افزایش روحیه نیروی فروش در بازارهای پویا و پیچیده: نقش منابع شغلی Boosting sales force morale in highly dynamic, complex markets: The role of job resources

1. Introduction Improving sales force morale is widely regarded among practitioners as a valuable strategy that can significantly enhance key outcomes such as job performance and turnover (Martin, 2015). Supernormal turnover at companies such as Groupon, for example, has been attributed to low levels of salespeople’s morale (Ovide, 2012). Not surprisingly, therefore, proactive companies, such as John Deere, are investing substantial resources to systematically learn about, measure, and manage employee morale (Power, 2016). Despite this level of practitioners’ interest, scholars have not demonstrated an equal amount of attention in the notion of sales force morale. As shown in Table 1, the topic of sales force morale has been the subject of very limited research in the extant marketing literature. As such, two important research gaps remain. First, the concept of sales force morale has not been the direct focus of much research in the extant marketing literature, with only tangential reference to the concept and without providing a clear definition or how it differs from other constructs, which seem to be overshadowing the concept of sales force morale (see Table 1). For instance, morale has been equated to and used interchangeably with the constructs of motivation (Cotham III, 1968), general feeling states and attitudes (Mantel, 2005), or satisfaction (Churchill, Ford, & Walker, 1976). Given this lack of attention, prior research offers little specific guidance concerning ways managers can employ to manage sales force morale. Second, although prior research on morale outside marketing has provided useful insights on what morale is in a general employee setting (e.g., Chang, Rosen, & Levy, 2009; Subramony, Krause, Norton, & Burns, 2008), at least two realities of the modern sales position require attention to how morale manifests and functions as well as to what are its antecedents, boundary conditions, and consequences in a sales force context. First, many salespeople work in physical, social, and psychological isolation from the firm for which they work (Dubinsky, Howell, Ingram, & Bellenger, 1986; Ingram, LaForge, Locander, MacKenzie, & Podsakoff, 2005) thereby making activity less visible to management. Reduced proximity to management is further amplified today due to many firms’ initiatives for salespeople to work in “virtual offices” where salespeople work from remote locations with fewer chances for interaction with their supervisors (Mulki & Jaramillo, 2011). Isolation from management renders salespeople less readily susceptible to leadership, motivation, and coaching interventions that may result from managersalesperson interactions. Fewer outlets of visibility and management intervention provide greater occasion for salespeople to feel isolated, which can lead to decreased levels of job satisfaction and organizational commitment (Mulki, Locander, Marshall, Harris, & Hensel, 2008). Second, there is universal consensus among sales academics and practitioners that the sales job is becoming increasingly complex and dynamic (Jones, Brown, Zoltners, & Weitz, 2005; Plouffe, Bolander, Cote, & Hochstein, 2016; Schmitz & Ganesan, 2014). Powerful forces stemming from evolutions in technology, customer demands, and new forms of competition all create a new “culture” that requires salespeople to adapt quickly and effectively to the velocity with which companies implement new customer strategies, launch new products, and redefine their selling models.