Firm-level participative leadership and individual-level employee ambidexterity

Unleashing the mechanism among salesforce control system, salesforce ambidexterity, and emotional exhaustion to enhance the competitive advantage of organizations

The service-sales interaction should be aligned within and outside the organization, but many companies are not harvesting the benefits of this technique. In line with the conservation of resources (COR) theory, the current research investigates the impact of the salesforce control system on salesforce ambidexterity (service and sales interface), which eventually leads to emotional exhaustion service-related performance outcomes. We assess the proposed model using cross-sectional data of 321 Pakistani salespeople from B2B organizations and employ structural equation modeling for data analysis purposes. First, the study results show that behavior-based control has an inverse influence on salesforce ambidexterity. On the other hand, outcome-based control is positively associated with salesforce ambidexterity. In addition, salesforce ambidexterity is positively linked with emotional exhaustion. However, emotional exhaustion has a negative impact on both service innovation implementation and service recovery performance. Finally, the results demonstrate the significant and positive moderating influence of self-efficacy and customer demandingness between exogenous and endogenous constructs. The study is particularly important to B2B sales organizations struggling with the difficulties of salesforce ambidexterity and how they control their sales representatives.

Understanding the Antecedents and Consequences of Service-Sales Ambidexterity: A Motivation-Opportunity-Ability (MOA) Framework

Drawing on the motivation, opportunity and ability (MOA) framework, we investigate the influence of charismatic leadership on salespeople’s service and sales activities—termed service-sales ambidextrous (SSA) behavior, which subsequently turn into service recovery performance outcomes. The primary aim of this research is to strengthen salespeople’s service quality in parallel to their selling activities while recovering a service failure. We validate the model using a sample of 344 business-to-business salespeople using partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique. Study results show that charismatic leadership is positively and significantly related to service-sales ambidexterity. Likewise, service-sales ambidexterity has a positive and significant relationship with service recovery performance and adaptive selling behavior. Moreover, we found a significant relationship between adaptive selling behavior and service recovery performance. The results further specify that salesperson motivation, opportunity and ability to engage in SSA significantly moderate the relationship between charismatic leadership and service-sales ambidexterity. The results suggest the need for training programs that provide the salesperson with opportunities to understand the simultaneous implementation of selling strategies while also providing customer services.