Predicting Sales Manager Control: A Comparison Of Control-System And Leadership Approaches

How much latitude should the field sales manager allow his or her subordinates? Two schools of thought have addressed this question. This study tests proposals from these two approaches. The control-system approach contends the field sales managers behavior should be consistent with other sales organization controls. The findings here do not support these contentions but do provide some support the leadership approach. The sales managers in this study varied their control behaviors depending upon the quality of their working relationship with their subordinate or upon the perceived effort levels of the salesperson

Big Brother or big bother? E-monitoring the salesforce

Advances in communication and information technology have fundamentally changed managerial monitoring. No longer is the field sales manager cut off from his geographically dispersed sales personnel as e-monitoring allows continual rather than intermittent views of a wide range of indicators with copious detail. Given this change in monitoring, we examined the possible effect it may have on customer orientation. Conceptually, customer orientation levels should be enhanced when e-monitoring purposes serve informational purposes and be impeded with controlling purposes. We gathered responses from field salespeople employed in the manufacturing sector and found some support for these expected effects. Customer orientation levels are higher when the predominant purpose of e-monitoring is to provide information. Thus efforts on the part of the manager to clarify the fact that e-monitoring is predominantly serving informational purposes will be worthwhile. Contrary to expectations our HLM moderator analyses indicate the reaction to either control or inform purposes in a very bureaucratic culture is less dramatic than that expressed in a less bureaucratic one. In low –rather than high -bureaucratic cultural contexts, informing attributions help and controlling hurt customer orientation. A firm which is not highly bureaucratic but uses e-monitoring as a control mechanism, then it may be giving mixed messages to the salesperson with a resultant level of confusion and lack of customer-orientation. A firm which is not highly bureaucratic and uses e-monitoring to empower or inform may be more focused and effective in gaining higher levels of customer orientation from their field salespeople

Abnormal deactivation of the inferior frontal gyrus during implicit emotion processing in youth with bipolar disorder: Attenuated by medication

Previous neuroimaging studies of youth with bipolar disorder(BD) have identified abnormalities in emotion regulation circuitry. Using data from the Longitudinal Assessment of Manic Symptoms Cohort (a clinical sample recruited for behavioral and emotional dysregulation), we examined the impact of BD and medication on activation in these regions. Functional neuroimaging data were obtained from 15 youth with BD who currently were unmedicated with a mood stabilizer or antipsychotic (U-BD), 19 youth with medicated BD (M-BD), a non-bipolar clinical sample with high rates of disruptive behavioral disorders (non-BD, n=59), and 29 healthy controls (HC) while they were shown task-irrelevant morphing emotional faces and shapes. Whole brain analysis was used to identify clusters that showed differential activation to emotion vs. shapes across group. To assess pair-wise comparisons and potential confounders, mean activation data were extracted only from clusters within regions previously implicated in emotion regulation (including amygdala and ventral prefrontal regions). A cluster in the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) showed group differences to emotion vs. shapes (159 voxels, corrected p<.05). Within this cluster, U-BD youth showed decreased activation relative to HC (p=.007) and non-BD (p=.004) youth. M-BD also showed decreased activation in this cluster relative to HC and non-BD youth, but these differences were attenuated. Results were specific to negative emotions, and not found with happy faces. IFG findings were not explained by other medications (e.g. stimulants) or diagnoses. Compared to both HC and a non-BD sample, U-BD is associated with abnormally decreased right IFG activation to negative emotions