Top performing salespeople are attracted to organizations that provide opportunities to make full use of their abilities. Responses from 1450 sales directors from a leading direct selling organization were used to examine salesperson's experienced meaningfulness. Results show that experienced meaningfulness is critical to sales because it impacts salesperson's performance, turnover intentions and felt stress. Further, ethical climate and customer demandingness influence experienced meaningfulness perceptions. 1. IntroductionPaying a competitive salary is not sufficient for attracting and keeping top performing salespeople because employees are also concerned about finding a “meaningful job.” As Pink (2011) asserts, “We leave lucrative jobs to take low-paying ones that provide a clearer sense of purpose” (p. 26). Employees gravitate towards meaningful jobs, driven by “pur-pose maximizing” rather than “profit maximizing” (Pink, 2011, p. 31). Employees believe that the employer has both transactional and re-lational obligations towards workers (Lee, Liu, Rousseau, Hui, & Chen, 2011). Transactional obligations correspond to monetary expectations whereas relational obligations correspond to commitments concerning a meaningful job. Another study that compared reward valence across three generations (Baby Boomers, Generation-X, and Generation-Y) in the U.S. shows that in spite of the increased financial demands today's employees face, workers still value intrinsic rewards over other rewards (Twenge, Campbell, Hoffman, & Lance, 2010). Jobs deemed interesting, creative, and providing opportunities for growth and learning are pre- ferred to jobs that simply offer an opportunity to make money.Martel's (2003) study of top performing firm's best practices found that above all, these companies communicate to employees that their work is important and valued. These practices are conducive to experienced meaningfulness, employees' beliefs that their jobs provide them with the opportunities to perform activities that truly matter (Renn & Vandenberg, 1995), and thus count “in one's own system of values” (Hackman & Oldham, 1980, p. 73). Piccolo, Greenbaum, Den Hartog, and Folger (2010) found that “when employees are motivated by jobs that have a positive and meaningful impact on other people, they work harder by exhibiting higher levels of effort, which then lead to higher performance” (p. 266). Despite findings that experi- enced meaningfulness helps firms retain valued people and achieve higher performance, empirical research examining how these percep- tions are formed and their effect on selling organizations is sparse.
This study proposes that experienced meaningfulness is driven by cus- tomer demandingness and ethical climate. In the current marketplace, customer sophistication and expectations are increasing (Thull, 2010). Customers want a salesperson who can solve problems and provide value added solutions. While serving demanding customers can be diffi- cult, these challenges may bring out the salesperson's best work (Jaramillo & Mulki, 2008). Providing solutions to complex problems may enhance a salesperson's belief that she is performing a meaningful job.
Research indicates that an ethical climate makes sales jobs more attractive and desirable (Schwepker & Good, 2007). Further, employees who work for ethical organizations report lower stress levels and increased job satisfaction (Babin, Boles, & Robin, 2000; Schwepker, 2001). Thus, ethical climate is associated with a positive job environ- ment conducive to experienced meaningfulness perceptions.
Experienced meaningfulness can lead to positive organizational out- comes (Thakor & Joshi, 2005). However, research aimed at understanding the drivers of experienced meaningfulness and their relationship with performance and turnover is lacking. To address this shortcoming, this study tests a model linking experienced meaningfulness, ethical climate, customer demandingness, felt stress, job performance, turnover inten- tions, salesperson's age and job tenure (see Fig. 1).
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