Abstract

Many firms are engaging in the digital transformation (DT) of their sales forces, and this trend has accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, research on DT as a profound organizational change process, as well as salespeople’s individual psychological reactions to such initiatives, is still limited. Although DT offers salespeople more and better resources for work-related goal attainment, it increases job demands and typically generates high uncertainty, which companies must then manage. We draw on job demands-resources (JD-R) theory to account for these bright and dark side effects simultaneously. We analyze the direct, mediated, and moderated effects of uncertainty reduction initiatives (resources) and excessive workload (demands) on the perceived usefulness of DT (i.e. salespeople’s motivation to embrace it), the stress it generates, and the ultimate success of DT integration. In doing so, we shed light on the complex pattern of relationships that characterizes salespeople’s psychological reactions to DT. Using DT context-specific constructs, we test our model and hypotheses on a sample of 144 salespeople of a firm engaged in DT. Our results fill several gaps in the technology in sales, DT, and JD-R literatures, and we provide managers with several guidelines to better manage DT in sales.

摘要

许多公司都在对其销售队伍进行数字化转型 (DT)，而这种趋势在 COVID-19 大流行期间加速了。然而，将 DT 作为深刻的组织变革过程以及销售人员对此类举措的个人心理反应的研究仍然有限。尽管 DT 为销售人员提供了更多更好的资源来实现与工作相关的目标，但它增加了工作需求，并且通常会产生高度不确定性，公司必须对其进行管理。我们利用工作需求-资源 (JD-R) 理论来同时解释这些正面和负面影响。我们分析了减少不确定性举措（资源）和过度工作量（需求）对 DT 感知有用性（即销售人员接受它的动机）、它产生的压力、以及DT集成的最终成功。在这样做的过程中，我们阐明了表征销售人员对 DT 的心理反应的复杂关系模式。使用 DT 特定于上下文的构造，我们在一家从事 DT 的公司的 144 名销售人员的样本上测试我们的模型和假设。我们的结果填补了销售技术、DT 和 JD-R 文献中的几个空白，我们为经理提供了一些指导方针，以更好地管理销售中的 DT。