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The principal purpose of this study is to examine the moderating influence of selling experience on the following two relationships – adaptive selling and job satisfaction and customer orientation and job satisfaction – using unionized salespeople as respondents. It also tests for the mediating role of adaptive selling in the customer orientation–job satisfaction relationship.

This paper uses data from a survey conducted on 208 pharmaceutical unionized salespeople from 46 pharmaceutical firms in India. The model was tested using structural equation modeling. Moderation hypotheses were estimated using process macro and the Johnson–Neyman technique.

The data fitted the model well. This research found that customer orientation drove adaptive selling behavior and job satisfaction, and that adaptive selling influenced job satisfaction (all positively); it was found that adaptive selling partially mediated the relationship between customer orientation and job satisfaction. Results revealed that job experience negatively moderated the adaptive selling behavior–job satisfaction and customer orientation–job satisfaction relationships.

The results show that pharma firms may hire young recruits and, importantly, measure their customer orientation and adaptive selling levels. For the purposes of training to enhance customer orientation and adaptive selling, pharma firms may send only their less experienced salespersons.

To the authors’ knowledge, this study could be the first to examine the interaction of job experience and customer-directed selling behaviors such as adaptive selling and customer orientation on job satisfaction. Moreover, this is possibly the only study in this domain that uses unionized salespeople in an emerging market (India).

This paper replicates with a unionized, Indian sample, the well‐established finding that managerial evaluations of employee performance are affected by both objective productivity and organizational citizenship behavior. Data from the managers of 104 Indian pharmaceutical sales representatives and company records replicated the findings of previous research. While objective productivity alone accounted for 9 percent of the variance in subjective performance, objective productivity and organizational citizenship behavior together accounted for 41 percent of the variance. Implications of the findings for future research and managerial practice are discussed.

This study aims to examine the question of how long a behavioral skills training program should be in order to result in measurable behavioral change.

An empirical field study was conducted to compare two different lengths of time for a managerial skills training program aimed at achieving behavioral change. The training time for the first training condition was based on “rules‐of‐thumb” found in the literature. The training time was increased in an “extended” training condition that covered the same material but permitted more time for lecture, role‐playing and discussion.

Results showed that, relative to a control group, participants in the “extended” training condition exhibited behavioral change, but those in the “rules‐of‐thumb” training condition did not. Self‐efficacy increased significantly for trainees in both training conditions.

More attention is required to the length of training programs as they are being designed, especially if behavioral change is a goal of the training. Using rules‐of‐thumb regarding training length may be insufficient for bringing about behavioral change. More importantly, the need for more effective management skills will not be met, and organizational performance outcomes may be jeopardized.

The results of this research have the potential to be broadly applicable to management training and may possibly generalize to training in other disciplines where the training is intended to effect behavioral change.

Industrial relations, organizational behavior, and human resource management scholars have studied numerous aspects of internal workplace conflict resolution, ranging from the design of conflict resolution systems to the processes used for resolving conflicts to the outcomes of the systems. Scholars from these specialties, however, have paid considerably less attention to external workplace conflict resolution through litigation. This chapter analyzes certain areas of such litigation, focusing specifically on workplace conflicts involving issues of managerial and employee misclassification, independent contractor versus employee status, no-poaching agreements, and executive compensation.

Leading recent cases involving these issues are examined, with particular attention given to the question of whether the conflicts reflected therein could have been resolved internally or through alternative dispute resolution (ADR) methods rather than through litigation.

Implications of this analysis are drawn for workplace conflict resolution theory and practice. In doing so, I conclude that misclassification disputes could likely be resolved internally or through ADR rather than through litigation, but that no-poaching and executive compensation disputes could very likely not be resolved internally or through ADR.

The chapter draws on and offers an integrated analysis of particular types of workplace conflict that are typically treated separately by scholars and practitioners. These include misclassification conflicts, no poaching and labor market competition conflicts, and executive compensation conflicts. The originality and value of this chapter are to show that despite their different contexts and particular issues, the attempted resolution through litigation of these types of workplace conflicts has certain common, systematic characteristics.

A successful company turnaround usually requires implementing significant changes in how a business is run. “Business as usual” does not suffice—that is what places the company in mortal jeopardy in the first place.

Although the organizational practice of using “contingent or non-traditional workers” has been escalating since the mid-1980s, only recently has research begun to focus on the consequences of this practice. In unionized workplaces, labor leaders have begun to organize these workers. Although it is believed that contingent workers are responding positively to union organizing drives, little is known about the attitudes and behaviors of contingent workers as union members. Using the Union Commitment scale developed by Gordon, Philpot, Burt, Thompson and Spiller (1980), the research project reported here compares the Union Commitment of traditional faculty and three categories of adjunct faculty. The results reveal that there are no significant differences across these employee groups for the factors of Union Loyalty, Responsibility to the Union, Willingness to Work for the Union and Alienation from the Union. The implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed.

In this chapter, the authors will examine turnover in Turkey. In the first section, the authors will briefly describe the legal, institutional, and cultural context with a particular emphasis on their implications for employment conditions and turnover in Turkey. In the second section, the authors will review the academic literature on turnover that originated from Turkey. The authors divide the reviewed studies into two groups: generalizability studies, which are primarily replications of the mainstream literature with no focus on any specific characteristics of Turkey, and contextual studies, which emphasized the role of the economic, legal, or cultural background in formulating or interpreting their research. In the final section, the authors will discuss the findings of the review vis-á-vis the mainstream literature as well as practical implications and conclude with potential future research directions in the Turkish context.

This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of Employee Relations is split into seven sections covering abstracts under the following headings: Design of Work; Performance, Productivity and Motivation; Patterns of work; Pay, incentives and pensions; Career/manpower planning, recruitment; Industrial relations and participation; Health and safety.

It is all too easy in the hectic world of business to get too involved with the day‐to‐day managing of processes and events. When this happens it is difficult to see the wood for the trees and the automatic pilot syndrome takes over. This does not suggest that you do not know what you are doing ‐ on the contrary you are probably as switched on to whatever activity you are managing as anyone could be. What you could be missing, however, is the explanation as to why you are doing it. If this sounds familiar to you, what might be needed is a detached period from your work. By this I mean stay on the high ground for a while so you can get an overview of what you are doing and, more importantly, why you are doing it. How many managers, I wonder, get the opportunity to question what they are doing? If you allow yourself to slip into complacency then you and your organization will soon lose competitive advantage.

Drawing on the organizational buying decision-making framework, the purpose of this study is to investigate how sales orientation (SOCO) affects buyers’ conflict, salesperson-owned loyalty and buyers’ propensity to end a supply relationship when selling firms use a single versus multiple salesforce go-to-market strategy.

Survey data was analyzed with a sample of organizational buyers. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were used to analyze the data.

Findings reveal that a selling firm’s go-to-market salesforce strategy moderates certain relational aspects of the buyer–salesperson relationship, consequently influencing a buyer’s decision to end a supply relationship.

Empirically, these findings indicate that the effects of selling orientation on conflict, salesperson-owned loyalty and exit intentions are not only based on the salesperson’s efforts but are conditional on the selling firm’s go-to-market strategy, particularly with the implementation of multiple salespeople selling to a particular industrial buyer.

These results suggest that a salesforce go-to-market strategy conveys serious consequences on buying decisions. Given that a go-to-market strategy involving multiple salespeople impacts the buyer’s relationship with the selling firm to a greater degree, managerial oversight must remain present when selling firms decide to pursue such a go-to-market strategy.

The empirical investigation of a salesforce go-to-market strategy is an original pursuit. Specifically, this study shows that while it is critical that buying and selling firms monitor buyer–salesperson relationships as the basis for supply partnerships, these exchanges are largely contingent on the selling firm’s go-to-market strategy.