Salespeople's knowledge-sharing behaviors with coworkers outside the sales unit

Managers and academics alike acknowledge that salespeople can play a pivotal role in intraorganizational knowledge-sharing behaviors with coworkers outside the sales unit (i.e., finance, engineering, production, design, etc.). To this end, this study contributes to the extant sales literature by delineating how and under what conditions salespeople's knowledge-sharing behaviors are motivated. The study reports two sets of findings that contribute to the sales literature. First, in response to a strong autonomy climate, self-efficacy and coworker relationship quality mediate the relationship between autonomy climate strength and knowledge-sharing behaviors. Second, drawing on situational strength theory, the research finds that knowledge-sharing behaviors benefit from coworker relationship quality under weak but not strong norms. The hypotheses are tested by employing a multilevel modeling technique that uses a sample of 222 salespeople from 38 organizations. Implications for sales theory and practice are discussed.