Does information and communication technology improve job satisfaction? The moderating role of sales technology orientation

a r t i c l e i n f o Empirical research concerning the role of information and communication technology (ICT) in shaping business-to-business salesforce job satisfaction remains relatively scarce. The authors propose and empirically test a causal model that theoretically represents structural relationships among factors comprising ICT and eventual salesper-son job satisfaction. Study results indicate that ICT indirectly influences job satisfaction through salesforce administrative performance. While ICT infrastructure, training, and support positively relate to administrative performance, none of them influence outcome performance significantly. In addition, salesperson technology orientation moderates the effect of both ICT infrastructure and support on job satisfaction. Managerial insights and implications from the research are discussed. Firms continue to invest substantial resources in information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure, training, and support with the hope of enhancing the capabilities of their salesforce. Modern technology augments business-to-business (B2B) salesforce activities with better ICTs than ever before. Information technology is fundamental to a firm's growth and represents a primary tool for enhancing B2B salesforce performance. Research shows that communication technologies enhance salesforce activities including employing market intelligence, managing their customer contacts, submitting sales call reports, and developing sales forecasts (Gohmann, Guan, Barker, & Faulds, 2005). While the sales literature contains a fair amount of research on adoption and usage of information technology applications , the role that ICTs play in shaping salesperson job satisfaction remains understudied. The current study presents unique contributions to sales technology literature in four distinct ways. First, an extensive literature provides evidence concerning sales technologies including salesforce automation (SFA) and customer relationship management (CRM). SFA involves the use of computer hardware and software applications to convert manual sales activities to electronic processes (2012) argue that today's salespeople use a wide range of technologies that may go beyond the classification as either CRM or SFA. Therefore, Hunter and Perreault (2006; 2007) coin the term sales technology (ST) as a broader concept including all information technologies salespeople use in performing the selling function. However, this definition does not explicitly describe just what all the various technologies might be. Similarly , others (Erffmeyer & Johnson, 2001; Honeycutt, 2005) argue that SFA refers to different things to different people or firms. For example, one organization may deem a tablet computer as an SFA tool, but another may not. These definitions focus on " information technologies " and do not address the more general case of " communication …