How agency and self-efficacy moderate the effects of strategic improvisational behaviors on sales performance: Evidence from an emerging market

Abstract

This study develops and tests arguments that improvisation is not universal in its benefits for the firm, but rather its multidimensional characteristics (action orientation, creativity, and spontaneity) hold differential performance effects. The study further examines whether these relationships are contingent upon individual agency and self-efficacy. Drawing on primary data from industrial sales account managers in Ghana, the study finds that an increasing level of action-orientation is associated with decreases in perceived sales performance and the decrease in performance is more pronounced under conditions of stronger sense of agency and self-efficacy. Similarly, an increasing level of creativity is associated with decreases in perceived sales performance when agency is stronger. However, an increasing level of spontaneity is associated with increases in performance and this increase is strengthened under conditions of stronger sense of self-efficacy. The study concludes that the effect of strategic improvisation on sales performance outcome within the context of an emerging economy (such as Ghana) is more nuanced than established improvisation literature suggests.