ABSTRACT

Purpose

This study is designed to respond to repeated calls for research on sales person retentionby building upon a mature research stream to identify ways to reduce turnover in boundary spanning employees and the resultant effect it has on organizational productivity. Specifically, this research draws on the Job Demands-Resources model to explore the effect of employee perceptions of firm market orientation as a way to reduce role stressors and subsequently turnover intentions. It also looks at employee traits that may serve as a buffer to the role stress to turnover intentions link and can be part of the hiring selection process (in this case grit). In so doing, this research uses a sample of early career salespeople to examine the effects of a firm’s market orientation (MO) and selective hiring for specific traits (level of grit) on a salesperson’s intention to quit using Job Demand-Resources as a framework.

Design/Methodology/Approach

The authors utilized a questionnaire to collect data from a sample consisting of 260 respondents who were employed full-time and worked in either B2B or B2C sales as boundary-spanning employees. The measures utilized in this study have been used in previous research and have demonstrated acceptable reliability and validity. Analysis of the latent constructs was conducted using PLS-SEM. The model was assessed as specified in the hypotheses and was estimated using the PLS algorithm to obtain path coefficient estimates.

Findings

Findings suggest that organizations can benefit internally from strong MO by mitigating stressors placed on boundary-spanning employees. Those who perceived strong MO in their employer experienced more clearly defined roles, which led to decreased role ambiguity. These increased levels of job satisfaction, which reduced turnover intention. Additionally, Grit appears to only moderate the link between role conflict and job satisfaction, which suggests that grit can serve as an additional resource salespeople can tap into in response to the demands of role stressors thereby reducing their likelihood of leaving their positions.

Research Implications

In this research, inclusion of market orientation as an antecedent to role stressors in the Job Demands-Resources model expands the conceptualization of the construct as it relates to salespeople in that market orientation is something the firm can control directly. This opens research opportunities to use this model in the sales literature. In addition, the job-demands-resources model expands the role of grit beyond positive psychology to be viewed as a resource in stressful situations and puts the role of grit into a theoretical framework for use in business contexts. As such, the current work suggests that the grit scale can be used to replace measures used for similar constructs such as tenacity.

Practical Implications

This research suggests that role ambiguity can be reduced by the presence of a market orientation. This reduction in role ambiguity leads to an increase in job satisfaction which leads to reduced turnover intention. Thus, this study indicates that there may be a cost-saving benefit (e.g. recruiting and retention efforts, lost sales, etc.) that accrues to firms with a market orientation due to reduced salesperson turnover via role perceptions. This supports that the idea that organizations can benefit from market orientation not only externally, but also internally in terms of mitigating stressors placed on boundary-spanning employees. Therefore, companies should push for adoption of market orientation in order to alleviate some key role stressors placed on their salespeople in addition to the already established benefits from external customers.

The link between grit, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions is another positive finding. As expected, job satisfaction helps reduce turnover intentions; however, the relationship is moderated by grit in such a way that people with higher grit show a weaker link between job satisfaction and turnover intentions while those with lower levels of grit show a stronger link between job satisfaction and turnover intentions. This raises human resource issues in the hiring process: human resource managers should work to identify salespeople with high levels of grit in order to better minimize turnover intentions given the cost of turnover to organizations.

Originality

This research expands existing research by examining the effects of a firm’s market orientation (MO) and selective hiring for specific traits (level of grit) on a salesperson’s intention to quit using Job Demand-Resources as a framework Combining these two literature streams – market orientation and salesperson grit – is novel and will inspire new thinking and foster new insights. This study serves as a starting point for future research to examine firm controllable resources (market orientation) along with employee traits that can act as a buffer (grit) when resources are scarce.

中文翻译：

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通过组织市场导向和选择性招聘降低销售人员流动意图：一种工作需求-资源方法

摘要

目的

本研究旨在响应对销售人员保留率研究的反复呼吁，通过建立成熟的研究流来确定减少跨界员工流动率及其对组织生产力的最终影响的方法。具体来说，本研究利用工作需求-资源模型来探索员工对公司市场导向的看法的影响，以此作为减少角色压力源和随后的离职意向的一种方式。它还着眼于员工特征，这些特征可以作为角色压力与离职意向链接的缓冲，并且可以成为招聘选择过程的一部分（在这种情况下是毅力）。这样做时，

设计/方法论/方法

作者使用问卷从 260 名受访者的样本中收集数据，这些受访者是全职员工并在 B2B 或 B2C 销售中作为跨界员工工作。本研究中使用的测量方法已在以前的研究中使用，并已证明可接受的信度和效度。使用PLS-SEM对潜在构建体进行分析。该模型按照假设中的规定进行评估，并使用 PLS 算法进行估计以获得路径系数估计值。

发现

研究结果表明，组织可以通过减轻施加在跨界员工身上的压力源，在内部从强大的 MO 中受益。那些认为雇主有强烈 MO 的人经历了更明确的角色定义，从而减少了角色的模糊性。这些提高了工作满意度，从而降低了离职意愿。此外，毅力似乎只能缓和角色冲突和工作满意度之间的联系，这表明毅力可以作为销售人员可以利用的额外资源，以应对角色压力源的需求，从而降低他们离职的可能性。

研究意义

在这项研究中，将市场导向作为工作需求-资源模型中角色压力源的先决条件扩展了该结构的概念化，因为它与销售人员相关，因为市场导向是公司可以直接控制的。这为在销售文献中使用该模型提供了研究机会。此外，工作-需求-资源模型将毅力的作用扩展到积极心理学之外，将其视为压力情况下的资源，并将毅力的作用纳入商业环境中使用的理论框架。因此，目前的工作表明，砂砾量表可用于替代用于类似结构的措施，如坚韧。

实际影响

这项研究表明，市场导向的存在可以减少角色的模糊性。这种角色模糊性的减少导致工作满意度的提高，从而导致离职意愿的降低。因此，这项研究表明，由于通过角色认知减少了销售人员的流动率，市场导向的公司可能会节省成本（例如招聘和保留工作、销售损失等）。这支持了这样一种观点，即组织不仅可以从外部受益，而且可以在内部从缓解跨边界员工的压力源方面受益。因此，公司应推动采用市场导向，以减轻对销售人员施加的一些关键角色压力，以及已经从外部客户那里获得的利益。

勇气、工作满意度和离职意向之间的联系是另一个积极的发现。正如预期的那样，工作满意度有助于降低离职意向；然而，这种关系受到毅力的调节，即毅力较高的人在工作满意度和离职意向之间的联系较弱，而毅力较低的人在工作满意度和离职意向之间的联系较强。这在招聘过程中引发了人力资源问题：人力资源经理应该努力识别具有高度毅力的销售人员，以便在考虑到组织的人员流动成本的情况下更好地减少人员流动意图。

独创性

这项研究扩展了现有的研究，通过检查公司的市场导向 (MO) 和特定特征的选择性招聘（毅力水平）对销售人员辞职意图的影响，使用工作需求 - 资源作为框架结合这两个文献流 - 市场导向和销售员的勇气——是新颖的，会激发新的思维和培养新的洞察力。这项研究作为未来研究的起点，以检查公司可控资源（市场导向）以及在资源稀缺时可以充当缓冲（坚毅）的员工特征。