How Can Companies Decrease Salesperson Turnover Intention? The Corporate Social Responsibility Intervention

Sandra Castro-González,Guadalupe Vila-Vázquez,Belén Bande

doi:10.3390/su13020750

Sandra Castro-González, Guadalupe Vila-Vázquez + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su13020750

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Journal: Sustainability	Publication Date: Jan 14, 2021
Citations: 6	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: University of Santiago de Compostela

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 CSR-organizational 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.

Highlights

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) defined as “context-specific organizational actions and policies that take into account stakeholders’ expectations and the triple bottom line of economic, social, and environmental performance” ([1] p. 855), has been recognized as a strategic factor for the achievement of the firms’ sustainable development [2,3,4,5]
Decreasing high salesperson turnover rates is a key issue for many organizations [13,29]
Decreasing high salesperson turnover rates is a key issue for many organizations This paper analyzes how salespeople’s perception of socially responsible practices in[13,29]

Summary

Introduction

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) defined as “context-specific organizational actions and policies that take into account stakeholders’ expectations and the triple bottom line of economic, social, and environmental performance” ([1] p. 855), has been recognized as a strategic factor for the achievement of the firms’ sustainable development [2,3,4,5]. Despite growing interest in CSR studies, most research in this area has focused on the macro level [4,6]. Recent work in CSR literature e.g., [7,8] highlight the need for future studies to understand incumbent employee reactions to their perceptions of CSR. From a marketing point of view, organizations can implement CSR activities to influence consumers’ or salespeople’s attitudes and behaviors. There is a significant lack of evidence on how CSR affects salespeople’s attitudes and behaviors, with only a few studies analyzing such relationships e.g., [9,10]. The CSR and human resources literature has begun to analyze the micro-level effects of CSR, but it excludes salespeople

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