Relationship Between Transformational Leadership, R&D Performance and Employee Based Brand Equity

Abstract

Purpose – Brand value, leadership and innovation subjects are vital for companies and organizations in order to be succesful and competitive. Therefore, aim of this study is investigating relationship between transformational leadership, R&D performance and employee based brand equity and what role R&D performance has. Design/methodology/approach – This study is carried out by collecting survey data from 135 managers or manager candidates who in R&D department of several defence companies. In the survey Bass and Avolio’s Multiple Leadership Questtionnaire (MLQ), Hirst’s R&D performance model and Kwon’s Employee Based Brand Equity scale were used. In order to test hyphotheses, reliability analysis, frequency analysis, Pearson correlation analysis and linear analysis was done using IBM SPSS software. Findings – The results of the anaylsis show that there is a statistically positive and meaningful relationship between transformational leadership, R&D performance and employee based brand equity. In addition, R&D performance has partial mediating effect on relationship between transformational leadership and employee based brand equity. Discussion – According to this study, transformational leadership affect R&D performance and employee based brand equity significantly. In order to increase R&D organization’s performance and employee based brand equity throughout an organization, manager selection should be made according to their transformational leadership traits. Since, employee based brand equity is a precursor of consumer based brand equity and consumer based brand equity is precursor of financial brand equity, companies should focus on increasing level of employee based brand equity inside their organizations as it is affected positively by R&D performance and transformational leadership while R&D performance is a mediatior between transformational leadership and employee based brand equity.