The Influence of Salesperson Depression, Low Performance, and Emotional Exhaustion on Negative Organizational Deviance

A total of 232 business-to-business salespeople were surveyed regarding factors that may influence workplace deviance behavior. Results reveal that salesperson depression and low salesperson performance are directly and positively associated with negative organizational deviance behavior. Low salesperson performance is partially mediated with depression while emotional exhaustion is fully mediated with depression. Several major managerial implications are realized. First, negative organizational workplace deviance appears to be associated with a range of factors including behavioral (e.g., low performance), emotional (e.g., emotional exhaustion), and psychological (e.g., depression) conditions. Second, preventing or managing such workplace deviance may be particularly challenging to organizations because these factors may be difficult to identify by sales managers, easy to hide by salespeople, or even resemble other unrelated conditions not necessarily associated with negative organizational workplace deviance. Third, organizations must be diligent to train sales managers to be alert for such employee symptoms, create an organizational culture that facilitates both communicating with and helping/supporting salespeople who may experience these factors, and enact policies that further prevent such negative deviance factors without infringing on employee rights or their sense of personal privacy. Fourth, a number of suggestions are offered for improving low sales performance.