Knowledge-Oriented Leadership in high tech Companies on B2B and B2C Markets

The study examines the impact of knowledge-oriented leadership (KOL) on companies operating in high tech industries concentrating either on business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C) markets. The impact is measured by companies' performance. The study was conducted in Poland using telephone interviews. The analysed sample consists of 358 companies. The main method of analysis used was linear regression. In order to distinguish high tech industries, the Galindo-Rueda and Verger (2016) classification was used. High tech and medium-high tech industries were analysed. In the first step, medium-high tech and high tech companies were analysed together. For companies concentrating on the B2C market, KOL accounted for 14.2% of their performance variance. In the case of companies concentrating on the B2B market, KOL accounted for as little as 3.1% of these entities' performance variance. At the subsequent stage, companies concentrating on the B2C market were analysed in more depth by dividing them into medium-high tech and high tech groups, as their model fit was relatively high. The results showed that in the case of entities operating in medium-high tech industries, KOL accounted for 17.1% of these companies' performance variance. In the case of entities operating in high tech industries, the model was statistically insignificant. The main contribution of this article is revealing that the impact of KOL on performance is especially high among companies operating in medium-high tech industries and (mainly) in B2C markets.