Many sales managers foster competition to raise motivation and performance among salespeople (Krishnan et al. 2002). Competition-stimulating tactics include recruiting competitive salespeople and administering sales contests (Syam et al. 2013). In addition, salespeople compete amongst themselves for compensation, promotion, recognition, and status. Thus, intra-firm competition manifests at both individual and organizational levels. The former refers to personal characteristics (e.g., trait competitiveness) and the latter to company characteristics (e.g., competitive psychological climate). Unfortunately, research on the effects of these variables on the sales force remains equivocal. For example, the relationship between trait competitiveness and sales performance has been directly positive (Brown and Peterson 1994), non-significant (Brown et al. 1998), and only indirectly positive (Krishnan et al. 2002). At the same time, competitive psychological climate research remains scarce. Although Brown et al. (1998) revealed its relationship with ambitious goal setting, we know little of its sales performance influence.

In contrast, research on organizational commitment in sales is plentiful and the construct is central to many sales research models (e.g., Chonko 1986; Sager and Johnston 1989). However, research is limited regarding trait competitiveness and competitive psychological climate’s role as antecedents to organizational commitment. Organizational commitment refers to “an individual’s identifying with the organization’s goals and values, a willingness to put forth effort for the organization, and a desire to remain in the employ of the organization (Sager and Johnston 1989, p. 31).” This commitment influences in-role behaviors, extra-role behaviors (Jaramillo et al. 2005; MacKenzie et al. 1998), and turnover intentions (Bashaw and Grant 1994). Extant literature centers on job-related antecedents to organizational commitment including burnout (Hollet-Haudebert et al. 2011), ethical conflict (Schwepker 1999), performance evaluations (Pettijohn et al. 2000), and job satisfaction (Sager and Johnston 1989). This research gap leaves questions as to how competitiveness and commitment work in combination to influence sales performance.

The overarching goal of this study is to extend the competitiveness work of Brown et al. (1998). First, we highlight competitive psychological climate’s moderating effects on the trait competitiveness–performance relationship and help explain previous inconsistent findings. Second, we shed light on the impacts of trait competitiveness and competitive psychological climate on three facets of organizational commitment. Third, we explore the interactive effects of continuance commitment on the affective commitment–performance relationship. Taken together, we reveal an interesting process in which individual and organizational competitiveness impact performance both directly and indirectly through the facets of organizational commitment.

1 Background and hypotheses

1.1 Interaction between trait competitiveness and competitive psychological climate

Successful salespeople are born and made (Johnston and Marshall 2013). Thus, sales managers evaluate traits with tests, interviews, and references (e.g., Cron et al. 2005). Simultaneously, sales organizations invest in motivation and training programs to create high-performance environments. Personal characteristics and organizational climate perceptions both influence salesperson attitudes, behaviors, and performance (e.g., Krafft 1999; Singh 1993). Here, we investigate competitiveness both as a trait and as a perception of organizational climate.

Trait competitiveness refers to “the enjoyment of interpersonal competition and the desire to win and be better than others” (Spence and Helmreich 1983, p. 41). Croner and Abraham (2008) suggested that competitive salespeople are hard-wired to be the best and liken them to racehorses—always comparing their performance to others. Higher performance is expected from competitive salespeople due to an inner fire, hard work, and a strong desire to win the sale (Croner and Abraham 2008). Nonetheless, empirical results are mixed: Wang and Netemeyer (2002) showed that trait competitiveness has a significant and positive influence on sales performance, but other studies do not corroborate (Brown et al. 1998; Krishnan et al. 2002). To explain these inconsistent effects of trait competitiveness on sales performance, we model competitive psychological climate as a moderator.

Brown et al. (1998) defined competitive psychological climate as “the degree to which employees perceive organizational rewards to be contingent on comparisons of their performance against that of their peers (p. 89).” Conscious of these comparisons, salespeople become more sensitive and concerned about their own contributions. Concern for social comparisons can motivate salespeople to work harder towards a goal (Festinger 1954). Extending Spence and Helmreich’s (1983) suggestion that highly competitive salespeople work harder given performance comparisons, we anticipate an amplified effect in highly competitive climates. Organizational psychologists suggest that a personality and environmental-perception interaction explains significant, incremental performance variance (Caldwell and O'Reilly 1990; Holland 1985). Consistent with the value congruity effect (Enz 1988), sales research suggests that when personalities match organizational characteristics, performance improves (e.g., Chonko 1986). When salespeople perceive consistency between personal and organizational values, they are more likely to internalize organizational beliefs and missions. A social identification process facilitates this internalization and motivates individuals to work on behalf of the organization (Ashforth and Mael 1996).

Oppositely, when personal values are inconsistent with organizational climates, role conflict likely develops (e.g., Chonko and Burnett 1983). Role conflict’s negative outcomes include decreased job satisfaction (Brown and Peterson 1994) and performance (MacKenzie et al. 1998). Research shows that employee “fit” has positive performance outcomes (e.g., Kristof-Brown et al. 2005). Extending logically, we anticipate that trait-environment “misfit” impacts performance negatively. The aforementioned reasoning suggests that (H1) (a) the relationship between trait competitiveness and sales performance is positive when competitive psychological climate is high and (b) negative when competitive psychological climate is low.

1.2 Competitiveness as antecedent to organizational commitment

According to Allen and Meyer (1990), organizational commitment has three dimensions: affective, normative, and continuance commitment. Affective commitment “refers to the employee’s emotional attachment to, identification with, and involvement in the organization (p. 1).” Normative commitment “reflects a feeling of obligation to continue employment (p. 1).” Continuance commitment “refers to an awareness of the costs associated with leaving the organization (p. 1).” This three-dimensional framework captures employees’ perceptions that they want to (affective), ought to (normative), or need to (continuance) stay.

Personal selling is naturally a competitive profession in which one salesperson’s success can mean another’s failure. This type of zero-sum game adds to the anxiety and frustration stemming from frequent rejection and boundary-spanner role stress. Consistent with prior research linking personal characteristics (e.g., trait optimism; Nonis and Sager 2003) to salesperson coping strategies, we expect that highly competitive salespeople will be more capable of coping with the stress of selling and will identify with a competitive sales job, developing stronger affective and normative attachments to the sales organization. This suggests positive relationships between trait competitiveness and affective and normative organizational commitment. Conversely, employees with high continuance commitment make a calculated, reluctant decision to stay because they perceive a “need to,” given high switching costs and/or worse alternatives (Meyer and Allen 1991; Commeiras and Fournier 2001). We suggest this mindset contradicts competitive salespeople’s winning spirit. We expect that highly competitive salespeople will tolerate risk and leave before reluctantly staying. Consequently, salespeople with high trait competitiveness should be less likely to develop a continuance commitment. These arguments suggest that (H2) trait competitiveness is positively related to (a) affective commitment and (b) normative commitment, but is (c) negatively related to continuance commitment.

In addition to traits, strong cultures also impact salesperson behavior and firm success (e.g., Chonko et al. 2002; Wiener 1988). Organizational culture’s influence on behavior stems from “the pattern of shared values and beliefs that help individuals understand organizational functioning and thus provide them norms for behavior in the organization (Deshpande and Webster 1989, p. 4).” Barnes et al. (2006) showed that strong cultures can stimulate salespeople’s organizational commitment. We believe that highly competitive climates reflect strong competitive values and culture. Thus, the extent to which salespeople perceive their environment as competitive likely reflects cultural strength and creates organizational connectedness (Ashforth and Mael 1996). According to Barnes et al. (2006), salespeople who share a relevant mission and beliefs are more likely to develop emotional attachments to their organization. Reciprocity suggests that these salespeople will feel more obligated to act on the organization’s behalf. Accordingly, we expect positive relationships between competitive psychological climate and affective and normative organizational commitment. Conversely, we anticipate negative effects of competitive psychological climate on continuance commitment. Salespeople should be “drawn to, and advance within, settings that suit their profiles (Hambrick 2007, p. 338).” Thus, we assume salespeople exerting only the effort needed to meet minimal standards for maintaining employment (i.e., those with a continuance commitment mindset) will ultimately select away from environments that they perceive as competitive (Brown et al. 1998; Meyer and Allen 1991), reducing continuance commitment in highly competitive climates. Therefore, we expect that (H3) competitive psychological climate is positively related to (a) affective commitment and (b) normative commitment, but is (c) negatively related to continuance commitment.

1.3 Interaction between affective commitment and continuance commitment

We are also interested in understanding how two of the three dimensions of organizational commitment (affective and continuance commitment) interact to produce differing levels of sales performance. One would expect that affective commitment would be positively associated with sales performance while continuance commitment would be negatively related to sales performance (Meyer and Allen 1991; Hackett et al. 1994). However, how these two components interact as antecedents to sales performance is less apparent. Prior research investigating the interactive effects of affective and continuance commitment yields inconsistent results. For instance, in one study, Meyer et al. (1989), moderation was found with one methodological approach (subgroup analysis), but not with another (multiple regression). We expect that the highest performing salespeople will show high affective commitment and low continuance commitment, consistent with the subgroup analysis of Meyer et al. (1989). We, therefore, anticipate that the “need-to-stay” mindset and the “do-the-minimum” effort from continuance commitment should suppress the benefits that come from a “desire-to-stay” mindset associated with affective commitment. In other words, continuance commitment’s negative effects on performance will attenuate affective commitment’s positive effects. Thus, consistent with prior research showing interactive effects of the commitment components (Randall et al. 1990), we expect that (H4) increasing levels of continuance commitment will decrease the positive effect of affective commitment on sales performance.

2 Method, analysis and results

Survey data were combined with company records to test the hypotheses. Salesperson responsibilities in the sample include selling human resource services. A marketing research firm collected a matched sample of 117 observations (21 % response rate) under the authors’ direction.

The dependent variable, performance, is measured as sales from company recordsFootnote 1. Brown et al. (1998) scales are used to measure trait competitiveness and competitive psychological climate, each containing four Likert-type items. It is important to note that competitive psychological climate is an individual, salesperson-level perception of his or her organization’s climate and can be expected to vary within an organization based on the personal interpretation of each salesperson (Glick 1985). Organizational commitment items were adapted from Meyer et al. (1993) scales. See Table 1 for descriptive statistics.

Table 1 Intercorrelations and descriptive statistics
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A five-factor confirmatory factor analysis model showed satisfactory fit (χ 2 = 113.77 (df = 109); CFI = 0.99; TLI = 0.99; NFI = 0.88; RMSEA = 0.019). All items loaded on intended factors; standardized loadings were significant, exceeding 0.50; and alphas exceeded 0.70.

2.1 Hypothesis testing

2.1.1 Main effect results

We used summated indicators of each construct in the SEM analyses. This method is common when handling a large number of variables (relative to sample size), and the results are presented parsimoniously (Brown and Peterson 1994). Four non-significant paths (H2c, H3a, H3b, and normative commitment to performance) were tested in the complete model, but removed to more accurately and parsimoniously represent the data (Brown and Peterson 1994). Table 2 shows acceptable fit (χ 2 = 4.43 (df = 4); CFI = 0.99; TLI = 0.98; NFI = 0.95; and RMSEA = 0.031).

Table 2 Structural equation modeling results
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Results show that trait competitiveness is positively associated with affective commitment and normative commitment, but has no significant relationship with continuance commitment—supporting H2a and H2b, but not H2c. Competitive psychological climate has a negative relationship with continuance commitment as expected, but fails to show a significant relationship with either affective commitment or normative commitment—supporting H3c, but not H3a or H3b. Both affective commitment and normative commitment have no significant direct effect on sales performance. Continuance commitment’s direct relationship with performance is negative. Given the moderate sample size, we assess the stability of the estimates with bootstrapping and find no standard errors deviate from the maximum likelihood estimates.

2.1.2 Interaction results

The hypothesized interactions were tested using hierarchical regression in a three-stage approach (see Table 3). Stage 1 (main effects) shows that positive, direct relationships exist between both competitive constructs and performance, but only continuance commitment has a direct relationship with performance among the commitment variables. In subsequent stages, we added interaction terms and examined the change in R2 (all predictor variables were mean-centered to minimize multicollinearity) following Aiken and West (1991).

Table 3 Hierarchical regression results
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Adding the trait competitiveness by competitive psychological climate interaction (H1) in Stage 2 significantly improves R2, and the coefficient is significant and positive. Adding the affective commitment by continuance commitment interaction (H4) in Stage 3 significantly improves R2, and the coefficient is significant and negative. The simple slope analyses below reveals the nature of these interactions.

2.2 Simple slopes analyses

In this analysis, we examine trait competitiveness regression weights at one standard deviation above and below the mean of competitive psychological climate (Aiken and West 1991). Consistent with H1a, the relationship between trait competitiveness and sales performance is positive and significant when competitive psychological climate is high (β = 0.43, p < 0.01). However, when competitive psychological climate is low, the relationship between trait competitiveness and sales performance (H1b) is negative, but not significant (β = −0.08, [ns]), partially supporting H1. Similar analysis shows that affective commitment’s effect on sales performance is positive when continuance commitment is low (β = 0.39, p < 0.05), but non-significant when continuance commitment is high (β = −0.16, [ns.]), supporting H4.

3 Discussion, managerial implications, and future research

Taken together, our findings reveal that trait competitiveness has both a direct and indirect path to positively impact performance. Its direct path to performance is enhanced when the salesperson senses a highly competitive psychological climate. However, with low levels of competitive psychological climate, this positive, direct path between trait competitiveness and performance disappears. These findings show the first important function of building a competitive psychological climate—it enhances the performance of competitive salespeople.

Further managerial insights were also revealed as organizational commitment is introduced into the model showing an indirect path between trait competitiveness and performance through affective commitment. Our results show that trait competitiveness has a positive relationship with affective commitment, but varying levels of continuance commitment mask the expected positive impacts of affective commitment on performance. Examining this interaction reveals that as continuance commitment increases, the positive impact of affective commitment on performance is negated such that only under low levels of continuance commitment will affective commitment maintain its positive effects on performance. Furthermore, while we did not hypothesize the direct relationship between continuance commitment and performance, we tested it and found a significant and negative relationship. Together, these findings highlight a second important function of fostering a competitive psychological climate—it decreases continuance commitment and its negative consequences (i.e., its attenuation of affective commitment’s performance benefits as well as its direct negative relationship with performance).

Broadly, these findings underscore the joint importance of personal characteristics and organizational characteristics in explaining performance (Simon 1997). Specifically, we show that the positive relationship between trait competitiveness and sales performance exists only when salespeople perceive a competitive organizational climate. This helps explain conflicting results in prior research regarding trait competitiveness and performance, i.e., the effect is contingent upon the existence of a perceived competitive climate. We also show that managers can reduce the harmful effects of continuance commitment by creating a more competitive environment. Ultimately, we recommend that sales managers actively recruit salespeople with high trait competitiveness while fostering a competitive organization climate. Simultaneous attention to both areas should produce the best results.

No single study provides comprehensive managerial insight. As such, we suggest future studies investigate how these findings fit into the nomological net currently being built by researchers around sales force competitiveness. For example, Shannahan et al. (2013) provide an interesting path forward for this research in investigating transformational leadership’s role with trait competitiveness. We believe that future research could make significant contributions by examining competitive psychological climate’s impact alongside transformational leadership and other sales management tactics.We also acknowledge that an overly competitive climate may have diminishing returns at some point, which could undermine camaraderie among the sales force. Future research in this area would be beneficial.