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Purpose Although trust is considered a dyadic and bidirectional phenomenon, the majority of trust research has not considered it as such. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to closing this research gap by analyzing the influence of supervisor’s propensity to trust on salesperson trust in supervisor, considering the mediating role of servant leadership (SL). Additionally, the authors delve into the relationship between trust in supervisor and salesperson turnover by examining the moderating effect of perceived ethical climate (EC). Design/methodology/approach Information was provided by 145 salesperson–supervisor dyads from 145 companies across various industries. SEM and PROCESS procedures were used to test the proposed hypotheses. Findings The results indicate that a supervisor’s disposition to trust is positively related to employee trust in the leader via its impact on perceived SL behaviors. However and contrary to the expectations, supervisor’s propensity to trust is found to have a direct negative impact on trust in the supervisor, suggesting the presence of additional mediating variables. Finally, the trust dimension of EC moderates the negative influence of trust on salesperson turnover intentions. Research limitations/implications The findings highlight the practical benefits of fostering trust in the workplace and confirm the significant role of trust in the identification of servant leaders. In addition, the study shows that a supervisor’s disposition to trust can have a relevant effect on salesperson’s turnover intentions. Moreover, the results demonstrate the beneficial role of an ethical work climate. Originality/value This study offers insight into how to improve the retention of efficient employees and the role of trust, analyzed at a dyadic level, in this process. In addition, the findings suggest why servant leaders adopt this leadership style.

Drawing on the Job Demand-Resources (JD-R) theory, the present study investigates the underlying mechanisms through which capability control, a type of behavior-based control, influences salesperson turnover. Using a sample of 145 industrial salesperson–supervisor dyads from different industries, this study's findings reveal that capability control contributes to decreasing salesperson turnover intentions, both directly and indirectly. Specifically, management capability control reduces work overload and increases work meaning, thus lowering salesperson turnover intention. The findings also confirm that these effects are contingent on the complexity of a product. When product complexity is low, capability control increases work overload and decreases work meaning, which has a positive effect on salesperson turnover intention. This study discusses these findings' theoretical and managerial implications.

Previous studies have long recognized and examined adaptive selling as an effective behavior. Although some studies have assumed and revealed moderating factors that impact the effectiveness of adaptive selling behavior, few studies have examined an individual's skill as a moderator on this effect. This study focuses on political skill as a type of skill that has been recently found to have positive effects on sales performance. Furthermore, this study includes intrinsic motivation as an additional moderator that enables political skill to be invested in effective selling behavior. Our analysis of 249 salespeople and 145 supervisors in a matching sample largely supports our hypotheses that the positive effects of adaptive selling behavior on sales performance are highest when both political skill and intrinsic motivation are high. As political skill represents a skill related to intraorganizational behavior, this study complements the traditional view found in the literature on selling behavior, which only focuses on customer-directed interaction.

Impression management tactics have recently been identified as effective strategies for coping with work stressors. However, despite the evidence that using a combination of tactics can provide more favorable outcomes than using a single tactic, previous studies have often examined impression management tactics in isolation. Furthermore, many sales organizations view their employees' proactive behaviors as essential for gaining a competitive advantage, but our knowledge about the antecedents of proactivity at work is still limited. To address this knowledge gap, we introduce a theoretical model that explains the joint moderating effects of combining two forms of impression management tactics on the relationship between work-family conflict and salespeople's proactive behaviors. We study 249 salesperson-supervisor dyads, and the results indicate that work-family conflict is negatively related to salespeople's proactive behaviors through emotional exhaustion. In addition, the combination of ingratiation and self-promotion has a buffering effect on the relationship between work-family conflict and emotional exhaustion.

Work overload is a critical but understudied stressor at work, particularly for boundary-spanning positions. Recent studies have highlighted the need for more research on the identification of different predictors of the use of intimidation, a type of assertive impression management tactic. Relying on Lazarus's transactional theory, this study hypothesized and investigated a mediated moderation model that includes resilience, work overload, and its outcomes. This paper contributes to the organizational literature by examining the use of intimidation by salespeople as a reaction to stressful circumstances and the association between this tactic and salespeople's performance. The information provided by 248 employee–supervisor dyads confirmed the proposed model. Work overload has a positive association with intimidation, and the direct effect of work overload on intimidation depends on the level of an employee's resilience. Finally, the use of intimidation has a negative association with supervisor-rated performance.

PurposeThis study's main objective is to analyse the role of the consumer's ethnocentrism as a potential segmentation basis and to detect product origin-sensitive groups. The relationship between the consumer's regional ethnocentrism, local and regional identity and corresponding valuation and purchase of food products from a region is also examined.Design/methodology/approachThe responses of 358 consumers residing in two Spanish regions are analysed by means of a mediation analysis and a cluster analysis.FindingsThe results suggest the convenience of considering ethnocentric consumer tendencies, also at the regional level, when studying attitudes, valuation, information search and effective purchase of foods of diverse categories and origins.Originality/valueThe main contributions of this work derive from the assessment of consumer ethnocentrism at a subnational level (which is much less present in the literature) and the evidence of its usefulness for segmenting the market and detecting groups of origin-sensitive consumers, which can be useful to companies that produce and market food products in different regions.

Previous literature has addressed the concepts of local products, regional products and traditional products as if they were independent concepts. However, in practice, many food products combine all three concepts. The objectives of this paper are as follows: first, to explore the valuation of food products that have local, regional and traditional features through the analysis of specific product categories; second, to study the possible link between the level of consumer ethnocentrism and the valuation and effective purchase of local-regional-traditional food. The results show that consumers value these products highly and buy them in high proportions. In addition, levels of consumer ethnocentrism are sometimes, but not always, related to the actual purchase of these local-regional-traditional food products. This finding highlights the need to include a product’s category in analyses of the effects of consumer ethnocentrism. The majority of previous studies examine the consumer’s valuation and intention to buy local or traditional products at a general or abstract level, which does not allow respondents to evaluate a specific food product that they can find in the market and consume. An important contribution of this work is its level of analysis: we analyze specific food product categories in two different geographic environments in Spain.

This investigation studies the influence of parents on the level of regional ethnocentrism in their children. The proposed model considers the parents’ levels of regional identity and regional ethnocentrism as potential antecedents of ethnocentrism among their children. The results are based on 195 triads consisting of young consumers and their parents. The findings show that despite low levels of ethnocentrism among youth, parental influence is significant and greater than the effect of other variables. The exploratory analysis presented here supports the assumption that consumer ethnocentrism is a general tendency acquired during childhood through the process of socialization.

Purpose: The objective of this study is to contribute to the sales management literature by analyzing whether self-monitoring dimensions (the ability to adjust the presentation of one’s self and the sensitivity to the expressive behaviors of others) play a moderating role in the use of impression management—supervisor liking—performance rating nomological network. Methodology/approach: Empirical analysis is based on dyadic data from 122 industrial salespeople and their sales managers in 9 different industries. Structural equation modelling was used to analyze the psychometric proprieties of the measurement scales, and conditional process analysis was used to test the proposed hypotheses. Research implications: The results obtained indicate that the use of supervisor-focused impression management tactics is an indirect antecedent of a salesperson’s performance rating through sales manager liking, but not the self-focused tactics. Results also show that a self-monitoring dimension i.e., the ability to adjust the presentation of one’s self, moderates the “impression management—supervisor liking—performance rating” chain. These results provide an increased understanding of the processes involved in sales managers—salespeople’s interactions. Practical implications: The main implication for salespeople is that the use of impression management tactics to influence performance ratings only is effective when they use supervisor-focused tactics because attempts to influence via self-focused tactics will not have any effect. The most important implication for sales managers’ is that not all impression management tactics are successfully executed and that the identification of combinations of impression management tactics and the levels of salespeople’s self-monitoring can positively influence performance appraisals by generating evaluative biases. Given that evaluative biases can produce inequitable behaviors by sales managers in the task assignments and support provided to the salespeople, it is important that sales managers are aware of when they can occur (i.e., when salespeople with a moderate ability to adjust their self-presentation use supervisor-focused tactics). Originality/value/contribution of the article: This article contributes to the existing knowledge by two important means. First, this study proposes a model and presents an empirical test of constructs that mediate (i.e., supervisor liking) and moderate (i.e., self-monitoring dimensions) the “use of impression management tactics—sales manager liking—performance appraisal” relation. This model responds to calls for studies that analyze how impression management tactics are related to performance appraisal and when the relation between the use of these tactics and performance rating occurs. Two, this study uses data from both salespeople and their sales managers, which minimizes any risk of common method variance bias.

Although sales tasks require creative thinking, salespeople&rsquo, s creativity has been identified as one of the most under-researched topics in the sales literature. This study contributes to filling this gap by understanding how responsible leadership and corporate social responsibility (CSR) perceptions can contribute to fostering salespeople&rsquo, s creativity. This study&rsquo, s empirical analysis is based on information provided by 176 supervisor&ndash, salesperson dyads from 96 companies, and the results indicate that responsible leadership is positively related to salespeople&rsquo, s creativity. Furthermore, our findings confirm that the relationship between responsible leadership and salespeople&rsquo, s creativity is mediated by salespeople&rsquo, s CSR perception, their job satisfaction, and their identification with the organization. Sales leaders should recognize that by practicing responsible leadership behavior, they can create this type of work environment for their subordinates.

In this paper, we propose an explicative model for the effective purchase of various brands of local products, incorporating private and public motivations into a causal chain and considering product availability as a possible moderator of the effects of these purchase factors on local products. The results obtained by applying conditional process analysis and a Tobit model to the responses of 195 young consumers show that local identity can have direct and/or indirect effects on the effective purchase of four different brands of local, traditional, and nontraditional products. Furthermore, for two of these brands, perceived product availability moderates the relationship between product valuation and effective purchase. [EconLit citations: C51, Q13].

Purpose – Although servant leadership (SL) improves the overall effectiveness of individuals and teams, it remains understudied. The aim of this paper is to provide insight into the mediating mechanisms through which perceived SL affects salespersons’ proactive and adaptive behaviors. Design/methodology/approach – Data were gathered from 145 industrial salespeople and their supervisors across a variety of businesses and sectors in Spain. Findings – SL enhances salespeople’s adaptivity and proactivity by positively affecting their self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation. Furthermore, SL directly shapes the development of adaptive behaviors among salespeople, although this direct influence is not significant when considering proactivity. Additionally, the use of outcome-based control mechanisms enhances the positive effects of SL on salespeople’s intrinsic motivation. Practical implications – The results demonstrate that sales managers can promote more proactive and adaptive behaviors among sales staff by recognizing the importance of service and their moral responsibilities to the success of their subordinates. Originality/value – Cognitive evaluation theory was used to examine the direct and indirect effects of perceived SL on two emergent change-oriented behaviors (adaptivity and proactivity) using a matched sample of industrial salespeople from a variety of industries, thus providing a basis for the generalization of results. Moreover, in analyzing the moderating effects of outcome control, the conditions under which SL is more or less effective were examined.