Felicia G. Lassk

Antecedents of Team Creativity: An Examination of Team Emotional Intelligence, Team Trust and Collaborative Culture

Teams represent a dominant approach to getting work done in a business environment. Creativity enables teams to solve problems and leverage opportunities through the integration of divergent thoughts and perspectives. Prior research indicates that a collaborative culture, which affects how team members interact and work together, is a critical antecedent of team creativity. This study explores other antecedents of team creativity, namely, team emotional intelligence and team trust, and investigates the relationships among these precursors to creative effort. Using a survey of 82 student teams at a large university in the northeast United States, our findings suggest that team emotional intelligence promotes team trust. Trust, in turn, fosters a collaborative culture which enhances the creativity of the team. Cognitive trust also moderates the relationship between collaborative culture and team creativity. Implications of these results for managers and academics are discussed.

The Current State of Sales Force Activities

Abstract Despite major changes in sales organizations and the sales environment over the last decade, no systematic updating of sales force activities has been undertaken since 1986. This article reports the process and results of a sales activities update, including 49 new activities not previously reported in the 1986 study. The resulting list of new sales activities is presented and discussed, and the importance of the findings to sales organizations and sales researches is addressed.

Customer Mind-Set of Employees throughout the Organization

Previous research has provided strong evidence for the benefits of embracing a market orientation, an organizational focus highlighting the needs of customers, and the creation of customer value. This study extends this focus on the customer to the individual worker level. A construct, customer mind-set (CMS), is developed that reflects the extent to which an individual employee believes that understanding and satisfying customers, whether internal or external to the organization, is central to the proper execution of his or her job. In this exploratory study, the authors develop a parsimonious scale for measuring CMS. Relationships between CMS and significant organizational variables are examined to establish CMSs validity and provide some tentative insights into its value to researchers and practitioners. The authors believe the CMS construct will allow for operational-level analysis of the extent to which a customer orientation is embraced throughout an organization, permitting managers to implement targeted improvement strategies.

Formal and informal management control combinations in sales organizations: The impact on salesperson consequences

Abstract Selecting an effective form of management control in sales organizations is important in achieving favorable salesperson consequences. We examine an alternative perspective to behavior-based management control in sales organizations. The conceptualization consisting of high, bureaucratic, clan, and low management control combinations is examined as a framework for management control research in sales organizations. In this study, hypotheses are developed concerning various salesperson consequences of the control combinations. The hypotheses are tested using a sample of 1042 salespeople from a broad range of industries and companies. The findings suggest that salespeople who work under a more visible control system (high control) perform better, are more satisfied, and display lower burnout and role stress, compared to salespeople working under bureaucratic, clan, and low control combinations. The managerial implications are discussed and several future research directions are proposed.

A Contemporary Taxonomy of Sales Positions

The sales job of the early twenty-first century has evolved due to myriad rapidly changing environmental factors. Customer relationship focus, technology, global competition, shifting customer preferences and demands, forced downsizing, increased competitive pressure, and other factors have contributed to altering the salesperson role—what salespeople do. Yet outdated taxonomies are referenced when researching and writing about sales jobs. This paper develops an empirically generated sales position taxonomy based on changing selling activities and strategies. First, a set of 105 activities are factor analyzed to create 12 dimensions of selling. Second, the factor scores are entered into a cluster analysis. The resulting factor score centroids allow for interpretation of a taxonomy of six categories of contemporary sales jobs.

The Future of Sales Training: Challenges and Related Research Questions

This paper discusses four key challenges and related research questions that will be critical to the future success of sales training in three major areas: content development, delivery, and evaluation. The four challenges are the changing roles of salespeople, the intensified emphasis on accountability, the enhancement of technological capabilities, and the importance of cultural diversity. To examine these issues and develop future research questions, the paper draws from reports of industry practices and academic literature in sales training, the sales/service interface, customer-oriented selling, social media, self-directed learning, and multicultural communications competency.

The Effect of Self-Efficacy on Salesperson Work Overload and Pay Satisfaction

As the lines blur between when work ends and home life begins, employees, working longer hours and multitasking, increasingly report feeling overwhelmed by their work. This research note investigates the effect of work overload and self-effcacy on important job outcomes—capability rewards and pay satisfaction. Utilizing social cognitive theory, the job demands control model, and the psychological contract notion, this paper provides evidence that role stress and work overload mediate the effect of self-effcacy on capability rewards and pay satisfaction. An empirical study is presented that includes 138 responses from boat and marine products salespeople. Study results and future research are discussed.

Exploring the Relationship Between Emotional Intelligence and Salesperson Creativity

In today’s highly competitive and rapidly changing business environment, organizations must take full advantage of their work force’s creative potential to prosper or even survive. The need to enhance creative performance for long-term success is perhaps especially true in the sales profession, where individual and organizational success depends on supplying innovative and useful solutions for customers. Emerging research has shown that a leader’s emotional intelligence positively supports workers’ creative performance. Employing a sample of 460 field members, this study extends this research by exploring how a sales representative’s emotional intelligence influences his or her creativity and key work outcomes. The findings are discussed in terms of theoretical and managerial implications. Limitations and suggestions for future research are offered.

Reexamining gender issues in salesperson propensity to leave

Abstract This research examines the moderating effects of salesperson gender and salesperson performance on the relationship between job satisfaction and propensity to leave the firm. Sales force data from 15–20 standard industrial classification (SIC) manufacturing categories representing 61 different companies and 1042 industrial salespeople were utilized in the study. The results illustrate that for both men and women, job satisfaction is a more important influence on the propensity to leave the firm at 3 months, 6 months and 1 year for low-performing salespeople than for high-performing salespeople. In addition, this research also supports the unique finding that high-performing salesmen have a greater propensity to leave the firm than high-performing saleswomen. Across longer time intervals, the propensity to leave the firm, as indicated by the variance explained, increased for salesmen but decreased for saleswomen. This suggests that high-performing saleswomen may be more loyal to their firm, regarding intention to leave.

Linking Performance Outcomes to Salesperson Organizational Citizenship Behavior in an Industrial Sales Setting

More than ever before, firms in the industrial marketplace are focusing on the contribution of the salesperson and selling role to organizational success. Considerable recent research shows that not only in-role but also extra-role behaviors—organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs)—are important in modeling salesperson performance. Yet, to date little effort has focused on examining the impact of OCB on relevant performance outcomes. Employing a sample of 207 industrial field salespeople from two companies and industries across the United States, this study reveals differences in impact of OCB on four diverse performance outcome types. The findings are discussed in terms of managerial applicability to industrial sales organizations, and a resulting set of next research steps is presented.