INFLUENCE OF ROLE STRESS ON INDUSTRIAL SALESPEOPLE WORK OUTCOMES IN THE UNITED-STATES, JAPAN, AND KOREA

Role theory espouses, and extensive empirical research has found, that role stress can have deleterious effects on work outcomes of sales personnel. The findings of these investigations, however, are predicated on U.S.-based samples of salespeople. Whether similar results would be obtained with samples of salespersons in other countries has not yet been determined. This paper reports the results of a study that examined the impact of role stress on performance, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment of industrial salespeople from the United States, Japan, and Korea. Tests of cross-national hypotheses indicate general consistency in the findings across the three countries.