Modeling the influence of management control system and ambidextrous behavior on B2B customer relationships: a job demand-resource perspective

• Published in: The Journal of business & industrial marketing Vol. 39; no. 4; pp. 781 - 793
• Main Authors: Irfan, Muhammad, Ahmad, Bilal
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Santa Barbara Emerald Publishing Limited 08-05-2024; Emerald Group Publishing Limited
• Subjects: Business to business commerce; Customer services; Employees; Fatigue; Influence; Occupational stress; Quality of service; Salespeople; Workloads; Emotional fatigue; Service recovery performance; Sales employee role conflict; Salesforce control system; Sales employee resilience; Service–sales ambidexterity
• ISSN: 0885-8624; 2052-1189; 0885-8624
• DOI: 10.1108/JBIM-08-2022-0389

Purpose
Service–sales ambidexterity (SSA) offers sales managers crucial information about dealing with customer service failures through an effective management control system. This study aims to scrutinize the relationships among SSA, salesforce control system, salesperson’s role stressors and service recovery performance (SRP) in the business-to-business (B2B) context.
Design/methodology/approach
An analysis is conducted based on survey data collected from 586 B2B sales employees participating in an extensive survey. Structural equation modeling is used to analyze the proposed hypotheses.
Findings
Empirical findings suggest that behavior-based control harms SSA. On the other hand, outcome-based control has a positive impact on SSA. The research outcomes further disclose that SSA positively impacts salesperson role conflict and emotional fatigue, whereas emotional fatigue negatively impacts SRP. Salesperson resilience notably moderates the association between SSA and emotional fatigue.
Originality/value
The study addresses there is a dearth of research on SSA applying the sales management control system. When studying about ambidexterity in sales context, many supervisory styles have been explored; however, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first systematic attempt to understand how sales management control systems play a role in SSA.