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This paper aims to show how managers model culture for employees to promote corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices.

The proposal begins by highlighting the importance of culture for CSR implementation and then explains the impact of culture on employees.

Currently, many companies carry out activities under the CSR umbrella, but they may do so without considering whether their company’s context is ideal for such initiatives. They may also not consider the types of employees composing the workforce or their disposition toward CSR. In these circumstances, organizations may miss out on the added value of CSR practices.

The important influence of CSR practices on employees’ attitudes and behaviors at work requires organizations to implement these types of actions. Therefore, the contextual factors that are most likely to aid in developing and maintaining these practices must be acknowledged. This paper seeks to offer a new perspective to managers and human resource managers regarding the implementation of CSR activities.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the nature and the organizational role of salespeople and, in particular, underscore the change in salespeople’s management in the current business context.

The paper briefly explains the role of salespeople in an organization and how salespeople are gaining prominence in customer management. From this point of view, the paper suggests steps to achieve the sale.

It is evident that salespeople must change the way they achieve sales goals within the organization. Currently, they need to adopt a more customer-centric approach, and the paper suggests how to do this.

The paper aims to provide key points for understanding and managing the sales force within the organization. Findings are relevant for those who must manage these workers or those who simply want to know more about the characteristics of the sales force.

The paper highlights the importance of salespeople in organizations and describes how they should be managed. In addition, in some ways, the paper helps improve readers’ perception of the sales position.

The purpose of this study is understanding how companies can improve sales force performance is a key issue. Despite this, the study of the impact that corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices might have on salespeople’s performance has been neglected in the sales literature.

Using data provided by 176 salesperson–supervisor dyads and through structural equation modeling and conditional process analysis, empirical evidence confirms the hypotheses.

Certainly, the findings confirm that salespeople’s performance is influenced by their CSR perception, not directly but through their pride and organizational commitment. Furthermore, the results improve when considering the intervention of a responsible leader. The paper also identifies the management implications and makes some recommendations for upcoming studies.

This paper contributes to fill this gap by examining the effect of salespeople’s CSR perception on their job performance through organizational pride and organizational commitment. Additionally, it is suggested that the exercise of responsible leadership by the supervisor strengthens the previous indirect relationship, moderating the influence of salesperson’s organizational pride on their commitment.

This study's main objective is to analyse the role of the consumer's ethnocentrism as a potential segmentation basis and to detect product origin-sensitive groups. The relationship between the consumer's regional ethnocentrism, local and regional identity and corresponding valuation and purchase of food products from a region is also examined.

The responses of 358 consumers residing in two Spanish regions are analysed by means of a mediation analysis and a cluster analysis.

The results suggest the convenience of considering ethnocentric consumer tendencies, also at the regional level, when studying attitudes, valuation, information search and effective purchase of foods of diverse categories and origins.

The main contributions of this work derive from the assessment of consumer ethnocentrism at a subnational level (which is much less present in the literature) and the evidence of its usefulness for segmenting the market and detecting groups of origin-sensitive consumers, which can be useful to companies that produce and market food products in different regions.

This article aims to provide knowledge on the antecedents and consequences of individual proactive behaviour. The proposed research model includes two unexplored antecedents (experienced meaningfulness of work and industry competitive intensity) and one consequence (individual proficiency).

Data were collected from 297 salespeople working at 105 enterprises in a range of industries. Data analysis was performed by applying confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling.

The results show (1) a positive association between industry competitive intensity and salespeople’s experienced meaningfulness of work and their proactivity at work; (2) a positive relationship between salespeople’s proactive behaviour and their individual proficiency and (3) that salespeople’s proactivity mediates the relation between industry competitive intensity and the experienced meaningfulness of work and individual proficiency.

The results suggest that managers could stimulate proactive behaviour by increasing the experienced meaningfulness of work. They also indicate that it is not only individual factors that are relevant in stimulating proactive behaviour at work, as contextual factors (particularly external ones) can also influence individual decisions with regard to engaging or not in proactive behaviour. Our findings regarding the positive relationship between proactivity and proficiency would help managers to encourage salespeople’s proactive behaviour.

Although trust is considered a dyadic and bidirectional phenomenon, the majority of trust research has not considered it as such. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to closing this research gap by analyzing the influence of supervisor’s propensity to trust on salesperson trust in supervisor, considering the mediating role of servant leadership (SL). Additionally, the authors delve into the relationship between trust in supervisor and salesperson turnover by examining the moderating effect of perceived ethical climate (EC).

Information was provided by 145 salesperson–supervisor dyads from 145 companies across various industries. SEM and PROCESS procedures were used to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results indicate that a supervisor’s disposition to trust is positively related to employee trust in the leader via its impact on perceived SL behaviors. However and contrary to the expectations, supervisor’s propensity to trust is found to have a direct negative impact on trust in the supervisor, suggesting the presence of additional mediating variables. Finally, the trust dimension of EC moderates the negative influence of trust on salesperson turnover intentions.

The findings highlight the practical benefits of fostering trust in the workplace and confirm the significant role of trust in the identification of servant leaders. In addition, the study shows that a supervisor’s disposition to trust can have a relevant effect on salesperson’s turnover intentions. Moreover, the results demonstrate the beneficial role of an ethical work climate.

This study offers insight into how to improve the retention of efficient employees and the role of trust, analyzed at a dyadic level, in this process. In addition, the findings suggest why servant leaders adopt this leadership style.

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether employee’s perceived organizational support and organizational identification (OID) have a mediating role in the relationship between supervisor’s servant leadership and employee’s organization member performance.

The sample used in this study consists of 181 salespeople and 83 sales managers. The model entails a cross-level mediation process that was tested using dyadic data and multilevel structural equation modeling.

Findings show that sales managers’ servant leadership is directly and positively related to salespeople’s organization member performance. In addition, sales managers’ servant leadership is indirectly related to salespeople’s organization member performance through the salespeople’s perceived organizational support – salespeople’s OID chain.

In order to increase employee’s organizational member performance, employees with a “we” mentality and who feel the need to serve should be selected for and promoted to supervisors. To enhance employees’ perceived organizational support and OID is also important, as these factors will encourage employees to behave in the best interest of the organization.

This is the first study to provide evidence for the relationship between servant leadership and organization member performance, as well as the mediating roles of employee’s perceived organizational support and OID on this relationship.

Consumer ethnocentrism and consumer animosity provide marketing management with two useful concepts to understand the reasons behind consumers’ purchase decisions concerning domestic vs imported products. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the antecedents and consequences of animosity and ethnocentrism within a single model, and respondents’ evaluations of a specific product category are solicited.

The study is conducted within an ideal context for the study of consumer animosity: data were collected in Belgrade shortly after the US-led NATO bombings of 1999. The surveys were carried out in person at the interviewees’ home. The sample was part of a regular omnibus panel composed of 270 adult respondents, of which 92.2 percent agreed to participate.

The findings indicate that animosity and consumer ethnocentrism are distinct constructs. Also consistent with previous research, results obtained confirm that each construct has unique antecedents and consequences.

Once consumer animosity and ethnocentrism levels have been measured, managers can then make decisions about whether to promote their country of origin or, alternatively, create more powerful local connections for their products. Thus, the consideration of animosity and ethnocentrism can be part of a firm’s international strategies.

Previous studies on consumer animosity have demonstrated through structural equation modeling that the two constructs are distinct and have distinct antecedents, but research has not examined both the antecedents and the consequences of animosity and ethnocentrism in the same study. Thus, this study investigates the antecedents and consequences of animosity and ethnocentrism within a single model.

Despite the recognition that the subordinate's influence is a particularly noteworthy feature of the social context with considerable potential to affect the performance evaluation process, there are almost no studies that consider this influence in a selling context. Attempting to contribute to address these needs, the model presented here depicts a number of social and situational factors influencing supervisor's rating of salesperson's performance, primarily operating through affective processes.

Data were collected from 122 salespeople and their immediate managers from 35 firms pertaining to nine different industries.

SEM results indicated that supervisor‐focused impression management was positively related to the supervisor's liking of the salesperson. Consistent as well with prior research is the positive influence of supervisor's affect towards salesperson on the supervisor's ratings of sales performance, both directly and indirectly, through the effect on salesperson's perceived interpersonal skills. Finally, a salesperson's physical attractiveness demonstrated significant positive effects on performance ratings, through the influence on supervisor's liking and salesperson's interpersonal skills.

These results have important managerial implications: sales managers should be aware that salespeople might be using impression management tactics and that the use of these behaviours might influence the way that they evaluate their employee's performance. Managers should also remain vigilant to the potential bias based on physical appearance in hiring and supervising salespeople.

This study contributes to the knowledge of the social and affective variables that influence the sales performance appraisal process, an area of research that is almost unexplored.

Although servant leadership (SL) improves the overall effectiveness of individuals and teams, it remains understudied. The aim of this paper is to provide insight into the mediating mechanisms through which perceived SL affects salespersons’ proactive and adaptive behaviors.

Data were gathered from 145 industrial salespeople and their supervisors across a variety of businesses and sectors in Spain.

SL enhances salespeople’s adaptivity and proactivity by positively affecting their self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation. Furthermore, SL directly shapes the development of adaptive behaviors among salespeople, although this direct influence is not significant when considering proactivity. Additionally, the use of outcome-based control mechanisms enhances the positive effects of SL on salespeople’s intrinsic motivation.

The results demonstrate that sales managers can promote more proactive and adaptive behaviors among sales staff by recognizing the importance of service and their moral responsibilities to the success of their subordinates.

Cognitive evaluation theory was used to examine the direct and indirect effects of perceived SL on two emergent change-oriented behaviors (adaptivity and proactivity) using a matched sample of industrial salespeople from a variety of industries, thus providing a basis for the generalization of results. Moreover, in analyzing the moderating effects of outcome control, the conditions under which SL is more or less effective were examined.