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Reports a study of sales management in UK companies, which explores the relationship between behaviour‐based control systems and outcome‐based control systems. Although conventional theory has suggested that behaviour performance and outcome performance result from different stimuli, we find that behaviour‐based control is positively associated with both behaviour performance and outcome performance. We find also that organizational commitment and sales territory design are significantly related to salesforce performance. This suggests a number of important avenues for improving salesforce performance. These findings and the growing emphasis on building long‐term, collaborative buyer‐seller relationships favour the use of behaviour‐based control systems in many sales management situations, and suggest a new agenda for management attention in improving salesforce effectiveness.

The purpose of this paper is to extend the previous regulatory focus and sales force control literature suggesting that organizational control system not only moderates but also mediates the interactive effect of the assessment × locomotion on salesperson ambidextrous behavior. Organizational control system, which has behavior and outcome dimensions, moderates the effects of employee regulatory focus on their ambidextrous behavior, sales performance, and satisfaction.

The authors conducted a survey with 163 bank frontline employees (FLEs) who sell financial products to final consumers. Each respondent was approached by a professional interviewer who presented the questionnaire and collected the answers. These respondents are FLEs, who are the ones that sell financial services and are responsible for post-sales services, such as answering customer questions and account problems. In the sample, FLEs are the primary source of revenue generation and services activities (ambidextrous features) in banking sector, similar to Bailey et al. (2016).

First, the moderating and mediation analysis showed that the interactive effect of both regulatory focus, locomotion and assessment, predicts FLE ambidextrous behavior. Second, this interaction effect suffers a three-way interaction under organizational control system. Third, organizational control system also moderates the impact of ambidextrous behavior on performance, such that outcome-based control system amplifies the relationship. Fourth, the authors found a conditional indirect effect, in such ambidextrous behavior, mediates the indirect effect of control system on sales performance, generating stronger (vs weaker) results under an outcome-based control system (vs behavior-based control system).

Since this study adopts the cross-sectional research design, the authors could not empirically demonstrate the causality of the relationships among constructs. The authors also analyzed the organizational control system from the FLEs perspective and not from the supervisors/managers perspective, who daily control employees activities.

The authors propose a conditioning indirect mediating impact of control system on performance and consumer satisfaction through ambidextrous behavior and explore the regulatory focus-ambidexterity-performance moderating chain, theorizing that this sequence depends on the level of control system.

The effective management of sales organizations is important to managers of international marketing operations spanning multiple countries, but also to managers of local operations who may question the validity of many of the prescriptions of US‐based research. Studies sales management control in companies in Austria and the UK to contribute a European perspective on behaviour‐based control compared to outcome‐based control. Focuses on the pivotal role of the field sales manager compared to prior research at the salesperson and chief sales executive levels. Confirms the robustness of the behaviour‐based control in these international contexts, and also contributes a number of new insights to the general sales management control research literature. Identifies a number of important research directions in this important area, as well as implications for managers of international selling organizations.

This study aims to investigate the direct effect of the behavior-based sales control system on job outcomes: salesperson’s performance and turnover intentions. The current study also intends to integrate these two streams by conceptualizing work engagement as a mediating variable between behavior-based sales control systems and salespersons’ job outcomes in the pharmaceutical sales context.

Data was collected through multi-stage stratified random sampling from a sample of 619 salespersons working in 20 pharmaceutical firms (multinational and national) through self-administered questionnaires.

The structural equation model yielded results indicating that the behavior-based sales control system was positively related to salespersons’ work engagement and negatively to turnover intentions while the relationship between the behavior-based sales control system and salespersons’ job outcomes was mediated by work engagement.

Two relatively separate lines of investigation have appeared in academic literature. The first line centered on sales force control systems and salespersons’ related consequences, whereas the second line of investigation emphasizes work engagement and its consequences. Although both lines are important, a diminutive research effort has been made to join these two different lines of investigation in sales management, specifically, in the pharmaceutical context. Focusing on this, the current research explores the role of an unexplored construct of work engagement in a pharmaceutical sales context. Second, it addresses the need to identify additional mediating variables to clarify the inconsistent relationship between sales control systems and job outcomes, such as job performance and turnover intentions.

The purpose of this research is to study the relationship between the HR control system and organizational results, examining the moderating effect of uncertainty and HR risk behavior.

The study analyzes the relationship between HR control systems and organizational results introducing two major moderating variables as, uncertainty and risk behavior. The data used for this study comes from questionnaire responses by sales and human resource managers of 108 Spanish firms.

The empirical results show that these moderating variables have an influence on the success of the control system, but it can be stated that the control system has an independent impact on the organizational and sales force performance.

Small sample size and cross sectional study, and the use of subjective measures of company and HR performance are the main limitations of the work.

To make correct decisions about HR control systems, managers should assess their environment and the composition of the workforce. There is not a control system that is good for all situations.

An analysis was made of an important non‐executive employee group, as the sales force is, and addressed the important issue of control and performance while the literature is focused on management control systems. The study does not limit the performance measures only to company variables, displaying customer satisfaction and human resource performance factors.

This study concerns an on-line path planning technique for a behaviour-based wheeled mobile robot local navigation in an unknown environment with hurdles, using the feedforward back-propagation neural network sensor-actuator control technique. The purpose of this study is to find the non-collision path for the mobile robot moving towards the goal in a cluttered environment.

Neural network architecture input layers are the different hurdle distance information, which are acquired by an array of equipped sensors, and the output layer is the turning angle (motor control). In this way, the mobile robot is effectively being trained to move autonomously in the environment.

Computer simulation and real-time experimental results show that the proposed neural network controller can improve navigation performance in cluttered and unknown environments.

The proposed neural network controller gives better results (in terms of path length) as compared to previously developed models, which verifies the effectiveness of the proposed architecture.

Organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) is discretionary employee behaviour that promotes organizational effectiveness, and has become recognized as an issue of potentially substantial importance in the management of sales operations. Identifies sales management control strategy as an important antecedent to salesperson OCB, which has been neglected in prior OCB research. Uncovers an important gender dimension in the display of OCB by salespeople, not previously investigated, and identifies an important relationship between sales manager gender and the OCB displayed by a sales unit or team, which is associated with the effectiveness of the sales unit. The findings have a number of important implications for managers concerned with enhancing sales organization effectiveness, as well as identifying a number of promising research directions.

The purpose of this study is twofold: to analyze sales managers’ person-focused and process-focused supervisory feedback as a potential goal-orientation antecedent, and to examine the relationship between different types of sales personnel goal orientations and two aspects of job performance: behavior-based and outcome-based. Based on previous sales motivation research, the authors look at the antecedents and outcomes of sales representatives’ goal orientation.

A cross-sectional survey design was used with a sample consisting of 326 pairs of sales reps and their supervisors. Average sales position tenure was 5.30 years.

Sales representatives’ performance-prove goal orientation (PPGO) can be triggered by positive person-focused feedback from their managers, and performance-avoid goal orientation (PAGO) can be triggered by negative person-focused feedback. A learning goal orientation (LGO) can be triggered by positive process-focused feedback. The authors also found that when job performance is broken down into outcome-based and behavior-based components, the process by which goal orientation influences performance is more easily determined. PPGO sales reps in the sample clearly focused more on outcome-based performance, while PAGO sales reps focused on behavior-based performance. LGO was only associated with behavior-based performance among the respondents, meaning that it cannot be used as a predictor of outcome-based performance.

First, a cross-sectional design may not be the best method for judging variable directions of causality. A longitudinal method is recommended for more detailed research. Second, the variance the authors noted in the three goal orientations may be due to impression management. Previous researchers have not addressed response bias regarding goal orientation; future researchers may want to add social desire response items to control for response bias from impression management.

The findings can help sales managers understand how their feedback styles can result in different types of goal orientation and different effort allocation in their sales staff. Managers interested in developing PPGO sales reps should offer more whole-person praise. Since negative person-focused feedback can trigger more conservative behaviors, they should use other approaches to criticizing their employees. If their goal is to promote individual learning in sales personnel, they will want to give process-focused feedback, either positive or negative.

This study contributes to the literature on the external influences of goal orientation, especially the effects of social (rather than institutional) factors in manager feedback on goal orientations among their sales staffs. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first attempt to study relationships between three types of goal orientations and various performance dimensions. The data clarify the links between two types of performance (outcome- and behavior-based) and three types of goal orientations (PPGO, PAGO and LGO).

Previous studies on international competitive strategies identify a number of loosely defined strategy types and suggest that the choice among them is based on their relative productive efficiency (i.e. ability to exploit such factors as economies of scale, economies of scope, and location economies). Our analysis highlights the additional role of motivational efficiency. We propose that the proportion of available productive efficiency that is actually realized under each strategy depends on the motivational efficiency of the best possible incentive system for implementing the strategy. Our conceptual framework allows the identification of precise theoretical relationships for empirical measurement and testing.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of organizational controls, both formal and informal, over the goal orientations of frontline employees. The goal orientations of employees, namely, in frontline settings, have been associated with a number of positive outcomes for organizations. Not surprisingly, past research has identified several personal characteristics with an influence on goal orientations. However, the contextual variables that influence employees’ goal orientations remain unspecified.

The authors distributed approximately 1,350 questionnaires through the frontline employees of a Brazilian bank and obtained 296 usable responses. The questionnaire relies on previously validated scales. The final confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) obtained a good fit and provided evidence of scale validity.

Overall, our results suggest that both formal and informal control mechanisms play a significant role explaining employees’ goal orientation. However, informal control mechanisms were found to play a more significant role explaining employees’ goal orientation.

This paper relies on employees from a single organization. In addition, it has a cross-sectional nature. The procedural and statistical remedies employed in this study suggest that method variance is not a concern.

The results show that managers may resort to control mechanisms to influence the goal orientations of frontline service employees in a manner that is consistent with organizational objectives.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that examines the impact of control mechanisms on employees’ goal orientation.