Empowering Salespeople: Does it Work?

Abstract

Salespeople play the important boundary spanning role that ensures the voices of customers are heard within the selling organization and that their needs are effectively met. To achieve these goals, salespeople need to be psychologically empowered to make decisions that are sound and timely. In this research we investigate the consequences of psychological empowerment of salespeople. Our results reveal that sales force empowerment favorably impacts the (a) attitude of salespeople (reduced role conflict, enhanced salesperson job satisfaction, and heightened organizational commitment), (b) job outcomes (increased customer-oriented selling and organizational citizenship behavior), and (c) customer outcomes (augmented customer relational satisfaction and customer loyalty).