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This study examines the interaction between sales control systems and firm level strategic orientations and their joint effects on company performance in B2B context. Independent and joint effects of market orientation (MO), innovation orientation (IO) and sales control systems (SCS) on firm performance were analyzed.

A quantitative research methodology is adopted to compile firm-level primary data from manufacturing companies located in an organized industrial zone. Research data were collected by face-to-face surveys from 302 sales professionals. The research model and hypotheses were tested by using partial least squares (PLS) structural equation modeling (SEM) with Smart PLS 3.0.

In addition to confirming the positive effects of MO and IO on performance, data analyses revealed that SCS exert an indirect effect on company performance which is fully mediated by MO.

The research was limited to a developing country context and research data was collected from a convenient sample of B2B companies by a cross-sectional study. Cross-cultural and longitudinal studies may provide additional insights. Firm level strategic orientations and sales control systems must be examined together in an integrated way to explore their effects on company performance. The individual effects of these structures on business performance may manifest differently when they come together.

Results indicate that the sales control system setup is critical for the implementation of a market-oriented strategy. This study highlights the importance of setting a compatible sales control system to achieve organizational goals in accordance with the strategic orientations which affect the success of particular organizational strategies.

Although the current literature identifies the independent and joint effects of market orientation and innovation orientation on company performance, empirical studies probing the interaction of sales control systems with these constructs is very scarce. Understanding how sales control systems relate to strategic orientations will help design a more effective sales organization and improve company performance. This study contributes to the literature by promoting additional insights by linking sales control systems with market orientation, innovation orientation and company performance.

This research analyzes the impact of transformational leadership on task performance in sales team members, considering the mediating role of leader–member exchange (LMX), perceived organizational support and work engagement.

A structural equations model was analyzed utilizing the partial least squares (PLS-SEM) method based on data collected from a survey of 142 members and 19 leaders of sales teams in Colombian companies.

The present study establishes that social exchange variables, including perceived organizational support and LMX, mediate the relationship between transformational leadership and task performance. Nevertheless, work engagement does not demonstrate a statistically significant mediating effect.

The outcomes of this study contribute significant insights into how transformational leadership, directly and indirectly, affects task performance in an emerging economy. It specifically addresses the cultural context of Colombia, marked by a high distance to power and a perceived low aversion to uncertainty – contrary to a desired higher uncertainty avoidance.

Esta investigación analiza el impacto del liderazgo transformacional en el desempeño de tareas de los miembros de equipos de ventas, considerando el rol mediador de factores como el intercambio líder-miembro (LMX), el apoyo organizacional percibido y el engagement laboral.

A partir de una encuesta realizada a 142 miembros y 19 líderes de equipos de ventas en empresas colombianas, se analizó un Modelo de Ecuaciones Estructurales utilizando la metodología de Mínimos Cuadrados Parciales (PLS-SEM).

Se identifica el rol mediador de variables de intercambio social como el LMX y el apoyo organizacional percibido en la relación existente entre el liderazgo transformacional y el desempeño de tareas; sin embargo, no se encuentra un efecto mediador significativo del engagement laboral.

Los resultados de este estudio aportan importantes perspectivas sobre cómo el liderazgo transformacional afecta, directa e indirectamente, el desempeño en las tareas en una economía emergente. Aborda específicamente el contexto cultural de Colombia, caracterizado por una alta distancia al poder y una baja aversión a la incertidumbre percibida, en contraste con una mayor aversión a la incertidumbre deseada.

This study clarifies the mediating effects of job satisfaction and knowledge sharing on the relationship between leadership humility and salesperson creativity. It also shows how job satisfaction mediates between leadership humility and knowledge sharing.

This study sampled 380 salespeople in Japan’s financial sector to participate in a two-wave online survey. The partial least squares structural equation modeling was applied to test the research hypotheses.

The results of the partial least squares structural equation modeling showed that the serial mediating effect of leadership humility on salesperson creativity through job satisfaction and knowledge sharing was statistically significant. The supplementary analysis showed that leadership humility had a curvilinear effect on salesperson creativity.

The findings were restricted to salespeople employed in Japan’s financial sector.

Contrary to previous meta-analytic studies, the mere presence of humble leaders is insufficient to induce salesperson creativity.

This study is the first to deeply elucidate the underlying mechanism between leadership humility and salesperson creativity and examine the curvilinear relationship between leadership humility and salesperson creativity.

The purpose of this study is to identify important strategies and practices supporting inter-organizational learning (IOL) in integrated care. The two research questions ask how organizational network architectures can help involved organizations overcome the barriers of IOL in integrated care (RQ1) and what design recommendations can strengthen the processes of IOL in integrated care (RQ2).

This study applies a qualitative design to analyze an improvement initiative in a regional, integrated care service for elderly patients with multiple illnesses in Norway. An inductive thematic analysis for the triangulating of qualitative data from different sources was applied. Patterns within the data were organized into themes, categories and subcategories. No software was applied.

The identified characteristics of the organizational network architectures supporting IOL in integrated care in the case under study were: equality of the involved parties, shared goals, recognition of expertise and the abilities to coordinate, design IOL processes and make joint decisions (RQ1). The categories of practices supporting the process of IOL were: insight into complex realities, contradictions, iteration, motivation and prototypes (RQ2).

This study offers much-needed insight into a successful approach for IOL in integrated care. The results offer strategies to be considered when building organizational networks for the improvement of integrated care and relevant practices useful when designing IOL processes in such care services. We believe such knowledge has important implications for policymakers, frontline personnel, education, research and leaders.

Drawing on conservation of resources (COR) theory, this paper aims to explore the effect of perceived organizational injustice (POI) on organizational performance (OPE) indirectly through knowledge hiding (KH). Moreover, this paper examines the boundary effects of perceived organizational politics (POP) and moral disengagement (MDS).

We employed a time-lag approach to collect data from 244 employees in Pakistani private hospitals. SmartPLS v. 4.4 was run to check the outer model. For testing the moderated-mediation model as an inner model, PROCESS v.4 was applied.

POI negatively and indirectly influenced OPE through KH, whereas high levels of POP and MDS may result in a stronger POI–KH linkage.

This paper adds to the literature related to COR that has been utilized to explain employee behaviors in the hospital context, where the antecedents of OPE were primarily the subject of empirical investigation.

After completion of the case study, students will be able to appreciate the challenges in managing a pharma sales team by learning the nuances of business hygiene, learn how new managers taking over a pharma sales team analyze data of a sales territory by balancing both quantitative and qualitative factors, evaluate the challenges of performance management of sales teams and balancing the expectations of various stakeholders, understand the approach of sales and effort hygiene – correlating data points that may not be directly connected but have a dependency and learn to forecast and build a business projection

Innov-Health’s dermatology (skin and hair) division in West Bengal, an Eastern state of India, recently hired Pradeep Vir as the area business manager. Innov-Health, a leading 100-year-old global healthcare player, was headquartered in the USA, with categories spanning oncology, immunology, neurosciences, metabolic, dermatology and pain management. Its brand Acnend, an acne cream, the only product in the division, was a market leader in India. Acnend required doctors’ prescriptions to be bought and was sold by pharmacies via distributors. In India, Acnend was doing well at the end of the first quarter (January–March) of 2022 in a highly competitive product category. Vir had just joined the West Bengal territory with four major cities, each with a district manager (DM). The position had been vacant for the past three months, but the DMs had done well in their sales performance for Quarter 1. All of them had achieved their targets, so Quarter 2, when he joined, started on a high note. But Salil Govind, the regional sales manager, his boss, was very concerned that a territory that had no manager had been consistently doing so well. He was concerned that the territory had far greater potential than the Quarter 1 projections had laid out. Govind now wanted Vir to re-work the Quarter 2 projections of West Bengal on priority since April had already begun. As Vir started working on the data, he was perplexed. While at a very obvious level, all four DMs were outperforming, there were gaps in varying degrees in the effort levels of each. The cumulative key performance indicators such as inventory, call average and doctor coverage and the data essentials for business hygiene[1] were worrisome and needed to be addressed. In addition, the doctor coverage, resulting in conversion, left a lot to be desired. However, he was conscious that he was new to the organization and would have to tread carefully. He wanted to do well. Vir got down to analyzing and taking action.

This case study is suitable for use in graduate-level management programs. It can be useful in courses such as sales management, marketing strategy and marketing analytics. The case study is also well suited to introducing students to the basics of sales, sales productivity, territory management, managing a team and business forecasting. The case study provides students a step-by-step understanding of business hygiene, and how just looking at overall sales numbers may not be conclusive, but a deep dive into effort and productivity is far more useful for forecasting.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 8: Marketing.

Competitiveness is an important personality trait that has been studied in various disciplines and has been shown to predict critical work outcomes at the individual level. Despite this, the role of competitiveness in groups and teams has received scant attention amongst organizational researchers. Aiming to promote future research on the role of competitiveness as both an adaptive and maladaptive trait – particularly in the context of work – the authors review competitiveness and its effects on individual and team stress and Well-Being, giving special attention to the processes of cohesion and conflict and situational moderators. The authors illustrate a dynamic multilevel model of individual and team difference factors, competitive processes, and individual and team outcomes to highlight competitiveness as a consequential occupational stressor. Furthermore, the authors discuss the feedback loops that inform the different factors, highlight important avenues for future research, and offer practical solutions for managers to reduce unhealthy competition.

While coopetition (cooperation among competitors) has been widely researched in domestic settings, relatively less work has evaluated how small exporters engage in these business-to-business (B2B) marketing strategies. Therefore, export coopetition activities could have different performance outcomes (and boundary conditions) to these B2B marketing practices in domestic arenas. Consequently, underpinned by resource-based theory (and focusing on smaller-sized and internationalised, businesses), the purpose of this paper is to unpack the relationship between export coopetition activities and export sales performance by accounting for key quadratic and moderating effects.

Survey responses were obtained from 107 small, and export-oriented, wine producers in South Africa. After refining the measurement scales, the quantitative data passed all major assessments of reliability, validity and common method variance. Subsequently, the elements of the conceptual model were tested through a hierarchical regression analysis. Moreover, a post-hoc test was undertaken to delve deeper into the nuances of the statistical results – and offer additional insights concerning how these B2B marketing strategies operate (and manifest) in export markets.

A significant non-linear (inverted U-shaped) relationship was found between export coopetition activities and export sales performance. No support was found for the moderators, namely, export geographical scope, export intensity or the interaction between these forms of internationalisation. An interesting issue to emerge from the post-hoc test was that export geographical scope yielded a quadratic link with export sales performance, for which the export coopetition activities construct did not moderate this connection (a non-significant interaction effect). These findings offer new insights that help inform the concentration versus spreading debate related to target market strategies.

New evidence emerges on the internationalisation of the coopetition construct, regarding how smaller-sized companies collaborate with their competitors within their export markets. Likewise, stronger insights arise concerning the dark sides of export coopetition activities via circumstances where they are harmful to internationalised firms. Moreover, improved claims are made about how resource-based theory serves as a useful tool to conceptualise the nuances of export coopetition activities and how they impact export sales performance. Collectively, this investigation not only responds to calls for research to evaluate coopetition in export markets but also embraces the complexities of these B2B marketing strategies.

The digital transformation is dramatically changing the business-to-business (B2B) sales environment, challenging long-standing views regarding the critical competencies required of salespeople. This paper aims to explore the personal traits associated with sales performance in a digital selling environment.

Using template analysis, the researchers captured and coded over 21 h of in-depth, semi-structured interviews with senior sales leaders from various industry sectors, exploring their perceptions of the personal traits now required of B2B salespeople in the digital landscape.

The research identifies three high-level trait types critical to sales success within a digital selling environment: “analytical curiosity” – the natural motivation and ability to gather and synthesize sales-related knowledge, “empathetic citizenship” – the ability to establish initial rapport while building long-term trust and “disciplined drive” – the exertion of selling effort in a highly focused and methodical manner across all stages of the sales process.

The present data came from interviews with sales leaders in Canada. A more global sample may lead to additional insights. Moreover, the sample was drawn from long-cycle B2B sales environments; conclusions may differ for short-cycle or business-to-consumer markets.

This paper presents a framework for hiring and developing salespeople in the digital sales environment, identifying personal trait types that sales leaders should look for when hiring: analytical curiosity, empathetic citizenship and disciplined drive. The paper identifies how these trait types influence sales success, suggesting that sales leaders could coach and educate their teams to make the best use of them.

This paper presents a conceptual framework for hiring in the digital sales environment and introduces the trait of analytical curiosity not previously discussed in the literature.

Prior research seldom explores the different structures of marketing presence in the top management team (MPTMT) and their impact on new product performance. In this paper, we distinguish among three structures of MPTMT: (1) a dedicated MPTMT; (2) a joint marketing and sales MPTMT; and (3) a joint marketing and other operations MPTMT. We then examine how these three structures of MPTMT are related to cross-functional integration in NPD and, subsequently, new product performance.

Path analysis is used to test the model using data collected from 139 U.S. manufacturing firms. We conducted two rounds of survey data collection (with a one-year gap) to assess the potential effect of common method variance.

The results show that, compared with no MPTMT, all MPTMT structures positively affect cross-functional integration in NPD, which, in turn, enhances new product performance. However, joint MPTMT structures have a greater impact than a dedicated MPTMT. Our moderation analysis also reveals that as TMT heterogeneity increases, the effect of dedicated MPTMT diminishes, but the effects of the other two joint structures remain positive and stable.

The model could include alternative mediating organizational processes and performance outcomes.

The findings provide managers with insight on how to configure and leverage marketing influence in the upper echelons in both SMEs and large firms.

The findings of this study highlight the importance of delineating MPTMT structures, understanding how they create value, and specifying their boundary conditions.