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Making things happen through challenging goals: leader proactivity, trust, and business-unit performance
Craig D Crossley1, Cecily D Cooper, Tara S Wernsing
1Department of Management, College of Business Administration, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL 32816, USA. craig.crossley@ucf.edu
The Journal of Applied Psychology
|February 6, 2013
Summary
Proactive managers set challenging sales goals, boosting business unit performance. Employee trust in leadership amplifies this effect, linking manager proactivity to collective sales success.
Area of Science:
- Organizational Behavior
- Sales Management
- Leadership Studies
Background:
- Decades of research exist on individual proactivity.
- Goal-setting theory and trust in leadership are established fields.
- The interplay between manager proactivity, goal setting, trust, and sales performance requires further investigation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the relationship between manager proactivity and business unit sales performance.
- To examine the mediating role of challenging goal setting in this relationship.
- To explore the moderating effect of employee trust in the manager on the goal-performance link.
Main Methods:
- A moderated-mediation model was employed.
- Data were collected from a large US sales organization (N = 50 business units).
- Statistical analysis examined the proposed relationships.
Main Results:
- Proactive senior managers set more challenging goals for their business units.
- Challenging sales goals were positively associated with higher sales performance.
- Employee trust in the manager critically facilitated the relationship between challenging goals and sales performance.
Conclusions:
- Manager proactivity influences sales performance through the setting of challenging goals.
- Trust in leadership is a key factor that enhances the effectiveness of challenging sales goals.
- This study highlights the district manager's role in translating proactivity into collective unit performance.
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