Customer-Focused Leadership: Identifying the Components and its Effect on Organizational Results

Despite the importance of customer orientation as a strategic orientation for enhancing customers’ satisfaction and organization success, the role of customer-focused leadership has not been studied yet. Moreover, the components of customer-focused leadership and the process through which it affects organizational results has not been recognized yet. This study aims at identifying the components of customer focused leadership and also the process through which it affects organizational results. It is a applied study applying mix methods. The qualitative part was conducted using thematic analysis and the quantitative part was conducted using descriptive-correlative method. The qualitative data was analyzed using thematic analysis. Results of the qualitative study indicate that customer oriented leadership has five dimensions. HR managers of premier manufacturing organizations were selected as the population of this study. Using random sampling, 155 people were selected as sample. Data was gathered by means of questionnaire and analyzed by SPSS and Smart PLS software. According to the results of the qualitative part, customer focused leadership is consisted of five components: leader’s attitude, customer focused behavior, ethics, employee focused behavior and competency. Results of the quantitative data analysis show that the proposed leadership model has good fitness. Results also indicate that customer focused leadership both directly and indirectly through the employee results has significant impact on customer results. Also, customer focused leadership indirectly affects organization results through the mediating role of employee and customer results.