How can managers promote salespeople’s person-job fit?

Abstract

Purpose – This paper aims to examine the impact of salespeople’s subjective person-job fit on the salespeople’s intention to quit. Moreover, this study further investigates how the subjective person – job fit could be influenced by the cooperative learning and support in the organization. Person-job fit is an important issue for salespeople’s career development. However, the antecedents of salespeople’s person-job fit seem to have been under-investigated in the management literature. Design/methodology/approach – A questionnaire survey is used as a research instrument, and Taiwan’s full-time life insurance salespeople took part in the investigation. The hypotheses were tested by using partial least squares and structural equation modeling tool (SmartPLS 2.0). Findings – The results confirmed that poor subjective person-job fit would significantly increase the salespeople’s intention to quit. Yet, the results also suggested that cooperative learning and organizational support are the mechanisms that reduce this problem. Originality/value – This study provided the initial discussions about the effect of cooperative learning and organizational support on the salespeople’s subjective person-job fit.