ORGANIZATIONAL CITIZENSHIP BEHAVIOR AND OBJECTIVE PRODUCTIVITY AS DETERMINANTS OF MANAGERIAL EVALUATIONS OF SALESPERSONS PERFORMANCE

This study investigates the effects of "organizational citizenship behaviors" (Organ, 1988a,b) and objective sales productivity on managers' evaluations of salespersons' performance. Three objective measures of weekly productivity (number of policies, total commissions, and the percentage of quota reached) were obtained for a primary sample of 259 multiline insurance agents, as well as a cross-validation sample of 113 agents. Also obtained for these agents was an evaluation of four dimensions of organizational citizenship behaviors (altruism, civic virtue, courtesy, and sportsmanship), and a managerial assessment of their performance. Covariance structure analysis indicated that managers' subjective evaluations of salespersons' performance are determined as much by the salespersons' altruism and civic virtue as by objective productivity levels in the primary sample. Similar results were also obtained in the validation sample. Moreover, these findings were robust to the effects of common method biases. The implications of these findings for our understanding of the determinants of managerial evaluations of performance are then discussed. © 1991.