Examining gender differences in field sales organizations

The vapid increase of women in the sales world has brought about debates on the role of gender in contemporary sales organizations. The hey question i s whether gender differences, in and of themselves, create different attitu dinal and behavioral relationships. A small but expanding stream of researc h and the expanded participation of women in many lines of business questio n whether the traditional position of differences based on gender is valid today. A conceptual basis is developed in support of no differences based o n gender and hypotheses are developed to Lest this premise across several c onstructs that have been found important in sales management research. This research examines a Fortune 500 international service organization with a salesforce that is gender balanced. The results indicate few significant di fferences between genders. A gender classification scheme is proposed based on a gender balance in the sales force and customer base. Results ave disc ussed and compared to previous studies. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.