Social media have become ubiquitous in many commerce circles and a global phenomenon the past several years. According to the Nielsen Company (2010), social media users worldwide grew nearly 30 percent in 2010, from 244 million to nearly 315 million users. Research from Gartner's Consumer Technology and Markets group forecasted that global spending on social media would total $14.9 billion in 2012 (Gupta 2011). Social media, such as Twitter, have enabled customers to express their feelings regarding a product or service they have purchased. With this feedback, businesses can improve decisions on how to serve clients and create more informed solutions, thus increasing customer loyalty (Myron 2010). However, social media, also known as "social CRM" (customer relationship management), are still working their way into business-to-business (B2B) sales (Lager 2009). Results by ES Research Group (2009) show that only a small percentage of sales professionals use social media tools in their sales process. current challenGeS and ObStacleS fOr buSineSS-tO-buSineSS SaleS

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Documenting student participation is not an easy task, for the professor or the student. The purpose of this article is to (1) offer an approach for getting students to take responsibility for documenting their level of course participation and (2) explore the active learning framework to teaching that might best support this approach to participation documentation. Student examples are offered as an illustration of what can transpire when students are required to be the center of their learning and must document their own participation in a course. The assignment of having the students document their own learning behavior often meets with resistance and bewilderment from students. Thus, common failures and student perceptions are also highlighted.

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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how national cultural values affect sales collaboration directly and how it interacts with the firm's reward structure. The results are linked with firm performance. Design/methodology/approach – The conceptual framework is tested on a large sample of sales organizations across 26 countries. Due to the nested nature of the data, hierarchical linear modeling is used to test the hypothesized framework. Findings – Sales collaboration is positively related to firm performance, while individualism and masculinity are negatively related to sales collaboration. Rewards alignment leads to greater sales collaboration and is particularly important in highly individualistic and masculine societies. Practical implications – The study identifies rewards alignment as an actionable management tool to foster greater sales collaboration and, in turn, enhanced firm performance. The study suggests that this is particularly important in cultures associated with high individualism and masculinity. These two values can hinder sales collaboration within the firm, but firm practices (rewards alignment) can counter societal tendencies. Originality/value – The effects of cultural values have been neglected in prior research on sales collaboration and firm performance. The findings in this study suggest that culture is important and, at times, it can be beneficial for the organizational culture to counter the dominant national cultural values.