THE IMPACT OF SUPERVISORY BEHAVIOURS AND PERCEIVED POWER ON SALESPEOPLE'S MOTIVATION AT DIFFERENT CAREER STAGES

Abstract

Despite the numerous stereotypes of salespersons, both academicians and practitioners have realised the important role played by this group of boundary role spanners as an area of competitive advantage. Consequently, past research has concentrated on the macro-behavioural aspects of sales management, particularly the motivation of salespeople and its various antecedents from different theoretical perspectives. A review of recent literature drawn upon the fields of psychology, sociology and organizational behaviour revealed the need to integrate the predictor variables like different supervisory behaviours, career stages and perceived supervisory power into a conceptual model. Specifically, this academic exercise attempts to examine the supervisory behaviour that has the most impact on salespeople's motivation at different career stages. Salespeople's motivation is postulated to be further moderated by the supervisory perceived power, namely position and personal power. The questionnaire consisting of five sets of scales measuring various variables. was administered to salespeople who were attending selling and marketing courses at the Marketing Institute Of Singapore. Subsequenlty, one-, two-way analyses of variance was employed to test a total of sixteen hypotheses leading to the development of the model. The results indicated that at the exploratory stage where the salespeople are deciding on a sales career, contingent approving leader behaviour emphasizing on feedback and approval is the most motivating to the salesperson. The level of motivation is positively moderated by the perceived personal power of the supervisor. At the establishment stage where the salesperson concentrates on achievement and promotion, supervisors who are achievement-oriented best motivates their sales personnel. At the maintenance stage, empirical testing do not support the hypothesis that supervisor who are upward influencing is more motivating to salespeople. This could be due to the moderating role of upward influencing behaviour on motivation for supervisors who are results oriented. However, supervisors who are upward influencing and perceived to possess position power rather than personal power are more motivating to salespeople. At the disengagement stage, salespeople who are preparing for life after retirement are more motivated by supervisory trust and respect behaviour and personal power. Although the results proved to be interesting in terms of theoretical, managerial and methodological implications, there is ample room for further research. Particularly, there exists the need to further explore this research across different industries, on a longitudinal basis and using more dynamic techniques like path analysis and multivariate analysis of variance.