Sales-Service Ambidexterity on Salesperson Performance: Do Role Characteristics Play a Role?

Primary author: Muzi Liu
Co-author(s): Muzi Liu; Pavan Munaganti
Faculty sponsor: Dr. Babu John Mariadoss

Primary college/unit: Carson College of Business
Campus: Pullman

Abstract:

Firms are increasingly requiring their frontline employees to play an ambidextrous role, that is, engage in “both sales and service activities regardless of formal title or position” (Rapp et al. 2017, 59). While ambidexterity refers to the simultaneous pursuit of dual, and often conflicting strategic goals (Simsek 2009), service researchers have focused on service-sales ambidexterity by examining service personnel who perform sales activities (e.g., Gwinner et al. 2005; Jasmand, Blazevic, & de Ruyter 2012), and sales researchers have focused on sales-service ambidexterity by examining service performance within the salesforce (e.g., Ahearne, Jelinek, & Jones 2007). Recent research (e.g., Rapp et al. 2017) suggests that the capacity of employees to function ambidextrously depends on whether their dual sales and service roles are perceived as a stressor, and whether firms can create conditions facilitating role integration and reconciling competing individual-level role demands, leading to successful alignment between customer service and sales. Extant literature (e.g., Singh 1998; Johnson, Anderson, & Fornell 1995) suggests that the blurring of roles between sales and service personnel can have implications on employee role characteristics such as role conflict, role ambiguity and role overload, and ultimately affect performance. The purpose of this research is to examine the effect of ambidexterity on performance, through the mediating effect of salesperson role characteristics. In two studies, we find that sales-service ambidexterity leads to increased perceived role conflict, ambiguity, and overload amongst frontline employees, and ultimately in diminished frontline employee performance.

Pricing Strategies in the Presence of Interventions

Primary author: Sadegh Kazemi
Faculty sponsor: Stergios B. Fotopoulos

Primary college/unit: Carson College of Business
Campus: Pullman

Abstract:

Motivated by real-life pricing practices, we consider a pricing problem under uncertain conditions where the customer’s willingness-to-pay (WtP) changes at an unknown point over the selling horizon. An important feature of our model is that the seller only observes the sales outcomes and has limited knowledge of the underlying WtP distribution before and after the intervention. Given the uncertainty associated with the seller’s estimate of the time of change, we obtain the probability distribution of the seller’s maximum likelihood estimate (MLE) of the intervention time. Furthermore, we characterize the seller’s expected revenue loss due to the under- or overestimation of the intervention time and propose an easily implementable procedure to approximate the seller’s revenue under-performance. Our study reveals two important findings. First, the seller tends to underestimate the intervention time in the face of negative events that lower the customer’s reservation price. Conversely, the seller is prone to overestimation when the intervention inflates the customer’s reservation price. Second, we show that the seller’s revenue under-performance is minimal both when the shift in WtP distribution parameter(s) is either very small or considerably large. While our analytical results significantly contribute to the revenue management literature on their own, we also provide an accurate numerical method to easily obtain and interpret the results in a meaningful way for managerial use.

A Model for Describing and Diagnosing Human Miscommunications

Primary author: Lynne Cooper

Primary college/unit: Carson College of Business
Campus: Pullman

Abstract:

Miscommunication in team settings can lead to conflict and negatively impact team performance. Rapidly recognizing that a miscommunication has occurred and diagnosing the cause enables team members to fix the communication errors before they grow into conflicts. Existing models of human communication, however, are built on models developed during the early decades of computer use. The sequence “Message–>Encode–>Transmit–>Receive–>Decode–>Message” focuses on the transmission and receipt of messages consisting of well-structured, unambiguous data and information but fails to capture the richness, ambiguity, and contextualization inherent in person-to-person communication.

Communication starts with intent – the meaning (X0) the sender wishes to communicate and the intended impact of that communication. Analogous to the sequence above, meaning (X0) is articulated into a message (X1) by the sender, which is received (Y1) and interpreted by the recipient to extract meaning (Y0). Perfect communication occurs when X0 = Y0. Errors can occur anywhere along the path, for example, when a person misspeaks (X0-X1), Autocorrect changes a text (X1-Y1), or the receiver doesn’t recognize sarcasm (Y1-Y0).

The path from X0 = Y0, however, is affected multiple factors: the channel chosen to communicate, the physiological and emotional state of the sender and receiver, cultural and social factors, and the common ground of knowledge and experience they share. These factors serve to amplify, dampen, filter, or add noise, i.e., introduce errors, into the communication process.

This research developed an enriched, but still parsimonious, model that integrates these key factors into a practical model for describing and diagnosing interpersonal (mis)communications.