The role of sales team intragroup conflict on critical job outcomes

Abstract

Sales teams are often structured into groups by territories, product categories, or hierarchical levels of salespeople which provide support to one another while counter-intuitively competing for individual resources, rewards, and promotions. We posit that the impact of conflict within the sales team (sales team intragroup conflict) on critical individual-level job outcomes (job satisfaction and intent to turnover) is contingent upon two loci of influences: individually-influenced goal orientations (learning and performance) and managerially-influenced justice perceptions (procedural and distributive). We empirically examine sales team intragroup conflict through a primary data collection of 195 distributor salespeople organized into 20 geographically dispersed teams. Our results largely support our hypotheses that there are nuanced effects across the loci of influences, such that in conflict-laden environments, having a performance orientation or perception of organizational distributive justice enhance job satisfaction, while a perception of organizational procedural justice decreases job satisfaction. Thus, we answer the call to better understand the role of conflict in marketing exchanges.