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A Social-Cognitive Approach To Salesperson Work Motivation, Lawrence Scott Silver

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to apply a social-cognitive model of motivation, used extensively in educational psychology, to a sales setting. The topic pertaining to work motivation and its importance is evidenced by the amount of research devoted to the topic. The literature examined for this study was selected from the fields of industrial/organizational psychology, educational psychology, and marketing/sales. Specifically, this study addressed the following research questions: (1) To what extent is salespeople's goal orientation determined by their implicit personality theory? (2) Do salespeople's goal orientation determine their behavior pattern? (3) Does optimism moderate the relationship between salespeople's implicit …