Nathaniel N. Hartmann

Measuring Salesperson Burnout: A Reduced Maslach Burnout Inventory for Sales Researchers

Given the negative effect that burnout has on the sales force, such as increased turnover intentions and decreased performance, measurement improvements on this multidimensional construct can have implications regarding how to manage the drivers and outcomes of burnout. However, little is known about the impact of the multiple burnout dimensions in sales contexts because researchers typically opt to collect data using the emotional exhaustion subscale instead of the complete Maslach burnout inventory, which also includes personal accomplishment and depersonalization facets. Using business-to-business and retail salespeople, this study reduces the 22-item burnout scale to 10 items in order to facilitate salesperson burnout research.

The Synergetic Effect of Multinational Corporation Management\'s Social Cognitive Capability on Tacit-Knowledge Management: Product Innovation Ability Insights from Asia

Multinational corporations (MNCs) use their overseas subsidiaries to access tacit knowledge about host countries. It is generally assumed that subsidiary tacit knowledge contributes directly to greater product innovativeness; however, little empirical evidence supports this assumption. In this research, the authors propose a negative direct relationship between subsidiary tacit-knowledge level and MNCs’ product innovation ability. The authors then examine the role of social cognitive capability as an attenuator of this negative relationship between subsidiary tacit-knowledge level and MNCs’ product innovation ability. The results reveal that each of the MNCs’ social cognitive capability components (i.e., task efficacy, organic structure, and affective trust) independently weakens this negative relationship. Moreover, combining social cognitive capabilities exerts synergetic influences to further excavate the effect of tacit knowledge.

Converging on a New Theoretical Foundation for Selling

This article demonstrates that the sales literature is converging on a systemic and institutional perspective that recognizes that selling and value creation unfold over time and are embedded in broader social systems. This convergence illustrates that selling needs a more robust theoretical foundation. To contribute to this foundation, the authors draw on institutional theory and service-dominant logic to advance a service ecosystems perspective. This perspective leads them to redefine selling in terms of the interaction between actors aimed at creating and maintaining thin crossing points—the locations at which service can be efficiently exchanged for service—through the ongoing alignment of institutional arrangements and the optimization of relationships. This definition underscores how broad sets of human actors engage in selling processes, regardless of the roles that characterize them (e.g., firm, customer, stakeholder). A service ecosystems perspective reveals (1) that selling continues to be an essential activity, (2) how broader sets of actors participate in selling processes, and (3) how this participation may be changing. It leads to novel insights and questions regarding gaining and maintaining business, managing intrafirm and broad external selling actors, and sales performance.

Salesperson’s Positive Organizational Behavior Capacities and Their Influence on Customer Relationship Outcomes: An Abstract

This study explores the role of positive organizational behavior capacities and their influence on customer relationship outcomes. First, the influence of salesperson optimism and resilience on customer-oriented behaviors is examined. Second, the mediating role of customer-oriented behaviors in explaining the influence of optimism and resilience on salesperson performance and customer satisfaction is explored. Drawing on broaden-and-build theory, optimism and resilience may increase customer-oriented behaviors. Optimism and resilience are positive states that broaden the spectrum of adaptive mechanisms and problem-solving approaches leading to lasting, diverse, exploratory, and novel behaviors (Fredrickson 2001). Also, resilience may encourage persistence and flexibility in the face of adversity, challenges, and setbacks (Schulman 1999). Customer-oriented behaviors are positively related to both customer satisfaction and sales performance (Homburg et al. 2011). It follows that optimism and resilience increase performance and customer satisfaction, at least in part, through their respective influence on customer-oriented-behaviors. We tested the hypotheses using questionnaires from 175 business-to-business salesperson-customer dyads and firm-provided objective sales performance data. All measures are based on established scales. The revised measurement model exhibited good fit. The structural model with direct and indirect effects fits well. However, three paths were not significant. We removed these nonsignificant paths stepwise. Results indicate that the revised structural model fits the data well, does not deteriorate fit, and all hypothesized direct relationships remained significant. Bootstrap estimates provide support for the mediation hypotheses. We developed a framework and provided evidence that optimism and resilience increase salesperson performance and customer satisfaction through their relationships with customer-oriented behaviors. These findings are important because they highlight that optimism and resilience positively influence salesperson performance and customer satisfaction and offer insight into the process through which this influence occurs. These findings are relevant to managers because optimism and resilience can be developed and assessed in interviews.

From the Dyad to the Service Ecosystem: Broadening and Building Theory in Sales—An Abstract

Changes in modern and dynamic markets are bringing about major changes to the sales role. Some believe these changes will diminish the strategic importance of salespeople. Others believe the strategic importance of salespeople will increase. Moreover, although sales scholars generally recognize that salespeople operate among a set of actors, work employing systemic perspectives that account for such interrelations is generally nonexistent. Herein, we employ a service-ecosystem and service-dominant (S-D) logic perspective to articulate that salespeople, more broadly: (1) reciprocally and dynamically foster direct and indirect service-for-service exchange (i.e., the application of knowledge and skill for the benefit of another (Vargo and Lusch 2004); (2) play an important role in institutionalization processes—the maintenance, disruption, and change (Lawrence and Suddaby 2006) of institutions (i.e., practices, assumptions, norms, laws, beliefs, and values among other attributes) that enable and constrain practices of social actors by simplifying and enabling thinking (Scott 2001); and (3) discover and resolve inconsistencies and contradictions in the institutional arrangements of various actors by aiding alignment in the narrative infrastructures of actors across service ecosystems. We propose that salespeople facilitate alignments in the narratives of systemic actors through interaction with other actors. Partly attributable to this, salespeople connect actors—as well as their narratives—across the service ecosystem. Hence, the establishment of relational norms and delivery of the firm’s value proposition, often the focus of more contemporary sales-buyer research, are only part of salespeople’s responsibilities and involvement in alignment processes. Indeed, responsibilities and involvement in alignment processes include ensuring that actor’s stories are heard, reconciled, and acted upon. In this capacity, salespeople identify opportunities to exchange service-for-service and align narratives by uncovering inconsistencies and contradictions in institutional arrangements and by providing discursive venues to, at least partly, resolve these inconsistencies and contradictions. In doing so, salespeople play a pivotal role in aligning stories to form a narrative infrastructure without ever becoming the master story teller. Therefore, salespeople serve in a necessary role whose strategic importance to organizations is likely to increase as the complexity of the marketplace increases. In this pursuit, we illuminate that institutionalization and resource integration are the bases for much of change in the sales role. Moreover, we articulate that service-for-service exchange generally occurs at where conceptions of problems and solutions tend to be misaligned, and the perceived benefits to costs of coordinating with other actors are low. Hence, salespeople (among other actors) not only coordinate resources but also facilitate relational contracts and bring about institutionalization, which results in greater convergence of perceived problems and solutions by aligning the narrative infrastructures of actors within the service ecosystem.