The Dynamics of Intra-Organizational Sales Network

摘要

Considering the sales intra-organizational network, it is key to understand a particular dynamic status for two reasons. First, social networks are always evolving due to relational changes (Doreian and Stokman, 1997; Snidjers, 1996). Second, sales people have the need to adapt to the ever changing conditions of the environment and the firm (Geiger and Guenzi, 2009; Jones et al., 2005). The question then is: how does the social network of salespeople evolve over time? The aim of this paper is to contribute to the growing body of research on intra-organizational studies of sales management, investigating how the patterns of interaction amongst sales people may be expected to evolve over time. The analysis focuses on the structural and relational dynamics of networks. Our hypotheses uncover these two distinct levels of analysis, be the within salespeople (Hypotheses 1-4) and across networks (Hypotheses 5 and 6).