Moderating effect of power distance on relationship between sales training and performance

• Autor(a) principal: Guerra, Diego de Sousa
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional do FGV (FGV Repositório Digital)
• Texto Completo: https://hdl.handle.net/10438/31228
• topic: Sales training; Work engagement; Power distance; Organizational commitment; Turnover intention; Treinamento de vendas; Engajamento no trabalho; Distância de poder; Comprometimento organizacional; Intenção de sair; Administração de empresas; Vendedores - Treinamento; Venda; Satisfação no trabalho; Motivação no trabalho; Comprometimento organizacional

Companies around the world annually invest billions of dollars to train their sales force and provide them with knowledge and skills to improve and maintain the performance of their teams. Constant investments are needed due to the intense global business environment competitiveness and strong structural changes that have been taking place over the years. There is strong scientific evidence that sales training investments increase employee engagement and performance, jointly improving the company's performance metrics, although this evidence suggests that the relationship between investment and performance is not necessarily direct and linear. Scholars have investigated factors that increase training effectiveness, especially those linked to motivation and engagement. These studies are closely linked to the challenges faced by practitioners in organizations daily, which is to improve training efficiency, increasing financial metrics such as ROI and ROA. In this thesis, we investigate the cultural effect exerted by power distance on the relationships between sales training and other related practices (general training climate and performance appraisal satisfaction) towards work engagement and organizational performance metrics (organizational commitment and turnover intention). We conducted a survey with 266 sellers, with 176 sellers in the USA and 90 in Brazil. We proposed and tested a structural model based on the social exchange and job demands-resources theory in which training and development efforts impact work engagement and work engagement affects organizational outcomes. In the model, these relationships are moderated by power distance. To estimate the relationships proposed in the structural model, we performed partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), All metrics were operationalized as reflective, and the measurement model was estimated using the “factor” weighting scheme in SmatPLS 3.3.3. We attest to the reliability, convergent and discriminant validity of all constructs and dimensions of the model. The results showed that all HR practices influenced work engagement. We found that the power distance moderates the training satisfaction-work engagement ratio and the training satisfaction-turnover intention ratio. Additionally, power distance exerted a direct and negative influence on work engagement and organizational commitment and positive on turnover intention. Another relevant result is the mediation of organizational commitment in the work engagement-turnover intention relationship. The results confirm our thesis that power distance exerts a moderating effect between training, work engagement and organizational outcomes variables.