Identifying aggressive versus ethical sales supervision in B2B service recovery: a multilevel perspective

Abstract

PurposeThe current research provides a conceptual framework that explains how sales managers' aggression across business-to-business (B2B) sales organizations triggers salespeople's surface acting, deep acting and service recovery performance. It also investigates the moderating role of ethical leadership through sales managers' aggressiveness on service recovery performance.Design/methodology/approachThe authors test the model using multilevel analysis with cross-sectional data of 367 salespeople from different sales organizations.FindingsThe study shows that the aggression of sales managers has an adverse influence on service recovery performance. Additionally, aggressiveness among sales managers is positively connected with surface acting while adversely affecting deep acting. The study’s findings also indicate that ethical sales leadership is positively moderate among sales managers' aggressiveness and service recovery performance.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors collected data from individual salespersons, which is the limitation; however, future studies could collect data using the dyadic approach, such as matching responses from both managers and salespersons. This method could enhance the model's internal validity.Originality/valueSeveral studies have mainly focused on positive supervision styles in the literature on service recovery. At the same time, building a negative supervision model in the B2B service recovery context, which has been persistently ignored, is noteworthy.