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

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Abstract

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.

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Notes

  1. Although some activity-based tasks (e.g., entering call data into a CRM system) can be considered by salespeople as time consuming and even counterproductive, activity control nonetheless prescribes a combination of instrumental behavior-based requirements (e.g., selling a new product to a predetermined client list) that challenge salespeople in terms of cognitive demands, workload, and time pressure. We thank an anonymous reviewer for making this observation.

  2. We do not claim that adaptive selling behavior and selling effort have been the only selling behaviors addressed in the sales literature; instead, we consider these two types of selling behaviors because they represent levels of salespeople’s investment in the selling process that have been frequently investigated by sales researchers.

  3. Because multiple salespeople in the same company may have provided data, responses from the salespeople working for the same company may not be independent, which can affect the results derived from the PLS structural equation model. To test the extent to which this clustering effect may be present, we followed Wieseke et al. (2012) by calculating intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) and design effects by multiplying the ICC by (average cluster size −1) and adding 1. Obtained design effects range from 1.02 to 1.37, which are all well below 2, suggesting bias due to clustering can be considered negligible (Wieseke et al. 2012).

  4. Per reviewers’ suggestion, we also tested the three-way 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) using the two-step latent score construction procedure in PLS (Ahearne et al. 2010b; Chin et al. 2003). None of the results were significant, and the inclusion of the three-way interactive effects did not change the significance of other results. Therefore, in the interest of parsimony we do not include the three-way interaction term in the model.

  5. We thank an anonymous reviewer for this insight.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Business, Clarkson University, 362 New Snell Hall, Potsdam, NY, 13699-5765, USA

    C. Fred Miao

  2. Michael F. Price College of Business, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, 73019-4007, USA

    Kenneth R. Evans

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  1. C. Fred Miao
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Correspondence to C. Fred Miao.

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Table 4 Multi-item scales
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Miao, C.F., Evans, K.R. The interactive effects of sales control systems on salesperson performance: a job demands–resources perspective. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. 41, 73–90 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-012-0315-4

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