When sales leaders induce competition among sales employees: a source of motivation or exhaustion?

Frieß, Maximilian ; Alavi, Sascha; Habel, Johannes und Richter, Bianca (2023): When sales leaders induce competition among sales employees: a source of motivation or exhaustion? In: Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management: S. 1-19 [Forthcoming]

Abstract

Many sales leaders support competition among their employees. However, inducing competition among peers may exhibit beneficial, motivating as well as harmful, exhausting effects, and which of the two countervailing effects prevails remains an open question. Drawing on the job-demand resources model and 20 interviews with sales professionals, this study proposes that competition-inducing leadership (CIL) exhibits ambivalent effects on sales employees’ positive stimulation and emotional exhaustion, which depend on the specific combination of employees’ extrinsic motivational orientation and role overload. A cross-national, multilevel dataset from 503 business-to-business sales employees reporting to 131 supervisors of a multinational industrial supplier firm supports these propositions. Thus, this study contributes to sales leadership and interpersonal competition research by empirically clarifying that CIL is a double-edged sword that cannot be one-sidedly categorized as beneficial or harmful.

• Dokumententyp: Zeitschriftenartikel
• Keywords: Sales leadership; interpersonal competition; motivation; positive stimulation; emotional exhaustion
• Fakultät: Betriebswirtschaft > Institut für Marktorientierte Unternehmensführung
• Themengebiete: 300 Sozialwissenschaften > 330 Wirtschaft
• ISSN: 0885-3134
• Sprache: Englisch