An Empirical Investigation of Perceptual Incongruence Between Sales Managers and Salespeople as to Sales Force Control System Application

This paper builds on the foundation laid by Oliver and Anderson (1994) and empirically tests their control instrument using two samples: sales managers and salespeople in three Canadian high-tech industries. The results reveal that the instrument is better suited to the salesperson sample and, as expected, the perceptions of salespeople and sales managers regarding the three-level control system - overall system, components and items - do effectively differ. There is no ambiguity as far as the first two levels are concerned. However, there is some agreement between both groups at the third level. Note that only the hypotheses expecting similar perceptions between the two groups do not bear out.
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