Individual and contextual influences on the affective commitment of retail salespeople

Salesperson characteristics as well as managerial approaches have been found to play an important role in the development of positive attitudes by salespersons towards an organisation. This study integrates these two research areas to investigate the personal and contextual antecedents of affective organisational commitment of retail salespeople. Fit theory and the literature on person-situation interaction provide the theoretical basis for explaining how salesperson selling skills, job liking and empowerment individually and jointly influence affective commitment. A multilevel modelling approach is used to analyse data from 105 sales managers and 419 salespeople. Findings reveal that salespersons&rsquo; affective commitment is influenced by their selling skills, degree of job liking, tenure and empowerment. The results also indicate that the impact of selling skills on affective commitment is higher when empowerment is high. Based on the study&rsquo;s findings, implications for managing salespeople as well as limitations and suggestions for future research are offered.</p

Laser coupling to reduced-scale targets at NIF Early Light

Deposition of maximum laser energy into a small, high-Z enclosure in a short laser pulse creates a hot environment. Such targets were recently included in an experimental campaign using the first four of the 192 beams of the National Ignition Facility [J. A. Paisner, E. M. Campbell, and W. J. Hogan, Fusion Technology 26, 755 (1994)], under construction at the University of California Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. These targets demonstrate good laser coupling, reaching a radiation temperature of 340 eV. In addition, the Raman backscatter spectrum contains features consistent with Brillouin backscatter of Raman forward scatter [A. B. Langdon and D. E. Hinkel, Physical Review Letters 89, 015003 (2002)]. Also, NIF Early Light diagnostics indicate that 20% of the direct backscatter from these reduced-scale targets is in the polarization orthogonal to that of the incident light