EFFECTS OF B2B SALESPEOPLE’S ENTREPRENEURIAL ORIENTATION ON SALES PERFORMANCE: MEDIATING ROLES OF PSYCHOLOGICAL PROCES

Abstract

This study attempts to investigate the impact of entrepreneurial orientation on positive psychological and behavior intention such as psychological ownership, work engagement, organizational citizenship behavior, sales efforts, adaptive selling behavior, performance for internal marketing based on job demands and resources model (JD-R model). The purpose of this study is to examine how the five-dimensional entrepreneurial orientation (innovativeness, proactiveness, risk taking, autonomy, aggressiveness) can affect salespeople’s positive motivation and to suggest how to manage and train salespeople effectively as internal customers. For this study, data were gathered from the respondents who are salespeople and analyzed by using structural equation model (SEM). According to the results of the study, entrepreneurial orientation affected salespeople’s positive psychological ownership and work engagement. In addition, we confirmed that psychological ownership affected to increase work engagement and organizational citizenship behavior, and work engagement was a positive precedence factor increasing organizational citizenship behavior, sales efforts and adaptive selling behavior. Lastly, we found that organizational citizenship behavior, sales efforts and adaptive selling behavior showed a positive impact on performance. Based on the study results, this research suggested academic and managerial implications to manage and train salespeople effectively in the business-to-business markets.