Does Field Managers’ Interactional Monitoring Style Asphyxiate or Stimulate Salespersons’ Performance? An Explanation Through Dual Mediation Process

Field management of the pharmaceutical salesforce is one of the key concerns for every market-oriented and profit-centered pharmaceutical firm. This study introduces one of the novel and parsimonious classifications of supervisors’ monitoring style, i.e., interactional monitoring. Theorizing the construct of a field manager’s interactional monitoring style devoid of every clue of its positive or negative associations is a matter of concern in the literature. There is also a lack of settlement between researchers on how divergent forms of monitoring styles may affect employees differently. Apparent varying conclusions may be partially because of the absence of a well-designed monitoring typology. The authors claim that the perception of a field manager’s interactional monitoring style may exert a distinctive effect on employee response in terms of performance. The authors propose that a field manager’s interactional monitoring style-sales performance linkage can be well understood by considering a salesperson’s emotional intelligence and interpersonal mentalizing skills. Guided by Social Exchange Theory, the authors proposed seven hypotheses and analyzed these hypothesized relationships in a pharmaceutical outbound sales context. Twenty multi-national and national pharmaceutical firms of Pakistan were selected as samples. Cross-sectional data were collected through a structured questionnaire to record the responses from three hundred and fifty respondents (salespeople). The findings of the study show that the emotional intelligence and interpersonal mentalizing skills of salespeople partially mediate the relationship between field managers’ monitoring style and salespersons’ performance. The insights achieved from this study offered applicable and important directions for the formulation of appropriate monitoring style at the field managers’ level as well as shed light on the extent to which a field manager’s interactional monitoring style impacts a salesperson’s performance.