Combining Commerce and Culture

It seldom happens that new firms, new industries, and new business systems need to be developed simultaneously. This, however, is the situation in transition economies such as China. Irrespective of product and technology used, incentives and governance structures need to be formulated that give business endeavours an organisational form. The survivability of firms depends further on the ability to start and maintain long-term business relations between contracting parties, while only a broad consensus within the community of entrepreneurs and firms on the procedures that co-ordinate business relations and sanctions transgression promises a decline in transaction costs sufficiently enough to trigger off the quick expansion of markets

Coping with Sales Call Anxiety and Its Effects on Protective Actions

We study how salespeople cope with sales call anxiety and find that two tactics ultimately reduce dysfunctional protective actions in selling interactions. That is, situation modification and attentional deployment both moderate the effects of felt physiological sensations and anxiety on protective actions

The Adaptive Consequences of Pride in Personal Selling

Study 1 investigates the beneficial effects of experiencing pride. Pride was found to have two different effects. First, it increases salespersons' performance-related motivations. Specifically, it promotes adaptive selling strategies, greater effort, and self-efficacy. Secondly, it positively affects organizational citizenship behaviors. Study 2 takes an emotion-process point of view and compares excessive pride (hubris) with positive pride. The results show that salespeople are capable of self-regulating the expression of these emotions via anticipated feelings of fear, shame, and regret. Salespeople in other words are affected by their emotions, but they also are capable of controlling them to their advantage

Exploring Emotional Competence: Its effects on coping, social capital, and performance of salespeople

We define emotional competence as a person’s domain-specific working model about how one can appropriately manage one’s emotions within interpersonal situations. Emotional competence is conceived as the integration of seven seemingly unrelated proficiencies: perspective taking, strategic self-presentation of emotions, helping targets of communication accept one’s genuine emotional reactions, lack of guilt when using emotions strategically, fostering self-authenticity, developing an ironic perspective, and incorporating one’s moral code into the self-regulation of emotions. A cluster analysis of responses to measures of the seven proficiencies by 220 salespeople revealed four distinct groups of people. The groups were defined by emotional competence syndromes consisting of combinations of different levels of the seven proficiencies. One group, the highly emotional competent, scored high on all seven proficiencies, a second group scored low on all seven. Two other groups resulted wherein one group was dominated by feelings of guilt in the use of emotions strategically, and the second was characterized by the inability to accept ambiguous and contradictory situations by assuming an ironic perspective. In a test of predictive validity, the highly emotional competent group, but not the others, coped effectively with envy and pride, achieved high social capital, and performed well

Account Managers Creation of Social Capital: Communal and Instrumental Investments and Performance Implications

Account managers invest in two distinct, compensatory social ties to achieve social capital, namely peripheral knowledge ties and implementation support ties. The first ties require communal investments, which consist of organizational citizenship behaviors and peripheral information sharing. The second ties require instrumental investments that encompass reciprocity norms and strategic information sharing. Hypotheses are tested on a sample of 164 account managers who sell financial products/services to large customers. The findings show that account managers invest in both ties to attain peripheral knowledge accretion and implementation support which in turn result in improved performance

When Intelligence is (Dys)Functional for Achieving Sales Performance

Using two different samples of salespeople, the authors investigate how a combination of general mental ability (GMA) and specific skills and capabilities (social competence and thinking styles) allows salespeople to reach their sales goals. The study finds evidence for an interaction between GMA and social competence. If combined with high social competence, high GMA leads to highest sales performance; if combined with low social competence, high GMA leads to lowest sales performance. In addition, interaction effects between GMA and a judicial thinking style were found. Salespeople high on GMA have the most potential for attaining high levels of sales performance when combined with specific skills; when lacking these skills they may become the firm’s worst performers

Exploring the effect of attachment styles and winning or losing a status contest on testosterone levels

A person’s ability to form relationships and seek and attain social status affects their chances of survival. We study how anxious and avoidant-attachment styles and subsequent winning or losing affects the testosterone (T) levels of team members playing two status contests. The first is a management game played by teams striving to earn the most profits. Winners and losers emerge due to the cognitive endeavor of the players, which provokes intense status dynamics. Avoidant-attached winners do not show higher T levels whereas anxious-attached winners do. The second is an economic game which is rigged and favors some teams to become richer than others; teams have the option though to trade with each other and reduce the self-perpetuating rich-poor dynamics embedded in the game. Besides attachment styles, we here also explore how authentic pride as a self-conscious emotion affects team members’ T levels as players trade with others to create more fairness. As in the first status contest, players’ T levels are not significantly affected by their avoidant attachment style, neither as a main effect nor in interaction with winning or losing the game. However, similar to the first game, players’ anxious attachment style affects their T levels: anxious-attached players generate significantly higher T levels when winning the game, but only when experiencing high authentic pride during the game. In short, the moderating effects of attachment style on winners’ T levels are partly replicated in both status games which allows us to better understand the functioning of working models of attachment styles during and after status contests and gives us a better understanding of working models of attachment styles in general. Keywords: status games, testosterone, authentic pride, avoi

Entrepreneurial Intentions of Teams: Sub-Dimensions of Machiavellianism Interact With Team Resilience

Machiavellians are often seen as manipulative people who contribute negatively to teams and ventures. However, recent work has shown that Machiavellians can also cooperate and act in pro-social ways in a team context. Thus, some aspects of Machiavellianism might be conducive for teams and team members’ intentions to start a business venture. Most studies in this area have failed to (a) assess the effect of Machiavellianism at the team level, (b) take into account the dimensional nature of Machiavellianism, and (c) assess moderators of these effects. We propose that the combination of Machiavellianism and resilience in teams predict team entrepreneurial intentions (EI). Moreover, we propose that different team level dimensions of Machiavellianism (amoral manipulation, desire for status, desire for control, distrust of others) are differentially related to EI. More specifically, we expect at the team level that amoral manipulation and desire for status are positively related to changes in EI (as teams high on these dimensions feel that they can use unethical practices that give them an advantage in being successful), whereas desire for control and distrust of others should be negatively related to changes in EI (as entrepreneurial teams usually work in less structured situations and need to closely work together). Furthermore, all sub-dimensions of Machiavellianism should interact positively with team resilience as resilience acts as a buffer that protects teams from potential negative effects of Machiavellianism. In a multi-wave study among newly formed teams engaged in entrepreneurship projects, controlling for psychopathy and narcissism, we found partial support for our hypotheses. Results supported our expectations for the “amoral manipulation” and “desire for control” sub-dimensions, but not for the “desire for status” and the “distrust of others” sub-dimensions of Machiavellianism, with distrust of others showing unexpectedly opposite effects. This study contributes to the literature by looking at the dimensions of Machiavellianism at the level of entrepreneurial teams in conjunction with the more positive team characteristic, resilience. Our results indicate that the relationship between Machiavellianism and EI is more complex than previously hypothesized, as the sub-dimensions are s

Exploring the effect of attachment styles and winning or losing a status contest on testosterone levels

A person's ability to form relationships and seek and attain social status affects their chances of survival. We study how anxious and avoidant-attachment styles and subsequent winning or losing affects the testosterone (T) levels of team members playing two status contests. The first is a management game played by teams striving to earn the most profits. Winners and losers emerge due to the cognitive endeavor of the players, which provokes intense status dynamics. Avoidant-attached winners do not show higher T levels whereas anxious-attached winners do. The second is an economic game which is rigged and favors some teams to become richer than others; teams have the option though to trade with each other and reduce the self-perpetuating rich-poor dynamics embedded in the game. Besides attachment styles, we here also explore how authentic pride as a self-conscious emotion affects team members' T levels as players trade with others to create more fairness. As in the first status contest, players' T levels are not significantly affected by their avoidant attachment style, neither as a main effect nor in interaction with winning or losing the game. However, similar to the first game, players' anxious attachment style affects their T levels: anxious-attached players generate significantly higher T levels when winning the game, but only when experiencing high authentic pride during the game. In short, the moderating effects of attachment style on winners' T levels are partly replicated in both status games which allows us to better understand the functioning of working models of attachment styles during and after status contests and gives us a better understanding of working models of attachment styles in general