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The aim of this paper is to examine when it is appropriate to provide dedicated support for a sales activity, and in cases where support is desirable, to explore the choice between core team support and external support.

Sales transactions typically require a diverse range of sales activities, including customer contact, scheduling appointments, internal meetings, processing orders, and preparing financing applications. This research develops a framework for understanding how to structure sales support for specific sales activities.

Each sales activity has four dimensions, i.e. workload, customization, complexity, and prequalification risk. Support structure (self‐support, core team support, and external support) moderates the influence of the four sales activity dimensions on sales activity performance and salesperson role stress. These, in turn, impact overall sales performance.

This research presents a broad conceptual model of sales support structure. Further research should test this framework using empirical data.

Normative recommendations are made for managers about how to allocate sales activities to sales support.

This research proposes four relevant dimensions of sales activities that should be considered when allocating sales activities to members of the selling center. The framework will help managers, academicians, and business students understand how sales support structure impacts sales performance.

The aim of this paper is to examine the effect of servicer and cross‐seller functional performance on salesperson perception of cross‐functional conflict.

Frontline employees often specialize in selling, servicing, or cross‐selling to customers. Two studies separately examine the effect of servicer and cross‐seller functional performance on salesperson perception of cross‐functional conflict.

In Study 1, salesperson conflict with frontline specialists who do not directly sell, called servicers, is examined and it is found that salespeople perceive less cross‐functional conflict when servicers perform well. Group cohesion decreases conflict directly. The effect of servicer performance on conflict is less pronounced as cross‐functional training increases. In Study 2, salesperson conflict with employees who cross‐sell additional goods and/or services to customers, called cross‐sellers, is evaluated and it is found that salespeople perceive more cross‐functional conflict when cross‐sellers perform well. Cross‐functional training decreases conflict directly. The effect of cross‐seller performance on conflict is less pronounced as group cohesion increases.

The research was carried out in a single setting, automobile dealerships, and only two controls, one formal and one informal, were examined.

The results indicate that salespeople view the performance of each type of specialist differently depending on the specialists' goals. Based on this finding, the paper provides guidelines for which formal and informal controls are likely to be effective for reducing conflict between different frontline functions.

The paper shows that salespeople view servicer performance positively and cross‐seller performance negatively. Thus, the research adds to the understanding of cross‐functional relationships among specialized frontline employees.

Medicaid home and community-based services (HCBS) support community living for three million disabled people in the United States. As a state-federal partnership, these programs are highly variable across states. Because eligibility determination and services differ from state to state, this Medicaid structure becomes a barrier for those HCBS users whose desired futures include cross-state moves.

I examine narratives of citizenship and personhood for Medicaid HCBS users circulating within policy arenas and explore tensions between these and the stories Medicaid HCBS users tell of their own lives. Specifically, I explore the degree to which narratives about Medicaid HCBS users include an affirmation of the right to cross-state movement. My analysis includes data from public statements from policy makers, legislative texts, organizational framings of Medicaid policy, and 18 semi-structured interviews with Medicaid PCA users who desired or pursued cross-state moves.

I conclude that institutional narratives of Medicaid HCBS users are an inadequate representation of the stories told by those who rely on this program and, in consequence, programs stemming from policy fail to offer services that would allow service recipients to pursue their objectives.

Medicaid HCBS policy is part of a broader story of disability rights progress over the last four decades, making its role as an obstacle to cross-state movement a bit of a paradox. This paradox points to the value of narrative analysis in calling attention to invisible contradictions and the need for institutional and organizational change.

The purpose of this paper is to fill important gaps by using the belongingness theory and examining the effects of individual-level workplace ostracism on members’ voice behavior and the effects of group-level workplace ostracism.

The authors used samples of 77 groups from a high-technological company.

Individual-level workplace ostracism is detrimental to group members’ promotive and prohibitive voice behavior, and group members’ belongingness mediates such effect; and group-level workplace ostracism is negatively related to group cohesion. The influence of group members’ perception of ostracism on their voice behavior is contingent on overall level of ostracism.

Despite of a growing body of studies on workplace ostracism “the extent to which an individual perceives that he or she is ignored or excluded by others at workplace”, the effects of workplace ostracism on individual’s voice behavior in group settings have received scant attention.

The last decade of the prior millennium witnessed many revolutionary, not evolutionary, changes in the way business is done and information is exchanged globally. The Internet has changed and speeded up the ways we exchange and use information and the time necessary for doing so. This revolution has the potential to reshape the world we live in; to draw us closer together in a global community; and to allow businesses to sell products and services and to raise capital on a global basis simultaneously. Instantaneous satellite transmission of television news coverage informs us of critical events, including financial developments, in distant lands. E‐mail allows us to establish business and personal relationships and communicate ideas rapidly with foreign individuals. And we have also seen increased interest among businessmen and others in investing capital in foreign nations and in the securities of companies publicly traded in foreign or international markets. The Internet allows investors to create ‘chat rooms’ to exchange information and ideas about issuers.

This study examines chronic illness, disability and social inequality within an exposure-vulnerabilities theoretical framework.

Using the National Survey of Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), a preeminent source of national behavioral health estimates of chronic medical illness, stress and disability, for selected sample years 2005–2014, we construct and analyze two foundational hypotheses underlying the exposure-vulnerabilities model: (1) greater exposure to stressors (i.e., chronic medical illness) among racial/ethnic minority populations yields higher levels of serious psychological distress, which in turn increases the likelihood of medical disability; (2) greater vulnerability among minority populations to stressors such as chronic medical illness exacerbates the impact of these conditions on mental health as well as the impact of mental health on medical disability.

Results of our analyses provided mixed support for the vulnerability (moderator) hypothesis, but not for the exposure (mediation) hypothesis. In the exposure models, while Blacks were more likely than Whites to have a long-term disability, the pathway to disability through chronic illness and serious psychological distress did not emerge. Rather, Whites were more likely than Blacks and Latinx to have a chronic illness and to have experienced severe psychological distress (both of which themselves were related to disability). In the vulnerability models, both Blacks and Latinx with chronic medical illness were more likely than Whites to experience serious psychological distress, although Whites with serious psychological distress were more likely than these groups to have a long-term disability.

Several possibilities for understanding the failure to uncover an exposure dynamic in the model turn on the potential intersectional effects of age and gender, as well as several other covariates that seem to confound the linkages in the model (e.g., issues of stigma, social support, education).

This study (1) extends the racial/ethnic disparities in exposure-vulnerability framework by including factors measuring chronic medical illness and disability which: (2) explicitly test exposure and vulnerability hypotheses in minority populations; (3) develop and test the causal linkages in the hypothesized processes, based on innovations in general structural equation models, and lastly; (4) use national population estimates of these conditions which are rarely, if ever, investigated in this kind of causal framework.

Digital evidence is now infused in many (or arguably most) cases of sexual assault, which has refigured investigative tools, policing strategies and sources of cynicism for those working in sex crime units. Although cynicism, both its sources and affects, is widely studied among scholars of work and policing, little is known about how police working in sex crime units experience, mitigate and express cynicism. The purpose of this paper is to fill this gap in understanding and explore the role of cynicism amongst investigators working in sex crime units.

To address this research gap, the authors conducted 70 semi-structured in-depth interviews and two focus groups with members of police services organizations across Canada working in sex crime units.

Examining sources of cynicism and emotional experiences, the authors reveal that officers in these units normalize and neutralize organizational and intra-organizational sources of cynicism, and cope with the potentially traumatizing and emotionally draining realities of undertaking this form of “dirty work.” The authors show that officer cynicism extends beyond offenders into organizational and operational aspects of their occupations and their lived experiences outside of work, which has implications for literature on police work, cynicism and digital policing.

The authors contribute to the literature on cyber policing by, first, examining sex crimes unit member’s sources of cynicism in relation to sex crimes and the digital world and, second, by exploring sources of cynicism in police organizations and other branches in the criminal justice system. The authors examine how such cynicism seeps into relationships outside of the occupation. The authors’ contribution is in showing that cynicism related to police dirty work is experienced in relation to “front” and “back” regions (Dick, 2005) but also in multiple organizational and social spheres. The authors contribute to the extant literature on dirty work insofar as it addresses the underexplored dirty work associated with policing cyber environments and the morally tainted elements of such policing tasks.