Impact of visionary leadership, partner alignment, and knowledge sharing on partner performance

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of a startup's visionary leadership on partner alignment, knowledge sharing and partner performance in the context of a partner network model. We argue that startups are challenged by a lack of sales in the initial stages and thereby resulting in high rates of mortality. Drawing upon the theory of visionary leadership, we suggest that knowledge sharing between a startup and network partner will have a positive relationship to partner performance. Secondly, we argue that visionary leadership would have a positive impact on partner alignment. Thirdly we posit that partner alignment would moderate the relationship between knowledge sharing and partner performance. Finally, we argue that partner alignment would have a positive relationship with partner performance in such a model. To support our hypotheses, we identified a startup that operates with such a partner model for our study. The startup works with network partners across the globe and the network partners collaborate with the startup to enhance its sales effort. We conducted a field experiment (n=62) to test our hypotheses. The partners were divided into intervention and control groups as part of the experiment. Through logs and self-report surveys, we gathered data on visionary leadership, alignment, knowledge sharing and partner performance. Results, implications and limitations of the study are discussed.