Learning and Performance Orientation of Salespeople: The Role of Supervisors

Abstract

The recent work of Sujan, Weitz, and Kumar (1994) brings into sharp focus two distinct goal orientations of salespeople: learning and performance. In this article, the authors make two primary contributions to this emerging topic in salesforce literature: (1) They develop and examine novel propositions that shed light on how supervisors influence the goal orientations of salespeople, and (2) They examine whether supervisors’ influence on their salespeople's orientations is moderated by salesperson experience. The article's hypotheses are tested using data from salespeople in two Fortune 500 companies. The results support several of the a priori hypotheses and suggest that supervisory behaviors (as perceived by salespeople) have a significant influence on salespeople's learning and performance orientations. Furthermore, the authors obtain some support for the hypothesized moderating effect of salesperson experience.

Learning under supervision: an experimental study

“…In our experiments, we do not have experts. Finally, our work augments past research on supervisor-worker relationships and appraisal within an organizational setting (Lounamaa and March 1987;Prendergast 1993;Duarte et al, 1993Duarte et al, , 1994Athey et al 2000) and in particular, to the research in marketing that has considered the relationship between sales personnel and their supervisors (John and Weitz 1989;Jaworksi and Kohli 1991;Oliver and Anderson 1994;Kohli et al 1998). Typically field settings have been used to investigate the effect of supervisor-worker relationship on several dependent variables such as job satisfaction and favoritism within an organization.…”

“…The Principal-Agent theory, while relevant for some contracts in the workplace, fails to encompass many of the relationships that can exist between a worker and his supervisor 1 (Perrow 1986;Eisenhardt 1989;Sujan et al 1994;Kohli et al 1998). Many times, the incentives of the worker and the supervisor are somewhat aligned and the situation is akin to a team relationship (Radner and Marschak 1972;Cooper and Kagel 2005;Kocher and Sutter 2005;Cox and Hayne 2006).…”

Discriminant validity testing in marketing: an analysis, causes for concern, and proposed remedies

“…Although Harris and Goode (2004) note that the constrained phi approach is a Bmore robust^discrim-inant validity test than Campbell and Fiske's (1959) MTMM method, every other reference to it casts doubt on its relative stringency. Various authors in the marketing literature claim that other discriminant validity tests are Bstronger^(e.g., Lytle, Hom, and Mokwa 1998;Rich 1997;Spreng, Mackenzie, and Olshavsky 1996), more Bstringent^(e.g., Batra and Sinha 2000;Cannon and Homburg 2001;Frambach, Prabhu, and Verhallen 2003;Kohli, Shervani, and Challagalla 1998;Jap 2001;Yilmaz and Hunt 2001), and more Brigorous ( Burton et al 1998;Low and Mohr 2001) than the constrained phi approach. However, there is no empirical evidence to date that supports these claims, which is a gap we hope to address with the current study.…”

Marketing and business performance

“…Human resources are in many ways one of the most critical inputs to a firm's marketing capabilities. For example, there is a large amount of evidence in the marketing literature concerning the role of the knowledge and skills of a firm's sales personnel in the firm's selling effectiveness (e.g., Kohli et al 1998;Szymanski 1988).…”