Supervisory Orientations and Salesperson Work Outcomes: The Moderating Effect of Salesperson Location |
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| Authors: | Goutam Challagalla Tasadduq Shervani George Huber |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Goutam N. Challagalla (Ph.D. University of Texas at Austin) is Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His research has been published in Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Marketing, International Journal of Research in Marketing, and Journal of Business Research. His research focuses on supervisory control systems and supervisory feedback.;2. Tasadduq A. Shervani (Ph.D. University of Southern California) is an independent consultant. His research has been published in Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Business Horizons, and Journal of Business Research. His research interests are in supervisory control systems and marketing's effect on shareholder value.;3. George P. Huber (Ph.D. Purdue University) is the Charles and Elizabeth Prothro Regents Chair in Business Administration and the Associate Dean for Research of the Graduate School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. His current research focuses on organizational change, organizational design, and organizational decision making. He has published numerous articles, including the Best Article of the Year in the Academy of Management Journal for 1993. He has co-edited two books, Organizational Change and Redesign: Ideas and Insights for Improving Performance and Longitudinal Field Research Methods: Studying Processes of Organizational Change. |
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| Abstract: | Although a growing number of companies have salespeople stationed at a site other than their supervisors' (i.e., are remotely located), relatively little attention has been paid in the literature to the differences between managing co-and remote located salespeople. Accordingly, we test the moderating effect of salesperson location on the relationships between three supervisory orientations—output, activity, and capability—and salesperson satisfaction with supervisor and performance.The results show that salesperson location moderates the relationship between supervisory activity orientation and satisfaction such that activity orientation has a positive effect on the satisfaction of remote located salespeople, but a negative effect on the satisfaction of co-located salespeople. We find that end-results orientation is positively related to the satisfaction of co-located salespeople but not of remote located salespeople. Finally, supervisory capability orientation is positively linked to the performance of co-located salespeople but not of remote located salespeople. The results provide guidance for sales managers about how to structure their interactions with remote and proximally close salespeople. |
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