Transformational leadership and development of marketing capabilities: Explaining the mediating role intellectual capital (Case Study: SMEs operating in the food industry of IRAN)

Developing marketing capabilities without paying attention to intellectual capital and especially human capital is impossible.On the other hand, dynamic economic environment requires attention to the importance of transformational leadership development in organizations; because these leaders have a great role in the process of creating the human capital and other dimensions of intellectual capital and consequently, improves organizational performance. This paper explores how employees’ perceptions on leaders’ transformational style positively affect their human capital benefits and consequently affect other components of intellectual capital and ultimately marketing capabilities  of business organizations. For these purposes, 368 responses from middle and top level management of small and medium sized businesses operating in the food industry located in industrial zones across the country were selected by multistage cluster sampling. The results show that transformational leadership factors have strong and significant potential to influence employee perceived human capital benefits, and most importantly, human capital, with the influence of other components of intellectual capital, plays a mediating role in the relation between transformational leadership and other components of intellectual capital. Finally, evidence suggests the direct and significant impact of informational capital, structural capital, and relational capital on marketing capabilities of small and medium-sized of enterprises operating in the food industry of IRAN.