Coping Resources and Salesperson Emotional Exhaustion

Introduction and Overview

"An investigation of the influence of coping resources in salespersons' emotional exhaustion" by Jeffrey E. Lewin and Jeffrey K. Sager examines salesperson burnout — 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. Because this topic had received limited research attention, the authors set out to examine both problem-focused and emotion-focused coping and the impact these two strategies have on role stress, specifically emotional exhaustion. Their investigation yielded mixed results for emotion-focused coping, generating additional research questions.

The article's introduction emphasizes the critical levels of job-related burnout experienced by today's workforce. Those working in people-oriented professions such as education, sales, and social services face particular difficulty, and burnout costs businesses hundreds of billions of dollars each year through absenteeism, reduced productivity, and medical insurance claims. Although researchers have examined this problem extensively in occupational and organizational literatures, it has been rarely explored in marketing literature. The authors note that professional selling is not only highly stressful but also leads to emotional burnout driven by intense competition and pressure to increase sales and revenue. The article therefore aims to examine the moderating effects of emotion-focused and problem-focused coping on salespersons' emotional exhaustion.

Background Literature on Stress and Burnout

The background literature section begins by describing burnout as an affective response to a person's chronic stress levels. Extensive interpersonal contact is identified as a primary contributor to burnout syndrome, which the authors describe as comprising three interrelated components: depersonalization, diminished personal accomplishment, and emotional exhaustion. Of the three, emotional exhaustion is considered the most important and has common symptoms that affect productivity, including increased absenteeism and ultimately withdrawal from or resignation of the job. Many researchers regard emotional exhaustion as the core dimension of the burnout process (Lewin & Sager, 2009), and most burnout studies have therefore examined the emotional exhaustion construct.

The next section of the reviewed article concerns role stress and burnout among salespeople. The authors note that role stressors have been researched extensively with regard to salesperson behavior, generating interest in two key antecedents: role ambiguity and role conflict. Those working in sales and telemarketing may particularly benefit from examination of these antecedents.

The section on stress and coping discusses coping processes and the factors that influence behavioral and physical outcomes. These factors include situational and personality characteristics as well as an individual's disposition toward particular coping styles. 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: cognitive appraisal and coping. The section concludes by discussing coping strategies proposed by researchers such as Kraft, Claybomb, and Porter, who suggest that problem-focused coping strategies may help salespeople manage stress and achieve positive outcomes.

Role Stress, Coping Strategies, and the Proposed Model

The proposed model and hypotheses section examines the interrelationships illustrated in Figure 1, titled "The Influence of Coping Resources on Salesperson's Emotional Exhaustion." The figure places role conflict and role ambiguity at one end, problem-focused and emotion-focused coping in the center, and emotional exhaustion at the other end. The model posits that work-related role stressors — conflict and ambiguity — have direct effects on salespersons' emotional exhaustion, while emotion-focused and problem-focused coping are expected to interact with these stressors, either amplifying or diminishing emotional exhaustion.

Role conflict is defined in relation to conflicting requests and expectations or demands from two or more sources. Role ambiguity encompasses uncertainty regarding authority, responsibilities, relationships with others, and allocation of time. According to the authors, both role ambiguity and role conflict may stem from situations such as clients declining to purchase despite earlier indications of intent, incongruent demands placed on the salesperson, and an organization's pursuit of incompatible goals such as large profit margins and high market share simultaneously.

For the section on problem-focused and emotion-focused coping and emotional exhaustion, the authors discuss the study's primary aim: to evaluate the moderating influence — amplification or reduction — of coping resources on the formation of emotional exhaustion among salespeople. The first type of coping resource discussed is seeking the support of others, categorized as social support. The second type involves coping strategies, which entail initiating behaviors and cognitions to help manage stressors. The authors explain coping strategies through two components: the first entailing indirect versus direct coping, and the second entailing inactive versus active coping. These components produce a four-quadrant model consisting of direct-inactive, indirect-inactive, direct-active, and indirect-active coping approaches.

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