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Integrating relationship marketing and management research, the author explores internal selling (i.e., a salesperson’s internally focused efforts intended to identify, solicit, and use internal sales resources to support external selling activities) as a unique source of salespeople role stress and examine its contingent outcomes. The conceptual model suggests that internal selling as a job demand and stressor leads to increased salespeople role stress. However, a number of situational (i.e., selling organization market orientation, service climate, and seller–buyer relationship) and individual factors (i.e., networking ability and psychological capital of the salespeople) serve as job and personal resources to moderate the internal selling–outcome relationships, such that when such resources are adequate, internal selling will reduce role stress and increase sales performance. The author also examines situational (i.e., customer solutions offering and formalization of the selling organization) and individual (i.e., salespeople power and social status) antecedents of internal selling. The model provides useful insights and practical guidance for selling organizations to recognize mechanisms associated with internal selling in their organizations, and to intentionally design within organization support systems to enhance salespeople well being and enable them to participate effectively in the relational process of selling. The chapter stresses the need to develop context-specific stress models for different occupations and job roles.

This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/EUM0000000002584. When citing the article, please cite: J.K. Sager, (1990), “Reducing Sales Manager Job Stress”, Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 7 Iss: 4, pp. 5 - 14.

This study aims to advance the organizational buying literature, by examining buyer burnout and its consequences. Specifically, the sequencing of multi-faceted organizational buyer burnout is established and the impact of each dimension on job satisfaction, job performance, affective organizational commitment and turnover intentions is accessed. The current research is accomplished through the development and examination of competing models and hypothesis testing.

A sample of 125 business-to-business buyers were surveyed using established scale items. The study examines a series of competing models and outcomes of the facets of burnout through the use of covariance-based structural equation modeling. In addition, indirect, direct and total effects were examined.

First, this study supports that researchers should examine burnout, as a multi-faceted construct within the organizational buyer context, using the Lewin and Sager model. Second, findings strongly indicate that gaps exist in the current boundary spanner research, given that the majority of this research stream only examines a single aspect, emotional exhaustion, of burnout and fails to account for the impact of both the personal accomplishment and depersonalization facets of burnout. Further, the impact of personal accomplishment is highlighted, given its total effects on examined outcomes.

This study extends the Lewin and Sager model beyond a sales context and finds that each facet of burnout impacts the outcome variables to varying degrees. The total impact of personal accomplishment is highlighted, given that researchers often omit this facet from their investigations.

This chapter builds on previous research that conceptualized organizational politics as an organizational stressor. After reviewing the studies that integrated the occupational stress literature with the organizational politics literature, it discusses the negative implications of the use of intimidation and pressure by supervisors, implications that have generally been overlooked. Specifically, the chapter presents a conceptual model positing that the use of intimidation and pressure by supervisors creates stress in their subordinates. This stress, in turn, affects subordinates’ well-being, evident in higher levels of job dissatisfaction, job burnout, and turnover intentions. The stress also reduces the effectiveness of the organization, reflected in a high absenteeism rate, poorer task performance, and a decline in organizational citizenship behavior. The model also maintains that individual differences in emotional intelligence and political skill mitigate the stress experienced by subordinates, resulting from the use of intimidation and pressure by their supervisors. In acknowledging the destructive implications of such behavior in terms of employees’ well-being and the productivity of the organization, the chapter raises doubts about the wisdom of using it, and advises supervisors to rethink its use as a motivational tool. Implications of this chapter, as well as future research directions, are discussed.

Discusses the results of a study designed to investigate how sales managers experience job stress. Considers the particular extra job responsibilities of managers compared with salespeople as stress factors. Concludes that over‐involvement and general dissatisfaction with life are more important job stress factors for sales managers than are personal characteristics.

The authors explore turnover tendencies among expatriate employees in Saudi Arabia They: (1) discuss the novelty of expatriates in Saudi Arabia; (2) review the literature on employee turnover tendency and its correlates—job satisfaction and employee characteristics; (3) hypothesize a negative relationship between extrinsic job satisfaction and expatriate turnover tendencies, a negative relationship between general job satisfaction and expatriate turnover tendencies, no relationship between intrinsic job satisfaction and expatriate turnover tendencies, and no relationship between expatriate characteristics and expatriate turnover tendencies, and (4) empirically lest the hypotheses with a sample of expatriate employees. Results provide strong support for most of the hypotheses except “pay,” one of the extrinsic job satisfaction variables, and “job feedback,” one of the intrinsic job satisfaction variables.

It is well known that job stress is major cause of salesperson job dissatisfaction and turnover. Salespeople require the resources to cope adequately with a multitude of job stressors, and the purpose of this study is to demonstrate that salesperson wellness promotes the ability of salespeople to use effective coping strategies in the workplace and as a result decrease their intentions of leaving the firm.

Data including measures of coping strategies and a wellness lifestyle orientation were collected from a sample of 441 full-time professional salespeople in two metropolitan statistical areas of the USA. Structural equation modeling was used to demonstrate the relationship of a wellness lifestyle to coping strategies and in turn the relationship of coping strategies to job satisfaction and turnover intentions.

The study demonstrated the influence of the wellness lifestyle on salespeople’s ability to cope effectively with job stress. It extends previous research by demonstrating the direct influence of salesperson wellness on coping behaviors and demonstrates the nomological validity of the wellness lifestyle construct by modeling its relationship with job satisfaction and the intent to leave the organization.

The study recommends new research on the synergies that might be produced by simultaneous consideration of the social, physical, and psychological elements of the multicomponent wellness lifestyle. This should be particularly valuable in the context of the Challenger Sale.

Wellness programs may be introduced or improved following an assessment of coping resource weaknesses of the sales force. New employees could be screened by examining their wellness profiles.

Major firms have promoted wellness lifestyle programs for years, but no studies have examined the influence of such programs on coping with job stress by salespeople. The paper demonstrates the value of the salesperson wellness lifestyle by showing that it promotes the most adjustive form of coping strategy, problem-focused coping.

This research expands the scope of the exploitation/exploration literature which has generally embraced a firm-level perspective by showing the theoretical and practical relevance of this framework for the study of entrepreneurial behaviour from an individual-level perspective. The study exemplifies specific instances where explorative or exploitative aspects of behaviour are likely to be manifested as a response to specific types of shocks that precede and impact the decision to quit and start one’s own business. Different types of shocks or entrepreneurial events displace the individual from the inertia of existing behaviour and pave the way for the consideration of a new set of opportunities; a new set of opportunities where entrepreneurial initiatives are perceived to be both feasible and desirable (exploitation–exploitation). Drawing upon 80 semi-structured and longitudinal interviews with entrepreneurs who quitted their ‘salaried job’ in order to start their own business, the study: (a) provides an inventory of events/shocks found to precipitate the interviewees’ decision to quit, and (b) links the various types of shocks with the prospective explorative and/or exploitative entrepreneurial initiatives. In this respect, the dynamics that underlie the effects of shocks on entrepreneurial behaviour are illustrated, while blurriness and interrelatedness of exploitative and explorative aspects of entrepreneurial behaviour are exemplified. Such a detailed list of shocks may serve as reference tool for both prospective entrepreneurs who wish to make an entrepreneurial shift in their career, as well as managers who wish to be proactive in avoiding or encouraging entrepreneurial employee turnover.

As productivity pressures, job uncertainties, changing sales strategies, and growing international competition increase, the salesperson experiences unprecedented levels of job stress. Cause and effect of job stress still remains poorly understood. Examines the role of a number of organizational variables including met expectations, role conflict, role ambiguity, job satisfaction, organization commitment and intention to leave and their relationships to job stress. The sample is drawn from an international, service‐oriented salesforce of a large Fortune 500 organization. Provides strong support for the hypothesized model relationship. Presents a discussion and implications of the results along with a summary of needed future research.