Linking authentic leadership to salespeople's service performance: The roles of job crafting and human resource flexibility

To build the sustainable service excellence, organizations should fuel sales employees’ drive to serve customers and recover service failures to their utmost satisfaction. The primary aim of our study is to delve into the role of authentic leadership in fostering customer-oriented organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and service recovery performance among sales employees. Respondents for our surveys comprised employees and managers from sales departments of pharmaceutical companies in Vietnam. The data analyses justified the positive relationships between authentic leadership and customer-oriented OCB as well as service recovery performance in a business to business (B2B) context. Job crafting served as a mediator for the links between authentic leadership and customer-oriented OCB as well as service recovery performance. Furthermore, human resource (HR) flexibility was found to play a moderating role for the effect of authentic leadership on job crafting among sales employees.     

The impact of purchase situation on salesperson communication behaviors in business markets

This research addresses the impact of purchase situation on sales communication behaviors used by the salesperson in business markets. We hypothesize that different sets of sales communication behaviors will be needed and vary for different purchasing situations. Measures of a salesperson's communication behaviors were tested for different types of purchase situations. Differences were found in the persuasiveness of the salesperson's getting, giving, and using information, depending on the type of purchase situation. These findings help support the value of salesperson adaptability, providing an important variable on which to adapt.     

Exploratory navigation and salesperson performance: Investigating selected antecedents and boundary conditions in high-technology and financial services contexts

Salesperson behavior aimed at improving internal company response to customer requests has received little attention in the industrial marketing literature in comparison to external, customer-directed behaviors. In this study, the phenomenon of “salesperson navigation” (SpN) is developed within the context of a research model of selected antecedents and boundary-conditions that influence a primary form of navigational behavior, or “exploratory navigation”. The research model's utility in predicting sales performance is tested empirically with data from two Fortune 500 sales forces. The findings show that the traits of competitiveness and expert power significantly enhance the salesperson's propensity to engage in exploratory navigation behavior. Exploratory navigation, in turn, is found to have a significant and positive association with salesperson job performance, contingent upon specific boundary conditions within the salesperson's own organization (i.e., sales management support and internal competitive climate). The article concludes by offering sales researchers and industrial marketing managers implications derived from the study as well as directions for further work.     

关系行为对组织公民行为的双刃剑效应

研究基于整体公平理论和印象管理理论,探讨关系行为对组织公民行为的影响,以及整体公平感的中介作用。采用问卷调查法,以北京等12个城市22家企业的274名员工为样本,通过结构方程建模选择最优模型,并在此基础上检验研究假设。结果表明：（1）关系行为对组织公民行为产生显著的正向影响;（2）关系行为对整体公平感产生显著的负向影响;（3）整体公平感对组织公民行为产生显著的正向影响;（4）整体公平感在关系行为与组织公民行为之间起到部分中介作用。研究发现关系行为不仅直接对组织公民行为产生正向效应,而且还会通过整体公平感的中介作用间接的对组织公民行为产生负向效应,关系行为对组织公民行为具有双刃剑效应。     

Studying the antecedents and outcome of social media use by salespeople using a MOA framework

The innovative impact of digital technologies on sales forces is largely unexplored. Particularly, the understanding of drivers of social media use by salespeople remains fragmented and scant. Drawing on motivation-opportunity-ability theory, this study develops an integrative framework. The individual's opportunities to use social media, including perceptions about market readiness, peer influence, and organizational support are considered as important antecedents of individuals' motivation (perceived usefulness) and ability (perceived ability to integrate social media in the sales tasks) to use social media in their job. Next to a positive effect of social media use on sales performance also a potential negative impact through distraction is accounted for. The framework and hypotheses are tested using a sample of 345 salespeople. The results largely support the model and hypotheses. Market readiness, peer influence, and organizational support positively affect salesperson motivation, and except for organizational support, the individual's ability to integrate social media in his/her sales job too. Findings further show that motivation and ability together drive social media use in sales, but that a lack of ability shuts down the positive influence of motivation on social media use. Finally, a positive effect of social media use on sales performance is detected, suggesting that social media can be an important tool to enhance sales growth. Support for a dark side effect of social media is not found.     

The role of sales team intragroup conflict on critical job outcomes

Sales teams are often structured into groups by territories, product categories, or hierarchical levels of salespeople which provide support to one another while counter-intuitively competing for individual resources, rewards, and promotions. We posit that the impact of conflict within the sales team (sales team intragroup conflict) on critical individual-level job outcomes (job satisfaction and intent to turnover) is contingent upon two loci of influences: individually-influenced goal orientations (learning and performance) and managerially-influenced justice perceptions (procedural and distributive). We empirically examine sales team intragroup conflict through a primary data collection of 195 distributor salespeople organized into 20 geographically dispersed teams. Our results largely support our hypotheses that there are nuanced effects across the loci of influences, such that in conflict-laden environments, having a performance orientation or perception of organizational distributive justice enhance job satisfaction, while a perception of organizational procedural justice decreases job satisfaction. Thus, we answer the call to better understand the role of conflict in marketing exchanges.     

Examining the impact of job embeddedness on salesperson deviance: The moderating role of job satisfaction

This study investigates the dysfunctional outcomes of salesperson job embeddedness as moderated by job satisfaction. Our findings suggest that among salespeople with low job satisfaction, organizational job embeddedness is positively linked with organizational deviance, interpersonal deviance, and customer-directed deviance. However, among salespeople with high job satisfaction, job embeddedness is negatively linked with organizational deviance and not significantly linked with either interpersonal or customer-directed deviance. The managerial implications of this study suggest that sales managers should be proactive in mitigating salesperson deviance behaviors through a variety of methods that may enhance salesperson satisfaction, particularly among salespeople who are embedded. Such managerial methods may include the following: 1) more assertive communication of acceptable norms with salespeople, 2) proper mentoring, 3) developing coordinated monitor and control systems, and 4) setting appropriate expectations for new hire salespeople by providing realistic job previews.     

Does salesperson's customer orientation create value in B2B relationships? Empirical evidence from India

Although value creation in business relationships has taken an important position in the literature, yet scant attention has been paid to the precise nature of creation or destruction of value in b2b customer-oriented selling. Moreover, very few empirical studies in the b2b customer value research have focused on emerging markets, especially the BRIC countries. This study carried out in the context of small and medium sized firms in India, empirically examines from the SOCO perspective (Saxe and Weitz, 1982), value creation in customer-oriented selling, and value destruction in sales-oriented strategies. We model value creation, relationship development, and customer satisfaction as direct and indirect consequences of salesperson's customer orientation. Based on a sample of 249 small and medium sized Indian firms, we show that salesperson's customer orientation directly leads to value creation and relationship development with customers. On the other hand, a sales orientation destroys value, although it may lead to relationship development in the short-term. We also found that customer satisfaction was unrelated to both types of salesperson's orientations. Our study has considerable impact for small and medium sized businesses in emerging BRIC markets such as India, as it throws light on how supplier firms can leverage their salesforce to create value creation with their customers.     

How psychological resourcefulness increases salesperson's sales performance and the satisfaction of their customers: Exploring the mediating role of customer-oriented behaviors

This research examines the relationships among psychological resourcefulness, customer-oriented behaviors, sales performance, and customer satisfaction. Drawing from positive organizational behavior and broaden-and-build theory, the authors propose that (1) psychological resourcefulness positively influences customer-oriented behaviors and (2) customer-oriented behaviors mediate the influence of psychological resourcefulness on sales performance and customer satisfaction. The authors test, and provide support for, these hypotheses using a unique data set consisting of objective sales performance data and survey data collected from 175 salesperson-customer dyads from various industries within a business-to-business setting. The broader contribution of the article is that psychological resourcefulness may be central to salesperson performance and customer relationship effectiveness. Implications of the findings for theoreticians and practitioners are discussed.     

The Impact of Innovative Culture on Individual Employees: The Moderating Role of Market Information Sharing

Current innovation literature provides a very limited understanding of the potential impacts of innovative culture on employees. Building on resource‐based view theory, the authors investigate theoretically and empirically how a perceived innovative culture can be a building block for a firm's competitive resource and advantage by creating superior employee‐level outcomes and how a market information‐sharing process may moderate these effects. The authors identify three distinct types of individual‐level outcomes stemming from an innovative culture. The three outcome variables—job satisfaction, organizational dynamism perception, and firm performance perception—reflect employees’ psychological and cognitive reactions to the process of creating organizational innovation and innovative culture. The authors collect survey data from 3960 individual employees in China. Their findings first show that a perceived innovative culture significantly and positively affects employees’ job satisfaction and perceptions of organizational dynamism and firm performance. Moreover, organizational dynamism perception plays an important mediating role among three employee‐level outcomes by converting job satisfaction into firm performance perception. The authors also find support for the direct, positive effect of a perceived market information‐sharing process on job satisfaction but not on perceptions of organizational dynamism and firm performance. Most importantly, their findings on the significant moderating role of a market information‐sharing system contribute to innovation theory by emphasizing the importance of the innovation/marketing interface: bundling market information sharing and innovative culture together enhances employees’ positive attitudes and perceptions. This result also suggests that examining only the direct effects of innovative culture and market information sharing may lead to incorrect conclusions as to how to manage the cultural infusion process: the market information‐sharing process shows only a weak effect on job satisfaction and no effect on perceptions of organizational dynamism or firm performance. Organizational designs should ensure simultaneous consideration of both variables in the cultural transformation process to enhance employees’ derived benefits in the process of creating an innovative culture. We offer a new insight: a perceived market information‐sharing process may strengthen the effect of an innovative culture on employees’ job satisfaction and organizational dynamism perception, while it may weaken the effect of an innovative culture on firm performance perception. This more nuanced view of market information sharing in the cultural infusion process presents new wisdom and calls for further studies in entrepreneurial innovation.     

Salespeople satisfaction and performance feedback

A model of the relationship between sales supervision and salesforce job satisfaction is developed and tested. The model hypothesizes that salespeople will experience greater job satisfaction when they receive more performance feedback and more opportunity to participate in their supervisor's decision making processes and when they have supervisors who are high on consideration and initiation of structure. In addition, because of recent empirical evidence suggesting a possible consideration/initiation of structure interaction effect on job satisfaction, a hypothesized interaction effect was examined in this study. The results suggest that performance feedback is an important predictor of job satisfaction. Furthermore, they indicate that the sales supervisor's consideration and initiation of structure are related to the salesperson's satisfaction with certain aspects of the job. Participation and consideration/initiation of structure interaction were not found to be significant predictors of salesforce job satisfaction.     

Sales force obsolescence: Perceptions from sales and marketing executives of individual, organizational, and environmental factors

The trade and academic literature is replete with observations that many sales organizations are in the midst of a redefinition of the strategic role of their sales forces. With today's market forces, change is overdue in many sales organizations. Consequently, the issue of whether the sales force is becoming obsolete has come to the forefront in recent years. As business environments change rapidly, the relevance of the modern sales force comes into question. Data were gathered from 245 midlevel sales and marketing executives on perceived sales force obsolescence. Our findings suggest that obsolescence is a phenomenon for sales organizations to address. The main findings of our study are (1) obsolescence is a phenomenon that affects sales professionals' feelings toward the job (job satisfaction) and outcomes (performance); (2) a firm's market orientation is very important in lowering perceived obsolescence; (3) a learning orientation is important in detecting symptoms of obsolescence; (4) age and education are related to perceptions of obsolescence depending on the type of industry in which the sales force competes: high- or low-tech; and (5) organizational changes can also have a bearing on the sales force's perceptions of obsolescence.     

Social media: Influencing customer satisfaction in B2B sales

Social media have changed how buyers and sellers interact, and increased involvement through social media may yield positive results for sales organizations if salespeople utilize it in facilitating their behaviors. Through the perspective of value creation, we test the mediating effects of salesperson information communication behaviors between social media use and customer satisfaction. Using salesperson-reported data, within a B2B context, we empirically test a model using structural equation modeling. Salesperson's use of social media is found to impact information communication behaviors, which enhance salesperson responsiveness and customer satisfaction. Also, salesperson responsiveness is found to have a positive relationship with customer satisfaction. Findings suggest that social media plays an important role in communicating information to customers, but as an antecedent enhancing salesperson behaviors to increase customer satisfaction rather than a direct factor. This encourages managers to carefully assess goals related to social media use of their sales force.     

Do business customers perceive what salespeople believe? Perceptions of salesperson adoption of innovations

A salesperson's commitment and effort toward an innovation can determine whether the customer agrees to buy it, such that customers' perceptions of such commitment and effort are critical. But these perceptions also might differ fundamentally from the salesperson's self-perceptions of commitment and effort. Therefore, this paper presents a theoretical framework of the relation between salesperson-perceived and customer-perceived commitment and effort, as exhibited by the salesperson while selling an innovation, which represents salesperson adoption. In the framework, job satisfaction factors also exert contingent, moderating effects. The authors gather unique, dyadic data from surveys of salespeople and their (potential) business customers during visits to sell a conventional, incremental innovation, complemented by objective purchase data gathered from company records. Three key insights emerge fromt this study. First, salespeople's own perceptions of their commitment and effort have only moderate influences on customers' perceptions of salespeople's commitment and effort. Second, customers seem to recognize salesperson effort more readily than salesperson commitment, although salesperson commitment has a higher sales performance impact than salesperson effort. Thus, sales managers should seek to encourage and support both the commitment of salespeople and also perceptions of that commitment among customers. Third, while a higher organizational support or job autonomy strengthens customers' perceptions of salesperson adoption, a higher pay satisfaction diminishes it. Thus, firms might need to find ways to increase the support for the salespeople and their autonomy and to reduce salespeople's satisfaction with their (direct) payments. In total, these findings suggest significant scientific and managerial implications.     

Why helping coworkers does not always make you poor: The contingent role of common and unique position within the sales team

In recent years, many companies have implemented sales teams as a way of streamlining accountability and promoting the development of sales expertise. The success of such work groups largely depends on experienced members' willingness to help coworkers. Previous studies indicate that group structure and individual position along individual attributes (e.g., experience) are important to understand interactions between coworkers. However, sales research on this topic is lacking. Drawing on a motivation-opportunity-ability framework, this study addresses this void by examining the impact of individual salesperson's job experience position within work groups on the motivation to help coworkers and his or her own sales performance. The findings of a multisource, multilevel empirical study reveal interesting effects. The results highlight the important role of job experience position: if a salesperson's level of job experience is common within the sales team, it activates identification as a driver of helping behaviors, which in turn negatively influences own performance. Conversely, if a salesperson's level of job experience is unique, it does not activate identification as a driver of helping, but does positively influence the effect of helping on own performance. The authors discuss implications for theory and practice.     

Relationship between leader�Cmember exchange and organizational citizenship behaviors: Examining the moderating role of empowerment

This study addresses the moderating role of empowerment on the relationship between leader?Cmember exchange (LMX) quality and subordinates?? organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Using hierarchical multilevel analyses, we found that LMX is positively related to OCB. Likewise, we found that team-level empowerment climate is positively related to individual-level feelings of empowerment, which, in turn, positively moderate the positive effect of LMX on OCB.     

The influence of formal and informal sales controls on customer-directed selling behaviors and sales unit effectiveness

Adaptive selling (AS) and customer-oriented selling (COS) constitute two key customer-directed selling behaviors for the success of the modern sales force. However, knowledge regarding the organizational factors that can induce salespeople to engage in those behaviors is strikingly limited. Against this background, we develop a comprehensive model that delineates the influences of formal and informal sales controls on AS and COS and, through them, on sales unit effectiveness. Based on a sample of sales managers in a major European Union country, we present new evidence that (a) formal and informal sales controls exert differential impact on salespeople's AS and COS behaviors; (b) AS directly and positively influences sales unit effectiveness; (c) COS affects sales unit effectiveness only indirectly, i.e. by fostering AS; and (d) outcome and cultural controls directly improve sales unit effectiveness. We conclude with a discussion of our findings for academics and practitioners.     

Job satisfaction and employer-sponsored training

This article examines whether participation in employer-sponsored training has a causal impact on job satisfaction by accounting for individual fixed effects, individual-by-employer fixed effects and controlling for promotions in a sub-sample of the data to address the endogeneity of participation arising from within employer job changes. The estimates show a consistent, positive effect of participation in employer-sponsored training on job satisfaction. Conversely, participation in other types of training does not have a significant impact upon job satisfaction. Additionally, participation in employer-sponsored training has a strong, negative correlation with turnover even while controlling for job satisfaction. Training does not exhibit a lasting effect of either job satisfaction or turnover.     

企业社会资本的功效结构:基于中国上市公司的实证研究

与政府的联系、组织的社会网络资本和特有的关系资本构成了企业的社会资本。通过对97家上市公司的经验研究表明,企业社会资本对销售收入的提升有着正面的促进作用,但对资产报酬率的改善却没有明确的影响。具体而言,在提升销售收入过程中,组织的社会网络资本作用最大,特有关系资本次之,企业家的政府关系资本是第三位的。我们还发现,国有企业比非国有企业在政府关系的利用和获得有利社会地位方面更有优势,但在组织的特有关系资本建设方面却呈现不足。作者建议管理者谨慎评价企业社会资本的功效,有必要考虑不同社会资本结构的交互作用,并将之与其他要素综合起来运用;企业应当用动态的眼光分辨不同层次的社会资本对绩效改善的作用。