Emotional Exhaustion Among Salespeople

......coping resources in salespersons' emotional exhaustion" by Jeffrey E. Lewin and Jeffrey K. Sager discusses in the abstract, sales person blowout. Salesperson blowout is a continuing major concern in industrial marketing organizations (Lewin & Sager, 2009). The authors analyze the viability of specific coping strategies and their impact on work-related stressors and salesperson burnout. This topic has not seen much research or analysis and thus the authors set out to examine problem-focused as well as emotional-focused coping and the impact these two coping strategies have on role stress, specifically emotional exhaustion. Nevertheless, mixed results came from emotion-focused coping, creating additional research-based questions.

The introduction starts with emphasis on the critical levels experienced by today's workforce in relation to job-related burnout. Those working in people-oriented professions like education, sales, and social services have an especially difficult time and costs businesses hundreds of billions each year from absenteeism, lessened productivity, and medical insurance. Although researchers have examined thoroughly this problem in both occupational and organizational literatures, ironically it is rarely explored in marketing literature. The authors note that professional selling is not only highly stressful, but leads to emotional burnout from savvy competitors and pressure to increase sales and revenue for their respective company. Therefore, the authors aimed to examine moderating effects of emotion-focused and problem-focused coping and see how it affects a salespersons' emotional exhaustion.

The background literature section begins with stress and burnout describing it as an affective response to a person's chronic stress levels. Extensive interpersonal contact may be responsible for burnout syndrome and the authors state the syndrome comprises three interrelated parts. These are: depersonalization, diminished personal accomplishments, and emotional exhaustion. The most important of the three, emotional exhaustion, has common symptoms that affect productivity such as increased absenteeism and ultimately, withdrawal or quitting the job. Many find emotional exhaustion the core dimension to the burnout process (Lewin & Sager, 2009). This means burnout studies examined the emotional exhaustion construct.

The next section concerns role stress and burnout among salespeople. The authors state role stressors are researched lengthily in regards to the behavior of salespeople. From this research came interest in role ambiguity and role conflict. Those working as salespeople and telemarketing personnel may benefit from examination of those important antecedents.

Stress and coping is section 2.3 and discusses coping processes and identification of factors that lead to influence over behavioral and physical outcomes. These are: situational and personality characteristics as well as a person's disposition to any coping style. The authors focus on Lazarus and Folkman's examination of stress, coping, and associated outcomes (Lewin & Sager, 2009). Their work reveals that a person's reaction to stress encompasses two steps. These are coping and cognitive appraisal. The section concludes with coping strategies discussed by various researchers like Kraft, Claybomb, and Porter. They suggest problem-focused coping strategies may assist salespeople manage stress, leading to positive outcomes.

The next section is proposed model and hypotheses. This section is where they examine interrelationships which are demonstrated in figure 1. Figure 1 has the title "The influence of coping resources on salesperson's emotional exhaustion" and has role conflict and role ambiguity on one end, problem-focused and emotion-focused coping in the center, and emotional exhaustion on the other end. Figure 1 essentially means conflict and ambiguity (work-related role stressors) are thought to have direct effects on the emotional exhaustion of salespeople. Emotion and problem-focused coping will be expected to interact with these stressors either amplifying/diminishing emotional exhaustion. The next section is role conflict, role ambiguity, and emotional exhaustion and simply helps define role conflict in relation to conflicting requests and/or expectations, demands from two or more sources. Role ambiguity was defined as authority, responsibilities, relationships with others, and allocation of time. Role ambiguity and role conflict according to the authors, may stem from clients not buying something even if they suggest they will, incongruent demands, and the business' focus on incompatible goals like large profit margins and market shares.

For section 3.2, problem-focused and emotion-focused coping and emotional exhaustion, the authors discuss the major aim of the study which is to evaluate the moderating influence (amplification/reduction) of coping resources for salespeople when it comes to the formation of emotional exhaustion. The first type of coping resource mentioned is seeking support of others and is categorized as social support. The second type is coping strategies and that involves starting behaviors and cognitions to help manage stressors. The authors explain coping strategies with one component entailing indirect/direct coping and the second component entailing inactive/active coping. Such components led to a four-quadrant model that consists of direct-inactive, indirect-inactive, direct-active, and active-inactive.

The research method section consisted of research context and data collection and represented the data on table 2 with composite reliability item loadings, highest shared variance, and average variance extracted. The sample size included 1000 total sales people working for an industrial products manufacturer. The participants filled out mailed survey packets. Table 3 contained the constructs like role conflict and role ambiguity and the means, Pearson correlations, and standard deviations. The next section entailed measure validation procedure. The authors measured the constructs using established scales and validates through use of standard statistical techniques like Cronbach alphas.

The analysis and findings section provided the hypotheses. The first hypothesis predicts "higher levels of role conflict will lead to higher levels of emotional exhaustion, while hypothesis 2 predicts higher levels of role ambiguity will lead to higher levels of emotional exhaustion" (Lewin & Sager, 2009, p. 802). The third hypothesis is split into part a and b and posits that use of PC (problem-focused coping) strategies will lessen impact of role ambiguity and role conflict in terms of emotional exhaustion. The results demonstrated support for all three hypotheses in table 4 which represented the standardized coefficient estimates and t-values.

The results continue with hypotheses 4a and 4b predicting use of EC strategies amplifying impact of role ambiguity and role conflict on EE (emotional exhaustion). There was mixed support for these hypotheses based on the findings. Hypotheses 5 and 6 assert nether PC or EC strategies have direct effects on EE and the findings supported both hypotheses.

In the discussion section examines a proposed model that positioned PC and EC as moderating the influence of role ambiguity and role conflict EE. The findings for the model remain consistent with current thinking and support the model's assumptions. The rest of the section shows the findings in detail. The next section, managerial implications examined the significant main effects surrounding EE and role stress with the authors stating they remain consistent within the literature researched. The authors state in terms of role stress, excessive role stress is detrimental in both organizational and individual objectives.

The research limitations section only noted one limitation which was the data in the study was cross-sectional meaning reported findings are not entirely accurately and must be viewed with caution. The authors also noted emotional exhaustion forms over time, especially if salespeople lack coping resources that take on the role of lessening work stressor influences. The last section is directions for future research in which the authors suggest research should be aimed towards focusing on the coping strategies of salespeople that will offer greater understanding and help in diminishing emotional exhaustion. Lastly, the authors suggest researchers should replicate the findings in their study to support the results collected.

References

Lewin, J. E., & Sager, J. K. (2009). An investigation of the influence of coping resources in salespersons' emotional exhaustion. Industrial Marketing Management, 38(7), 798-805. doi:10.1016/j.indmarman.2008.02.01