Examining impacts of technostress on the professional salesperson's behavioural performance

This paper examines the concept of technostress in the professional sales area and shows it to be a possible reason for low technology-enabled behavioural performance of professionals in the sales function. Integrating literature from sales, technostress and social cognitive theory, we examine relationships between technostress creators, role stress, technology-enabled innovation and technology-enabled performance. We hypothesize that technostress adversely affects the technology-enabled performance of the salesperson through two distinct paths, one by increasing role stress and two, by decreasing technology-enabled innovation. We further examine the role of factors that mitigate these adverse effects. We find that organizational technostress-inhibiting mechanisms negatively moderate the positive relationship between technostress creators and role stress, and technology self-efficacy dampens the negative association of technostress and technology-enabled innovation. We also find that technology-enabled innovation enhances technology-enabled performance. Our results are based on survey data collected from 237 institutional sales professionals. Theoretical contributions and practice-based implications of findings are discussed.     

An assessment of needed sales management skills

The skills required of sales managers are vitally important to the success of the firm's selling effort; however, there has not been a recent review that identifies these needed skills. Based on a survey of sales executives from 145 companies, this research develops a taxonomy of key sales management skills. The perceived importance of these skills is reported based on the level of management, gender and the performance level of the firm. In addition to identifying the relative importance of the various sales management skills, they were found to group into three conceptual dimensions relating to interpersonal, technical and strategic skills. The results also indicate that significant differences in the perceived level of skill importance exist based on level of management, years managing salespeople, gender and on three dimensions of the respondent's firm performance.     

Which influence tactics lead to sales performance? It is a matter of style

The application of influence is a key behaviour set at the heart of the sales role. But we know little about how or whether influence tactics affect salespeople's actual job performance. We extend existing research on salespeople's use of influence by: (1) showing that influence tactics can be used to predict objective sales performance (and delineating which tactics are most predictive); (2) demonstrating that the effect of tactics on performance varies across salespeople, and these patterns of influence effectiveness allow us to identify different influence ‘styles’ and (3) revealing that the influence styles our data uncover are not consistent with existing theoretical classifications of influence tactics. The article concludes with a discussion of theoretical and managerial implications, and directions for future work.     

Structuring for team success: The interactive effects of network structure and cultural diversity on team potency and performance

This longitudinal study used data from 91 self-managed teams (456 individuals, 60 nationalities) to examine the interactive effects of a team’s task (“workflow”) network structure and its cultural diversity (as indexed by nationality) on the team’s “potency” (i.e., the team’s confidence in its ability to perform) and its performance (as rated by expert judges). We found that whereas the emergence of dense task networks enhanced team potency it was the emergence of (moderately) centralized task networks that facilitated team performance. These varied structural effects, moreover, were themselves contingent on team composition: the more culturally diverse a team, the more pronounced were the positive effects of network density on team potency and the higher the level of network centralization required for optimal team performance. The success of a team appears to hinge on the interplay between network structure and team composition.     

What do we know about the effects of mental training applied to combat sports? A systematic review

ObjectivesThis study aimed to investigate the effects of mental training applied to combat sports athletes.MethodsA systematic review was conducted, following the criteria recommended by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement, from inception up to February 2021, with an electronic search in PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, PsycINFO, and SPORTDiscus databases. As eligibility criteria, this review included original studies that carried out any type of mental training, with or without a control group, acute or chronic, in combat sports athletes, of both sexes, age >16 and < 45 years old, from any competitive level, and evaluated the effect of these interventions on psychological measures. The quality assessment was conducted through the application of the Cochrane Collaboration tool.ResultsIn total, 1921 studies were found and after application of the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 21 articles were included in this review. A total of 417 subjects were investigated from the 21 studies. As results, despite the variations in the type and characteristics of the interventions, studies showed that mental training seems to improve anxiety, mood, self-confidence, emotions, cohesion, emotional balance, and relaxation, in addition to physical and athletic performance.ConclusionsThis systematic review based on the evidence from the selected studies indicates that mental training seems to be beneficial for athletes in combat modalities, while combat sports can benefit from mental training in preparation, competition, and recovery. However, the interpretation of these findings must consider that there is limited scientific production with good quality studies investigating the effects of psychological intervention protocols in athletes of combat sports in different combat modalities.Prospero register numberCRD42020169793.     

Simultaneous and alternate combinations of action-observation and motor imagery involve a common lower-level sensorimotor process

Combining the motor simulation techniques of action observation and motor imagery (AOMI) is known to enhance motor performance more than when these techniques are presented in isolation. The present study examined the involvement of lower-level sensorimotor processes for the improvement in a dart-throwing task using AOMI. Novice participants (n = 70) were assessed on their dart-throwing both before and after a six-week AOMI training intervention that was contingent upon the random allocation of groups. Participants were randomly allocated into groups involving AOMI, where they observed either a congruent action, incongruent action or fixation cross (control), while simultaneously or alternately imagining the dart-throwing task. Dart-throwing performance was significantly more improved for the simultaneous- and alternate-congruent groups compared to the simultaneous-fixation and control groups. There was no indication of improvement by any of the other groups. This improvement appeared to coincide with lower EMG activity at the agonist and antagonist muscles, which would indicate greater movement efficiency. The findings suggest that AOMI involves a common lower-level sensorimotor process, which can lead to motor facilitation or interference, dependent upon whether the simulation techniques are congruent or incongruent with each other, respectively. What's more, this feature does not appear to differ as a function of the structure of delivery (i.e., simultaneous vs. alternate).     

Effect of multiple monitoring requests on vigilance and readiness by measuring eye movement and takeover performance

Drivers do not need to supervise the L3 automated driving system but have to resume dynamic driving tasks when necessary, where the takeover request system plays a crucial role in alerting drivers to take over control. Previous studies have investigated the feasibility of the two-stage takeover system, which divides the takeover request system into monitoring requests and takeover requests. However, whether it will affect drivers’ situation awareness and takeover performance if the monitoring request is issued multiple times without the takeover request has not been fully considered. This research conducted a driving simulation study to investigate the effect of multiple monitoring requests on participants’ vigilance to monitoring requests and readiness for takeover requests by measuring their eye movement and takeover performance. Forty-two participants experienced three kinds of takeover conditions: no monitoring request, once monitoring request, and four monitoring requests. Simultaneously, the eye movement and takeover performance of participants were recorded and analyzed. Results showed that participants gained sufficient situation awareness in the monitoring request phase and showed better takeover performance in the two-stage takeover system than the single-stage takeover system. However, participants’ vigilance to the monitoring request and readiness for the takeover request decreased after experiencing multiple monitoring requests. Specifically, 62% and 59% of participants put their hands on the steering wheel during the monitoring request phase when experiencing the first monitoring request, which decreased to 35% after experiencing four monitoring requests. Moreover, after experiencing multiple monitoring requests, more participants shifted their attention to non-driving-related tasks after first observing the road and with a reduced percentage of time in the road center. These findings suggest that the monitoring request should be more reasonable to avoid reducing the vigilance and readiness of drivers to take advantage of the two-stage takeover system effectively.     

Critical reflections on second-generation mindfulness-based interventions

ObjectivesThe purpose of this paper is to provide a critical introduction on Second-Generation Mindfulness-Based Interventions (SG-MBIs) to sport and performance psychology scholars and practitioners.MethodThis essay is written as a commentary on Roychowdhury et al.’s, (2021, this issue) article in this issue. Specifically, I apply theoretical insights from Roychowdhury et al., (2021, this issue) to the practical model of SG-MBIs.ResultsI find that SG-MBIs attempt to respond to ethical concerns with the ways that mindfulness has been commodified, secularized, and universalized through appeals to cultural authenticity.DiscussionWhile acknowledging the cultural contexts from which practices like mindfulness have been taken is important, appeals to cultural authenticity often reproduce fixed and essentializing constructions of culture and are easily coopted by neoliberal multiculturalism.ConclusionAs sport and performance psychology professionals reflect on the next generation of mindfulness-based interventions, it will be important to attend to the contextual flexibility of neoliberalism to universalize and essentialize.     

员工跨界行为的收益与代价：元分析的证据

为探究员工跨界行为产生的影响、作用机制和边界条件, 通过文献检索、筛选和编码, 对50项员工跨界行为研究的52个独立样本(总样本量N = 14366)进行元分析, 结果表明: 员工跨界行为既会产生收益也需要付出代价, 收益表现为员工跨界行为提升工作满意度、组织承诺、绩效和创新, 付出的代价表现为跨界行为引发角色压力。员工跨界行为与结果变量的关系受员工类型(知识型员工-非知识型员工)和个人主义-集体主义、权力距离的调节。工作态度在员工跨界行为和绩效、创新的关系中发挥中介效应, 但在跨界行为和压力与耗竭的关系中出现了遮掩效应。本元分析为员工跨界行为提供了综合而可靠的结论, 对未来员工跨界行为的相关研究具有一定借鉴意义。     

“近朱者赤”：同事主动行为如何激发员工动机和绩效

以往有关主动性的研究通常聚焦员工本身, 忽略了团队或组织中同事会对员工行为产生影响这一重要管理实践和理论视角。为此, 本研究以社会学习理论为基础, 探讨了同事主动行为对员工自主动机和工作绩效的影响, 以及员工主动性人格的调节作用。通过多时点、上下级匹配问卷(研究1)及情景实验(研究2)两项研究, 本文发现, 同事主动行为可以激发员工的自主动机, 进而提升工作绩效; 并且, 员工主动性人格强化了同事主动行为对员工自主动机的正向作用。本研究不仅从理论上将现有关于主动行为的研究视角迁移到同事, 也为如何更好地激励员工提供了实践指导。