Antecedents to managerial trust and sales control in Malaysian salesforce

This study proposes and empirically tests an integrated framework investigating the antecedents to managerial trust and sales control in Malaysian salesforce. The theoretical framework of transaction cost analysis (TCA) serves as the main paradigm for suggesting that uncertainty is the basis for managers making decision to trust and/or use sales control to manage their salesforce. Sales managers from Malaysia were sampled to test hypotheses relating six uncertainty variables to managerial trust and sales control strategies. Our empirical evidence suggests that managerial trust plays an important mediating role in how Malaysian sales managers utilize sales control strategies to deal with uncertainty. The cultural implications for researchers and sales managers are discussed. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.