تیم فروش خود مدیریتی و عملکرد تیم : نقش مکمل توانمندسازی و کنترل

This work is the first to examine systematically the influence of empowerment and control on the degree to which selling teams engage in desired self-managing behaviors. Further, this work is the first to propose the construct of desired self-managing behaviors in a selling team context, and empirically examine its influence on selling team performance. Our investigation indicates that control of team self-management provides a complementary positive influence to that of empowerment on the degree to which selling teams exhibit desired self-managing behaviors. In addition, we find a positive relationship between the degree to which teams exhibit desired self-managing behaviors and selling team performance; moreover, this relationship explains, to a large degree, selling team performance. These findings are consistent with our thesis that control of teamwork facilitates performance on the selling team level, just as control of selling skills facilitates performance on the individual sales rep level.

In this study we explore the complementary influence of empowerment and control on the degree to which teams engage in what we posit to be self-control, or team self-managing behaviors, and the degree to which these behaviors are advantageous. We also examine the degree to which such behaviors are advantageous in that they lead to enhanced team selling performance. Empirical analysis provides support for all of our hypotheses, and our model appears to be promising with respect to two key attributes. First, our model of team selling performance offers the advantage of being parsimonious in that it is comprised of a relatively small number of variables. Second, empirical analysis suggests that our model of team selling performance offers powerful insights since it explains almost 60% of the variance in team selling performance. These results are especially noteworthy given how difficult it is to collect primary data in a team selling context along with the managerial importance of research that identifies effective team selling (Jones, Dixon, Chonko, & Cannon, 2005). As posited, our empirical findings indicate that the team self-managing behaviors that we test are advantageous in that they have a significantly strong and positive influence on team performance. Also, we found that empowerment leads to desired team self-managing behaviors and our findings lend support for the notion that management control of a rep's teamwork leads to desired team self-managing behaviors. Moreover, such control influence complements that of empowerment (and, indeed, the magnitude of control's influence is almost as great as empowerment's). Our findings suggest that though empowerment is positively associated with these behaviors, sales management's use of control can increase substantially the degree to which selling teams exhibit advantageous team self-management behaviors. In other words, these findings lend credence to the notion that though the “wrong forms” of management intervention and control can inhibit teams from self-managing, without the “right kinds” of management intervention and control teams are less likely to engage in advantageous self-managing behaviors. This is also the first research to examine the degree to which selling teams engage in self-controlling behaviors that are specifically advantageous for a selling team context by employing Challagalla and Shervani's (1996) conceptualization of “control of a critical capability.” Our measures of desired team self-managing behaviors capture the degree to which team members engage in advantageous self-control efforts with respect to sales performance, selling activities, and selling knowledge. Further, we provide empirical support for the usefulness of these “team self-control routines;” which is a significant contribution to the stream of academic research on selling teams since future researchers can employ our measures in efforts to replicate and extend this research, and/or to refine or add dimensions to our measures of desired team self-managing behaviors. Given the conceptual and empirical support for these measures, this research offers both academics and practitioners with a useful, precise, and relatively comprehensive model for determining the degree to which selling teams engage in advantageous self-managing behaviors. It is not unreasonable at all to envision (given our field work with sales professionals and the focal organization's initial reaction to this research and its findings) the formal or informal use of these measures by internal consultants, sales executives, and/or sales managers in diagnostic fashion to help pinpoint problems of underperforming selling teams or sales managers to enhance selling team or sales manager performance. Similarly, they can also be used to reinforce and maintain, or refine in continuous improvement fashion, desired selling team and management behaviors to continue to enhance performance. Further, though other work has examined leadership empowering behaviors with respect to sales management's efforts to facilitate higher levels of salesperson performance (e.g., Ahearne, Mathieu, & Rapp, 2005) this is the first selling team research to examine not only the influence of empowerment, but also the influence of management control, on the degree to which teams engage in advantageous team self-managing behaviors. As such, findings from this research offer novel and useful insights to both researchers and sales organizations and sales managers. Based on our exploratory and pre-test field work (e.g., see the interview with sales managers discussed earlier), it is apparent that at least a significant number of managers and organizations are either: (1) unaware of the apparently powerful impact that team skills capability control can have on selling team efficiency and effectiveness, or (2) intuitively employ such control, but in ways that may not be systematic or complete enough. Again, it is quite reasonable to envision that teamwork capability control insights and specific control techniques suggested by this research can and will be employed by sales organizations and sales managers with each salesperson in order to facilitate advantageous team self-managing behaviors and enhanced selling team performance. Among other insights, this research supports the notion that sales managers should engage in control efforts that are non-invasive in that they do not involve direct intervention into how selling team members interact with each other and how the team runs itself. Rather, the control efforts are indirect management control interventions that one could envision as having as its objective to provide sales reps with a kind of a “train-the-trainer” knowledge they can use to facilitate team-work within their team without direct management intervention. Further support for non-invasive and indirect sales management control can be found in the strong positive findings of empowerment's influence on the degree to which selling teams engage in advantageous self-managing behaviors. Additional empirical support we provide for the indirect nature of “helpful” management control in a team environment is the simple fact that both management empowerment and control do not directly influence selling team performance, but rather are fully mediated by the degree to which the team engages in what both management actions are employed to promote – advantageous team self-managing behaviors.