How can companies decrease salesperson turnover intention? The corporate social responsibility intervention

Abstract

Salespeople turnover is a key issue that can threaten a company’s survival, either by reducing its income or increasing its expenses. The purpose of this study is to analyze the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices on the salespeople turnover. Drawing from social network theory, this research suggests that the perception of CSR practices influences salespeople turnover through their impact on the perception of the company’s reputation and the organizational pride that sellers experience. Additionally, the moderating role of interpersonal justice in the CSRorganizational pride relationship is analyzed. The data was collected from a sample of 176 salespeople and their supervisors from 96 companies. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the psychometric properties of the measurement scales and to test the proposed direct hypotheses, and conditional process analysis was used to test the proposed mediation hypothesis. The results indicate that CSR is negatively related to salesperson turnover via the perceived salespeople’s organizational pride and organizational reputation. Furthermore, this study’s findings confirm the importance of a salesperson’s interpersonal justice for these relationships. This study contributes to the existing sales and management literature by enhancing our understanding of how to reduce salespeople turnover intention. Specifically, it underlines the role of CSR practices in reducing those intentions.