empleados para el rendimiento creativo (Drazin et al 2008, WhitneyRuscio y Amabile, 1998). Aqui se ha dividido la creatividaden dos capitulos. En el primer capitulo que trataremos acerca de como los lideres transformacionales influyen directa e indirectamente en la creatividad. En el segundo capitulo hablaremos de como la creatividad, directa e indirectamente afecta al rendimiento y la eficacia de las ventas de la organizacion. En otras palabras, podemos decir que estamos estudiando acerca de los antecedentes y consecuencias de la creatividad. BRIEF SUMMARY The main objective of this thesis is to examine the creativity and Leadership of the sales person in India and the comparative analysis of public and private sector organization. The thesis integrates recent perspectives on i) the transformational leadership direct and indirect effect to sales person?s creative performance ii) creative direct and indirect effect to sales person?s sales performance and sales organizational effectiveness iii) Self leadership direct and indirect effect to sales person?s performance. iv) Self leadership effect to Proactivity, Creative Performance and Organizational Citizenship Behaviour in both Private and Public sector organization. The present research is built upon sales management context and combines insights from Organizational behaviour literature, psychological literature. The empirical foundation for the research consist of data from India (n=120). The empirical research presented in this thesis relies heavily on Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) allows for the incorporation of latent (unobserved) structure into theoretically-based probabilistic models. This research yields four key findings and different conceptual and practical implication: i) The first essay informs that creativity is an integral part of individual?s skill repertoire to succeed in the current dynamic and competitive scenario. Creativity is expressed in generation of new ideas, their promotions, and realization of benefits. However, little is known in the extant literature about the creativity in sales. The study, proposes in the first essay how transformational leadership influence to creative performance through various mechanism like intrinsic motivation and trust in supervisor. The results of the research suggest that Transformational Leadership influence positively to creative performance and intrinsic motivation. But intrinsic motivation doesn?t influence to creative performance. The research suggests that leaders stimulate their followers or their sales person to boost their creative performance. ii) The second essay sheds light about the consequences of creativity i.e. how creativity influence the sales persons performance and to the overall performance of the organization. Finding indicates that creativity is positively influence to adaptive selling, Sales Performance and Sales Organizational effectiveness. The research suggests that creativity influence to adaptive selling and sales performance. Sales people need to be creative for new product development to enhance their sales performance and sales organizational effectiveness through their adaptive selling behaviour as per the customer requirement. iii) The third essay reveals the importance of Self leadership in sales management and their influence in performance through various mechanism like self efficacy, job satisfaction and sales performance. Finding indicates that self leadership is positively influence self efficacy, Job satisfaction and sales performance. On the other hand Self efficacy is positively influence to job satisfaction, but job satisfaction doesn?t influence to sales performance statistically. The research suggest that when a sales person can lead themselves alone can perform better in their work to get more self control over their jobs which helps them to get more confidence in their work and enhance the performance of the sales people. iv)The fourth essay sheds light how self leadership influence to creative performance, Organizational citizenship Behaviour & proactivity. The findings suggest that Self leadership has a significant correlation effect to Proactivity, and Creative performance in both private and public sector organization but has no correlation between Self leadership and Organizational citizenship behaviour in private sector organization. On the contrary Self leadership and Organizational citizenship behaviour has a significant correlation effect in public sector organization. The research suggests that however, Self Leadership can lead themselves and get their new ideas and solutions to their problem creatively hence leads to creative performance to survive with their competitors.