The impact of values on salespeople's job responses: A cross-national investigation

Although prior research has considered the impact of individuals' values on employee job responses, few investigations have been directed toward assessing how values influence salespeople and none of the investigations has been cross-national. This article presents a values typology derived from social psychology and uses it to examine the impact of values on three critical job responses of sales personnel: job performance, organizational commitment, and motivation. The typology comprises seven value domains: enjoyment, security, achievement, self-direction, restrictive conformity, prosocial behavior, and maturity. Data were gathered from a survey of U.S. and Japanese field salespersons in the electronics industry. The seven value domains are hypothesized to be selectively related to the job responses under investigation. Moreover, the enjoyment, achievement, and self-direction domains are posited to have a stronger relationship with the job responses in the U.S. than in the Japanese sample. Security, restrictive conformity, and prosocial behavior domains are posited to have a stronger association with the job responses in the Japanese than in the U.S. sample. No difference between the two samples is hypothesized for the maturity/job response linkages. The findings, some of which were unexpected, indicate that values have some influence on the three job responses in the two samples. Few differences, though, were found between U.S. and Japanese salespeople. J BUSN RES 1997. 39.195-208