The antecedents of salesperson deviant behavior: The role of work meaningfulness

Abstract

Employees tend to engage in certain behavior, either good or deviant. Drawing from control theory, the employees' behavior will be controlled as the organization can fulfill their needs. The ultimate objective of the study is to examine how Salesperson-Organization Fit will affect job stress and, in turn, salesperson deviant behavior. Besides, this study also examined how employees' work meaningfulness moderates the relationship between job stress and workplace deviant behavior. This study employed hierarchical regression analysis and moderated regression analysis to test the hypotheses. Using 182 salespeople for both manufacturing and services companies, the results showed that Salesperson-Organization Fit negatively affects three types of deviant behavior: organizational deviance, interpersonal deviance, and frontline deviance. The results of this study also found a mixed result for job stress on deviant behavior. Job stress has a positive effect on organizational (β = 0.092; p < 0.1) and frontline deviance (β = 0.092; p < 0.05), while it has an insignificant effect on interpersonal deviance. Work meaningfulness only moderates the relationship between job stress and organizational deviance.