Abstract:

Extremely increasing competition, the paradigm changes called epidemic or economic crisis affects the world globally. Whereas the improvement of technological opportunities and the factors that divert the businesses, such as (virtual) remote working, make the concept of leadership open to discussion and enhancement. Leadership is no longer perceived only as directing followers in one direction in line with the goals of the establishment. The effectiveness and scope of leadership in management science are evolving day by day. The leadership function is expected to be more inspiring and ignited while adapting to today's contemporary era. In daily business life, tasks to be performed with more effort require more supervision, interaction, and a better role model to demonstrate, to provide more inspiration. Within the scope of the study sparking leadership has been suggested as a new leadership style. It has been investigated whether the sparking leadership has an impact on business performance perceived by the employees with the perspectives of age, seniority, and gender. Research has been conducted on 265 participants employed in 33 companies consist of a variety of sectors. According to the survey conducted; a positive relationship was obtained between sparking leadership and business performance perceived by the employees. While age and seniority increase, the positive effect of sparking leadership was observed on business performance perceived by the employees. Also, it has been determined that women are slightly more affected by sparking leadership characteristics than men.

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