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Seeing past research, sales managers’ encouragement of their salespeople, tailored to the demands of value-creating sales, should constitute a key success factor for implementing value-centered business models. But prior research is largely silent on sales managers’ encouragement behavior for adopting value-centered business models regarding specific sales manager encouragement behaviors. Hence, this paper aims to examine the moderating effect of in-role and extra-role encouragement by sales managers in value-centered business models on financial firm performance.

The research model was tested empirically on a sample of key informants from 209 firms working in (sales) management positions using regression analysis.

The findings suggest that in-role encouragement behavior is more effective to achieve financial firm performance in value-centered business models. Sales managers should use in-role encouragement to provide their salespeople with a clear structure as a framework for their tasks and work environment and a strategic alignment along the sales organization.

First, while the study included a variety of industries, it only covered countries from the Dach region (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland), which could limit the generalizability of the findings. To validate the results in additional countries, future research could replicate the research in a cross-country study to test whether the effects differ between countries. Second, the study surveys one key informant per firm on a firm-level leadership tendency. Although leadership culture may promote similar leadership styles or behaviors within one firm, individual leadership behaviors may still vary. Future research should validate the findings using individual sales managers data.

Firm managers must encourage sales managers in value-centered business models to engage in in-role encouragement and avoid extra-role encouragement and thus intensify their micromanagement. Micromanaging the salesforce comprises extensive guidance regarding their expectations and execution toward their salespeople’s work-related tasks and their way of thinking. Furthermore, firms must ask themselves whether their sales managers are capable of micromanaging at all and whether they have the capacity to do so. If not, they must create the appropriate capacities for this. Supplementary, firms should offer regular training for managers on the application of in-role encouragement.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study combining the two rather separately considered research streams of encouragement behavior and value-centered business models regarding the effects on firm performance outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is first, to test the validity of a new scale measuring the construct of meaning‐making, defined as the ability to integrate challenging or ambiguous situations into a framework of personal meaning using conscious, value‐based reflection. Second, to explore whether meaning‐making is distinct from other personal resources (self‐efficacy, optimism, mastery, meaning in life), and coping (positive reinterpretation, acceptance). Third, to explore whether meaning‐making facilitates work engagement, willingness to change, and performance during organizational change.

Cross‐sectional survey‐data were collected from 238 employees in a variety of both public and private organizations.

Confirmatory factor analyses showed that meaning‐making can be distinguished from other personal resources, coping and meaning in life. Regression analyses showed that meaning‐making is positively related to in‐role performance and willingness to change, but not to work engagement, thereby partly supporting the hypotheses.

The paper focuses on meaning‐making that has not yet been studied empirically in organizational change settings. It shows that the new construct of psychological meaning‐making is related to valuable employee outcomes including in‐role performance and willingness to change. Meaning‐making explains variance over and above other personal resources such as self‐efficacy, optimism, mastery, coping and meaning in life.

Entrepreneurs need both psychological and practical support when starting up their business. These support structures need to be local. This article describes three Nordic examples of such activities designed to help women get started in business. The first case deals with social entrepreneurship undertaken independently of government programmes. In the second case, social entrepreneurship has been undertaken in co‐operation with the government programmes. The last case is one where the activity forms a part of a government programme.

Digital solutions (DS) that build on recurring revenue models (RRMs) offer new opportunities to continuously create and capture superior value. However, many firms fail to engage their sales force in digital solution selling (DS selling), leading to agency problems that receive little attention in literature. This study aims to examine the drivers of agency problems that surface in the transition toward DS selling and the sales control systems that resolve these problems.

The authors conducted a qualitative, inductive study. Data were collected from interviews with 72 marketing and sales managers representing 53 industrial firms transitioning toward DS selling.

DS selling is subject to adverse selection and moral hazard caused by motivation-related, opportunity-related and ability-related drivers. Input, capability, activity and outcome controls – detailed in this study – can resolve these agency problems.

The limitations of this study’s methodology and scope suggest several directions for future research. Methodology-wise, the authors mainly relied on cross-sectional interview data from informants in Central and Northern Europe. Scope-wise, more research is needed on the capabilities, processes and steering instruments supporting DS sales. Finally, only now do the authors begin to understand which compensation plans motivate DS selling.

The controls identified in this study help managers to steer their sales force in DS sales.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to investigate DS sales control systems. Thereby, the authors enhance prior understandings of solution selling, agency problems and sales control systems.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of creative process engagement on employees’ in-role performance, and does so by considering the support that employees received from and given to their supervisors.

Using data from 540 questionnaires collected in China, this paper conducts a hierarchical regression analysis to test the proposed model.

Creative process engagement positively affects employees’ in-role performance. However, the moderating effect of receiving support on the above relationship is not significant. Instead, it is the interaction of receiving support from and giving it to supervisors that moderates the relationship between creative process engagement and in-role performance.

The study has some contributions to the conservation of resource (COR) theory. The authors find that acquiring new resources such as receiving support from supervisors is not always effective. The acquisition process of resources should be considered with the investment process of resources. According to the COR theory, people invest resources to gain resources and protect themselves from losing resources or to recover from resource loss (Halbesleben et al., 2014). The findings of the study show that employees investing resources is not just for gaining resources. Sometimes, they invest resources such as giving support to supervisors to remain a relatively balanced relationship.

Companies can encourage employees to place more attention on creative process engagement to improve in-role performance. In addition, when offering support to employees, managers should consider whether the employees are able to give it back in response to the received support, and distribute their support to employees accordingly.

This paper explored employee’s engagement at creative process in a more novel way and clarified the relative effect of creative process engagement on in-role performance. Also, this paper was the first to pay attention to the bidirectional nature of supervisor support.

This study aims to examine how job satisfaction (JS) affects two types of knowledge sharing (KS), in-role KS and extra-role KS. It also investigates the mediating effect of knowledge sharing self-efficacy (KSSE) and the moderating effect of team collaborative culture (TCC) between JS and two types of KS.

This study applies attribution theory to develop a cross-level model and validate it through paired data collected from 322 information technology professionals nested within 80 teams. Hierarchical linear modeling is used to test the hypotheses.

JS positively influences in-role and extra-role KS via KSSE and TCC positively moderates the relationship between JS and extra-role KS.

This study is one of the first to investigate the mechanism underlying the influence of JS on two types of KS. It also identifies the mediating and moderating effects of this mechanism.

Customer engagement (CE) literature features divergent definitions and conceptualizations. To clarify its meaning, antecedents and outcomes, this paper aims to propose that psychological customer engagement (PCE) is the mechanism by which customers’ readiness to engage influences behavioral customer engagement (BCE) in the form of in-role and extra-role behaviors, which then affect customers’ goal attainment, satisfaction and retention.

Set in the fitness center industry, this study combines perceptual data (from customers) and behavioral data (from the fitness center) to reveal a hierarchy of effects: customer readiness to PCE to BCE to customer goal attainment, satisfaction and retention.

Customer readiness variables (role clarity, ability, motivation) influence in-role and extra-role BCE directly and indirectly through PCE. Extra-role BCE is associated with goal attainment and satisfaction, and the latter is linked to customer retention. In-role BCE is associated with goal attainment only.

The proposed integrative model bridges the psychological–behavioral divide in CE literature and encourages the adoption of a broader nomological network that accounts for the effects of customers’ characteristics and actions on their goal attainment, satisfaction and retention.

Managers can enhance CE by improving customer role clarity, ability and motivation. Relative to in-role BCE, extra-role BCE appears more critical because it affects both goal attainment and satisfaction directly and retention indirectly.

The novel integrative approach, combining BCE and PCE in a single model, also provides a consumer-oriented view on CE, which establishes a more comprehensive perspective, as summarized in the proposed model of consumer engagement.

This study aims to examined the relationship between emotional intelligence (EI), self-efficacy and two outcome variables: in-role performance and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). The study also examined whether burnout mediates this relationship. The target population included Arab teachers in Israel.

A survey was performed. Usable questionnaires were returned by 221 teachers; therefore, the response rate was 88 per cent.

Hierarchical linear models and mediation analyses showed that EI and self-efficacy are related to OCB, and in-role performance and burnout have a strong and negative relationship with the outcome variables. Mediation analysis using Preacher and Hayes’s (2004, 2008) approach showed that burnout mediates the relationship of EI and self-efficacy with the three outcome variables.

The findings emphasize the role of the two personal variables examined here as important determinants of job performance and OCB, and demonstrate the importance of burnout in understanding OCB.

This study will contribute to the literature on OCB and work performance by examining the rarely researched relationships between EI and self-efficacy, on the one hand, and between OCB and in-role performance, on the other. Further, this study will argue that burnout mediates the relationship between these personal and outcome variables.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of leaders' managerial coaching on followers' organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), creativity and task performance. This study also examined the mediating role of intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy, recognizing the follower’s attitude and cognition as essential elements of behavioral changes.

This study collected data from 20 companies across multiple industries in South Korea, and a total of 386 leader–follower dyads' data were used.

The results show that leaders' coaching is positively associated with OCB directly, but a direct impact of coaching on creativity and task performance was not supported. The results also showed that intrinsic motivation partially mediates the effect of coaching on OCB and fully mediates the effect of coaching on creativity and task performance. Self-efficacy played a role as a full mediator between coaching and task performance.

This study considered both the cognitive and affective aspects of managerial coaching and examined the influence of managerial coaching on the followers' in-role and extra-role behaviors (i.e. OCB, creativity and task performance) using responses from both the leaders and the followers at multiple organizations. Specifically, the results of this study empirically illustrated that managerial coaching by leaders serves as a mechanism mediated through intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy, linking to employees' OCB, creativity and task performance. This provides a clear explanation of the processes through which managerial coaching impacts employees and offers insights into the specific aspects that organizational leaders should focus on when engaging in managerial coaching.