Salespeople Contribution to Innovation in the Firm: Can Generativity Be a Driving Force?

CAHIER DE RECHERCHE n°2014-04 E3This paper explores the role of salespeople’s concern for the well-being of futuregenerations—a phenomenon known as generativity—in driving otherwise busy salesmenand women to take part in their employer’s innovation process through idea generation,promotion, and realization (that is, their innovative performance). In addition, it exploreswhether or not said innovative performance translates into increased sales performance forsalespeople. Six hypotheses are derived from the extent literature and are empiricallytested with a sample of 145 professional salespeople. After controlling for other importantvariables, such as self-efficacy and expertise, our results confirm the positive influence ofgenerativity on two dimensions of innovative performance—idea promotion and idearealization (although only marginally for the latter)—but not on idea generation. In turn,the influence of salespeople’ innovative performance on their individual sales performanceis mitigated: Only idea promotion turns out to be a marginally significant predictor of salesperformance. These results are discussed in light of the apparent conflict of self-efficacywith our hypothesized generativity—innovative performance—sales performance chain