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This paper seeks to describe supplier coordination of sales and marketing activities to manage customer relationships.

Six propositions are suggested that examine the drivers dictating how customers initiate influence tactics for their benefit in dealing with their suppliers.

Illustrations are provided to show how and when the marketing and sales functions come close to synergistic efforts and what hinders them from doing so.

Although influence tactics have a rich history in social psychology and organizational behavior research, more influence tactics must be tested using various samples and multiple methods in the customer‐supplier realm of selling and marketing activities.

Understanding trust, commitment, and cooperation from the supplier's perspective, enhances one's ability to understand why the sales and marketing functions must work together to program a defense mechanism against customers that are initiating influence tactics against them.

The study presents useful information for the coordination of sales and marketing activities.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and rank the different influence tactics used by children and to examine whether there is a difference in perception of parent and child with respect to the use of different influence tactics.

The study was conducted based on an extensive literature review and detailed focus group discussions. Through structured questionnaires, a survey was conducted on children (aged 8‐12 years) and their respective parent (any one). In total, 400 responses were received, out of which only 350 (175 children and their parents) were found to be fully filled, the remaining 50 were discarded due to incomplete information.

Statistical analysis suggests that the most common influence strategy used by children in this age‐group is persuasion strategy, followed by emotional and bargaining strategies. As per the t‐tests conducted, there were not many significant differences found in the perception of parent and child regarding the use of the different influence tactics.

The identified strategies and tactics are expected to add clarity to the issue of children's role in family decision making. Marketers should take these observations into consideration while designing and implementing global sales promotion and advertising strategies.

The paper makes a much needed contribution to the extant literature on Indian children in the age‐group 8‐12 years as consumers. The findings would add value to marketing companies and practitioners to have a better understanding of Indian children's influence behaviour. The results from the current study are crucial, as not many studies have been conducted in India when compared to the West.

The paper aims to examine whether power distance and management style predict social power choice and whether management style also acts as a mediator in a model linking all three variables.

The study was conducted within the Israeli Police Force using regular patrol and special patrol units. A total of 40 captains or officers and 151 policemen/women completed scales assessing power distance, captain's managerial style, and influence tactics chosen by them in conflict situations. The data were analyzed from two different perspectives: captains and policemen.

Harsh tactics were found to differ significantly by power distance whereas the parallel comparison for soft tactics was not significant. The mediation hypothesis tested separately on both samples was supported only for the subordinate group. Management style added significant variance for explaining the dependent variable and also mediated the relationship between power distance and harsh tactic choice.

Using alternative methods for the research design such as observational data or manipulating the independent variables with different scenarios would provide support for the robustness of the findings.

As power distance is increasing, the need to gain compliance in a task oriented situation increases the usage of harsh influence tactics. Conversely, for a similar power distance but in an interpersonal oriented situation, the supervisor may well decide to apply more soft tactics which are more likely to foster a free exchange of ideas and encourage compliance on the part of the patrolman.

Theoretically, the findings of a mediator effect aids in understanding power strategy choice. Specifically, managerial style is not independent of power distance but rather helps maintain the existing organizational culture. Methodologically, the use of two data sets, supervisors and subordinates, reduces bias attributed to common method variance.

A typology for assessing managerial roles was used to explore Thai managers’ self‐reported use of influence tactics with subordinates. In‐depth interviews were conducted with 16 Thai managers in the Siam Cement Group. Managers who viewed themselves as vision setters tended to use rational persuasion, consultation, and pressure most. Motivator managers used rationality and ingratiation. Analyzer managers used pressure. Task masters used rationality and pressure. However, all types of manager sometimes used other tactics besides the most common ones. Much of this behavior is similar to how managers in studies from the USA behaved. However, Thai managers showed some orientation toward “softer” methods, whether or not the managerial role is typically associated with “soft” or “hard” methods.

The purpose of this paper is to inspect the influence of organizational climate on the social desirability of political behaviour of employees. It also examines perception of politics and perceived behavioural choice as the underlying mechanisms that mediate the relationship between organizational climate and social desirability of political tactics. Finally, the paper studies the influence of desirability of politics on frequency of use of political tactics.

The study uses data (n = 234) collected from a large public sector organization in India. The inter-relationships are tested empirically using structural equation modelling.

The findings suggest that organizational climate significantly influences the social desirability of political tactics such that positive climate leads to lower social desirability of political tactics. Also, perception of politics and perceived behavioural choice mediate the relationship between organizational climate and desirability of political tactics. Finally, the social desirability of political tactics positively and significantly influences frequency of political tactics used.

Because of the nature of the study, generalization must be made with caution since it has been conducted in an Indian public sector organization, and errors due to measurement method could be present. The study provides a better understanding of the relationship between organizational climate and political behaviour and clarifies the mediating role of perception of politics and behavioural choices. It also elucidates the need for organizations to accept the active role of employees in determining the nature of workplace politics.

The study establishes political perceptions and perceived behavioural choice as important mediators between climate and political behaviour, fostering in-depth research into the environmental aspects of public sector organizations. It also establishes employees as autonomous members of the organization who make political choices by taking into account their organizational contexts, a concept much newer to highly formalized and codified public sector organizations.

An exploratory investigation of the outward influence tactics used by practicing managers. Narrative accounts of 117 successful and unsuccessful influence attempts were content analyzed and categorized using Flanagan’s critical incident approach. Chi‐square analyses and Spearman Rank‐Order correlations were used to compare successful and unsuccessful influence tactics and determine the reasons these methods were employed. Similar to previous investigations, which focused on lateral and upward influence tactics, communicating facts and data in a rational manner was the most frequently used outward influence approach. Success was more likely when a combination of tactics was used and when more than one agent was involved. Successful attempts were associated with the achievement of objectives, creation of a positive image, and improved business relationships. Negative attempts were associated with a jeopardized future business relationship and generation of negative feelings. The implications of the findings and future research directions are identified.

We examine how a firm’s market-oriented capabilities (in areas such as R&D or marketing) and consumer focus (business-to-business or business-to-consumer) foster its effectiveness in pursuing corporate political activities. We then explore the sustainability of any advantage that firms may gain from their political activities. We develop a conceptual framework to propose that a firm’s political capabilities to implement different political tactics, such as information provision and constituency building, are a product of how related these tactics are to different market-oriented capabilities and to the skills needed to serve different types of customers. Finally, we propose that the integration of market strategies and political strategies provides new insight into the sustainability of the advantages that a firm might gain through political activities.

The purpose of present study is to examine the influence of impression management (IM) tactics (e.g. ingratiation) applied in job application letters on perceived qualifications and hiring recommendations. The study aims to build on recent research done in the interview context, by studying IM specifically in the written form pertaining to a job application.

Data were gathered from 94 respondents asked to evaluate the job application letters of applicants for a mentoring program. IM was manipulated through the cover letter, such that, each subject received five cover letters, four of which engaged in ingratiation and one that had no ingratiation. Participants were required to evaluate the applicants' qualifications and make selection decisions.

The results of the study were consistent with those of the interview context. More specifically, ingratiation led to significantly higher ratings of applicants, and self‐focused tactics were more effective than other‐focused tactics.

The findings of this research conveyed that most of the IM tactics significantly improve recruiters' evaluations of the applicants. Still, future research needs to further investigate this relationship in order to understand the specific nature of the IM tactics and develop a deeper understanding of the underlying processes that cause IM tactics to have an impact on recruiters' judgments.

The present study highlights the need for greater understanding of how IM tactics may influence the decisions of employers who rely on written applications, or a combination of job application letters and interviews. Therefore, employers need to be aware of the use of IM in written applications and emphasize the importance of interviews in the selection process.

Existing research has been concerned with how IM tactics influence interview outcomes and has overlooked how these same IM tactics may be used in job application letters to influence selection decisions. This study addresses this gap by focusing on the job application letter as a means of conveying and managing impressions by candidates.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the associations between personal sense of power (PSP) and compliance as a function of the interaction between negative emotion intensity and emotion regulation tactics.

First, hypotheses linking PSP to different emotional reactions and to different levels of compliance with two types of conflict management styles were formulated. Subsequently, data were collected in three waves with a five-week interval between them to test the hypotheses.

Results based on principle component analysis and confirmatory factor analysis indicated that workers with high PSP reported lower internalized negative emotions (negative emotions directed to the self) in the workplace and were less inclined to comply with harsh tactics, in comparison to workers with low PSP. The importance of emotional components (suppression and negative emotions in the workplace) was underscored by the moderated mediation model: internalized negative emotions mediated the association between PSP and compliance with harsh tactics as a function of level of suppression such that the link between negative affect and compliance was negative only under high suppression, but not under low suppression.

The findings point to the deleterious influence of high emotional suppression of negative emotions on study behaviors, especially for employees with a low sense of power. Because the data were collected from a single source, which could raise concerns about common method variance and social desirability bias, future study should examine other-reports.

Recruitment and training of employees and managers should aim to create an open and safe organizational environment that encourages emotional expression and lessens emotional suppression.

The findings can help develop empowering interventional programs to coach employees to use suppression in an adaptive manner.

The current study sheds new light on the relationships between PSP and compliance from the emotion regulation perspective.

Family consumption studies have been criticised for using an individualistic or dyadic approach to explore the types of influence strategies that children use to sway parental decisions. In this study, attention is refocused on the voices of South African families within twenty-first-century familial interactions. The purpose of this paper is to explore the prevalence of pester power in South Africa, and to understand the influence strategies used by children and the different categories of products that children attempt to influence the purchasing of. Parental responses to these strategies are also explored to determine their effectiveness.

An exploratory research design using quantitative, but mainly, qualitative data, was used to draw insights from 135 families to understand intra-familial negotiation tactics within the context of family consumption and everyday family life. Thematic content analysis was used to extract themes from the responses.

The findings suggest that children use everyday family interactions as a resource to select successful pester and negotiation tactics. These children have a relatively deep understanding of how to influence their parents by using different tactics, such as emotional appeals, product requests, purchase justifications and bad behaviour. Children were found to have an awareness regarding the circumstances during which these tactics are more effective.

The contribution offered by this paper is first to build on calls for perspectives in the African context, when marketing to children and second, to add deeper understanding of the categories that children from South Africa influence, and the negotiating tactics that they use. This also contributes to an understanding of the intra-familial interaction processes leading to the eventual emergence of influence strategies and concomitant consumption behaviour.