G. Alexander Hamwi, Brian N. Rutherford and James S. Boles
The purpose of this study is to explore stressors that may influence salespersons' emotional exhaustion and their perception of organizational support.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to explore stressors that may influence salespersons' emotional exhaustion and their perception of organizational support.
Design/methodology/approach
Structural equation modeling is used to assess: the effects of role conflict and work‐family conflict on emotional exhaustion; role conflict and role ambiguity's effects on perceived organizational support; and whether perceived organization support is directly or indirectly linked to emotional exhaustion.
Findings
Findings from the study suggest that work‐family conflict and role conflict both significantly affect emotional exhaustion. Work‐family conflict also was found to impact on the relationship between perceived organizational support and emotional exhaustion. Finally, role conflict and role ambiguity were found to have a negative impact on perceived organizational support.
Originality/value
This study provides a foundation for reducing salespersons' emotional exhaustion and provides a method of increasing a salesforce's perception of organizational support.
Details
Keywords
Reflecting on the importance of negative word-of-mouth (NWOM) executed by internal audience of brand management, this study aims to explore the mechanism of employees’ NWOM in the…
Abstract
Purpose
Reflecting on the importance of negative word-of-mouth (NWOM) executed by internal audience of brand management, this study aims to explore the mechanism of employees’ NWOM in the emotional exhaustion context.
Design/methodology/approach
Focusing on employees’ active brand-oriented deviances, this study used a surveyed data set (n = 150) collected from negatively aroused employees experiencing a negative event within their organization. Structural equation modeling was adopted to test the hypotheses.
Findings
The current study revealed that employees’ NWOM is associated with emotional exhaustion. Also, it discovered that emotional exhaustion is more strongly associated with employees’ NWOM than turnover intention.
Research limitations/implications
Relying on self-regulation theory, the current study identified emotional exhaustion as a critical antecedent of employees’ NWOM. Future researchers can use the longitudinal research design or temporal separation as an effort to prevent common method variance.
Practical implications
Internal audiences engage in negative brand-oriented performance by spreading NWOM. Further, the advance in social media may instigate NWOM spread by internal audiences to external audiences.
Originality/value
This paper tests the explanatory power of conservation of resources theory and self-regulatory theory in terms of the impact of employees’ emotional exhaustion on NWOM and turnover intention.
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Muhammad Irfan and Bilal Ahmad
Service–sales ambidexterity (SSA) offers sales managers crucial information about dealing with customer service failures through an effective management control system. This study…
Abstract
Purpose
Service–sales ambidexterity (SSA) offers sales managers crucial information about dealing with customer service failures through an effective management control system. This study aims to scrutinize the relationships among SSA, salesforce control system, salesperson’s role stressors and service recovery performance (SRP) in the business-to-business (B2B) context.
Design/methodology/approach
An analysis is conducted based on survey data collected from 586 B2B sales employees participating in an extensive survey. Structural equation modeling is used to analyze the proposed hypotheses.
Findings
Empirical findings suggest that behavior-based control harms SSA. On the other hand, outcome-based control has a positive impact on SSA. The research outcomes further disclose that SSA positively impacts salesperson role conflict and emotional fatigue, whereas emotional fatigue negatively impacts SRP. Salesperson resilience notably moderates the association between SSA and emotional fatigue.
Originality/value
The study addresses there is a dearth of research on SSA applying the sales management control system. When studying about ambidexterity in sales context, many supervisory styles have been explored; however, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first systematic attempt to understand how sales management control systems play a role in SSA.
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Megan C. Good and Michael R. Hyman
The purpose of this paper is to apply protection motivation theory (PMT) to brick-and-mortar salespeople's responses to customers' fear appeals.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to apply protection motivation theory (PMT) to brick-and-mortar salespeople's responses to customers' fear appeals.
Design/methodology/approach
The approach is to develop a conceptual model for the effect of customers' fear appeals on brick-and-mortar salespeople.
Findings
PMT relates to the influence of customers' fear appeals on brick-and-mortar salespeople's behaviours. The salesperson's decision whether to follow a retail manager's suggestion about ways to mitigate a customer's fear appeal depends on believed threat severity, believed threat susceptibility, response efficacy, self-efficacy and response costs.
Research limitations/implications
PMT is applied to a new domain: brick-and-mortar salespeople. Although a powerful yet universal emotion, only limited research has examined fear within this group.
Practical implications
Understanding salespeople's fears will help retail managers identify strategies for encouraging adaptive behaviours and deterring maladaptive behaviours by salespeople.
Originality/value
A model relating customers' fear appeals to salespeople's behaviours is introduced.