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Salespersons represent an important and challenging set of employees for organizational management. Given frequently high autonomy levels and varied job roles, boundary spanning agents have ample opportunity and motivation to modify/ ignore organizational directives. Based on a multi-theoretical perspective, this research sets forth a three-dimensional conceptualization of directive modification intentions and develops and empirically tests a scale designed to better explain this phenomenon while empirically validating its occurrence. Results indicate that boundary spanners have three distinct and relatively stable motivations for modifying/ignoring organizational directives, including customer-, organization-, and self-focused motivations, and that each motivation may potentially relate differently to important antecedent and outcome variables. Managerial and theoretical implications are discussed.

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New product introductions are an important part of the success of many organizations, and they often hinge on the perceptions of the sales force.   In turn, much of sales person perceptions are derived from managerial guidance and input.  Although the extant literature has investigated some of the antecedents to the adoption of new products by salespeople, very little attention has been paid to the impact of the sales manager over this process.  Using elements of social information processing, this paper explores how sales managers can exert influence over new product adoption by their salespeople.

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