The outside Salesman: Interorganizational Link

Miner John B. , “Personality and Ability Factors in Sales Performance,” Journal of Applied Psychology, XLVI (1962), 6–13.

McGarry Edmund D. , “the Contactual Function in Marketing,” Bliss Perry , ed., Marketing and the Behavioral Sciences (Boston, Mass.: Allyn and Bacon, 1963), pp. 374–400. McGarry suggests that selling is essentially patterned interaction: “The contactual relationship between buyers and sellers is essentially a human relationship, and, because of this, the function is most effectively carried out on a person-to-person basis” (p. 378). Evans F. B. , “Selling As a Dyadic Relationship—A New Approach,” The American Behavioral Scientist, May 1963, pp. 76–79. Evans notes that selling includes a process of patterned interaction: “… the ‘sale’ is a social situation involving two persons. The interaction of the two persons, in turn, depends upon the economic, social, physical, and personality characteristics of each of them” (p. 76). (Note: The salesman engages in “selling,” while the purchaser engages in “buying,” although one usually implies the other.)

Chester I. Barnard argues for including the customer within the social system boundaries of a business organization in Organization and Management (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1948), chap. 5, “Concepts of Organization.”

Dubin Robert , The World of Work: Industrial Society and Human Relations (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1958), chaps. 2–5, furnishes part of a theory of organization which I have borrowed from extensively. The reader is urged to consult this work for a more comprehensive treatment of the concepts presented here.

Landmark discussions of power, authority, and status have been written by Bierstedt, Simon, and Barnard. See Bierstedt Robert , “Power and Social Organization,” in Dubin Robert , ed., Human Relations in Administration (2nd ed.; Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1961), pp. 237–261; Simon Herbert A. , “Authority,” in Dubin , ed., Human Relations in Administration (3rd ed.; Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1968), pp. 279–285; Barnard Chester I. , “Functions of Status Systems in Formal Organizations,” in ibid., pp. 302–314.

Levine Sol White Paul E. , “Exchange as a Conceptual Framework for the Study of Interorganizational Relationships,” Administrative Science Quarterly, V:4 (March 1961), 588.

Landsberger Henry A. , “The Horizontal Dimension in Bureaucracy,” Administrative Science Quarterly, VI:1 (June 1961), 300.

Tucker W. T. , The Social Context of Economic Behavior (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964), pp. 88–92. Tucker refers to this as “hierarchic protocols.”

Landsberger . op. cit.

Lorsch Jay W. , Product Innovation and Organization (New York: MacMillan Company, 1965).

Strauss George , “Work-Flow-Frictions, Interfunctional Rivalry, and Professionalism: A Case Study of Purchasing Agents,” Human Organization, XXIII:2 (Summer 1964), 137–149.

Ibid., 141.

“Sell Value Added-Sell More,” Industrial Distribution, LV:8 (August 1965), 46.

Ibid., 47.

Philip Van Ness , “Systems Contracting: New Way to Sell Value Added,” Industrial Distribution, LV:8 (August 1965), 42–45.

Ibid., 45.

Simon Herbert A. , The New Science of Management Decision (New York: Harper & Row, 1960). Simon would call critical decisions “nonprogrammed decisions.”

For an example of how far production will give into a salesman's non-formal requests, see the case report on “Gregory Pellham,” in Dubin , ed. Human Relations in Administration (2nd ed.), pp. 523–525.

Ditz Gerhard W. , “Status Problems of the Salesman,” MSU Business Topics, XV:1 (Winter 1967), 68–80.

Mason John L. , “The Low Prestige of Personal Selling,” Journal of Marketing, XXIX:4 (Oct. 1965), 7–10.

Wittreich Warren J. , “Misunderstanding the Retailer,” Harvard Business Review, May-June, 1962, pp. 147–159.

Dubin , Human Relations in Administration (3rd ed.), pp. 56, 319–320.

Roethlisberger Fritz J. , “The Foreman: Master and Victim of Double-talk,” Harvard Business Review, Spring, 1945, pp. 285–294.

For more recent theorizing and research on salesmen as men-in-the-middle, see Ditz Gerhard W. , “The Internal-External Dichotomy in Business Organizations,” Industrial Management Review, VI:1 (Fall 1964), 51–57; Kahn Robert L. , et al., Organizational Stress: Studies in Role Conflict and Ambiguity (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1964).

“Caught in the Middle,” Industrial Distribution, LV:1 (Jan. 1965), 107–110.

Goffman Erving , The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1959). Goffman stresses the necessity of consistent impression management which is needed to maintain the bond between salesman and customer: “… the impression of reality fostered by a performance is a delicate, fragile thing that can be shattered by very minor mishaps” (p. 56).

Dubin , ed., Human Relations in Administration (3rd ed.), pp. 297–299, 317–320.

Likert Rensis , New Patterns of Management (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961).