Antecedent Factors of the Informal Leader Emergence in Stores:

Focusing on the Capacity of Salespeople’s Abilities

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to find out situational factors for informal leader emergence with questionnaire data of 1,719 store clerks from 410 stores in a Japanese apparel chain. The results reveal that the factors affecting informal leader emergence of initiating structure were the number of store members and formal leaders’ ability to accomplish their tasks. In terms of consideration, the main factor turned out to be the ability to understand a situation of others by formal leaders or subordinates.