The interactive effects of sales control systems on salesperson performance: a job demands–resources perspective

By C. Fred Miao, K. Evans. 2013

220 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Sales control systems represent an important managerial tool in directing the sales force for desired organizational objectives. However, the majority of prior sales control research has focused only on the main effects of sales control systems without explicitly considering their interactive effects and associated intervening mechanisms. Drawing on job demands–resources theory, the authors theorize differential interactive effects of outcome control, activity control, and capability control on job engagement (i.e., adaptive selling behavior and selling effort) and job stress (i.e., role ambiguity and role conflict), which subsequently affect salesperson performance. Empirical results using a sample of industrial salespeople find that (1) outcome control and capability control have positive interactive effects on adaptive selling behavior and selling effort while suppressing role conflict, (2) activity control and capability control have a negative interactive effect on role ambiguity, and (3) outcome control and activity control have a positive interactive effect on selling effort but negative interactive effects on adaptive selling behavior and role clarity. These results indicate that sales control researchers can benefit from considering the complex interactive effects of various control styles as well as the intervening processes, which provide a more refined understanding of this important managerial tool.

Subfields: Management Information Systems, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/34c27b0fad52cc5359d1a5a42087d91a21e1e522

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Management Information Systems

1. Stavroula Spyropoulou
2. Fatima Wang
3. Seigyoung Auh
4. B. Menguc

In Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

1. Raj Agnihotri
2. Seigyoung Auh
3. B. Menguc
4. Stavroula Spyropoulou
5. Fatima Wang
6. Thomas L. Baker
7. Adam Rapp

Citations in the corpus

• Competitive intelligence collection and use by sales and service representatives: how managers’ recognition and autonomy moderate individual performance (2015, background): “The only study we could identify that reported a direct test of the relationship between role conflict and adaptive selling is Miao and Evans (2013).”
• Service employee burnout and engagement: the moderating role of power distance orientation (2016, methodology): “The JD-R model has been applied in various marketing contexts, for example, to explain sales control (Miao and Evans 2013), salespeople’s management of customer and organizational complexity (Schmitz and Ganesan 2014), frontline employee performance (e.g., Singh 2000), customer service under stress…”
• The role of climate: implications for service employee engagement and customer service performance (2017, unknown): “Although the JD-R framework has garnered widespread support in marketing literature on sales (Miao and Evans 2013; Schmitz and Ganesan 2014) and frontline employees’ customer service, customer orientation, and performance (Chan and Wan 2012; Singh 2000; Zablah et al. 2012), we argue that the JD-R…”