Managing ambiguity: salesperson bricolage behavior and its organizational determinants

Abstract

Bricolage – a term that implies resourcefulness – is a construct with a long history in anthropology, design, management, and entrepreneurship, among other fields. Our study is one of the first to apply the bricolage concept to better understand the behaviors of salespeople. Overall, findings from our multi-study, multi-method approach (combining survey methodology and a scenario-based experiment with video manipulations) indicate that salesperson bricolage behaviors are desirable and can be developed in a sales force. More specifically, in Study 1, we leverage Job Demands-Resources Theory and survey data from 405 business-to-business (B2B) salespeople and find that salesperson bricolage behaviors can effectively mitigate the predictably negative impacts of role ambiguity on sales performance. In Study 2, we leverage Self-Determination Theory and an experimental design with 181 B2B salespeople and provide initial evidence regarding salesperson bricolage behaviors’ organizational determinants (i.e. sales force control system combinations). Study 2 indicates that capability control interacted synergistically with outcome control and antagonistically with activity control in predicting bricolage behaviors. Taken together, findings from the two studies indicate that bricolage behaviors are both beneficial and manageable, warranting continued study in the sales literature.

Keywords:

• Bricolage
• sales force control systems
• role ambiguity
• Job Demands-Resource Theory
• Self-Determination Theory
• video scenario-based experiment

Declaration of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.