THE IMPACT OF VALUES ON SALESPEOPLE JOB RESPONSES - A CROSS-NATIONAL INVESTIGATION

Although prior research has considered the impact of individuals' valu es on employee job responses, few investigations have been directed to ward assessing how values influence salespeople and none of the invest igations has been cross-national. This article presents a values typol ogy derived from social psychology and uses it to examine the impact o f values on three critical job responses of sales personnel: job perfo rmance, organizational commitment, and motivation. The typology compri ses seven value domains: Enjoyment, security, achievement, self-direct ion, restrictive conformity, prosocial behavior, and maturity. Data we re gathered from a survey of U.S. and Japanese field salespersons in t he electronics industry. The seven value domains are hypothesized to b e selectively related to the jab responses under investigation. Moreov er, the enjoyment, achievement, and self-direction domains are posited to have a stronger relationship with the job responses in the U.S. th an in the Japanese sample. Security, restrictive conformity, and proso cial behavior domains are posited to have a stronger association with the jab responses in the Japanese than in the U.S. sample. No differen ce between the two samples is hypothesized for the maturity/job respon se linkages. The findings, some of which were unexpected, indicate tha t values have some influence on the three job responses in the two sam ples. Few differences, though, were found between U.S. and Japanese sa lespeople. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Inc.