The impact of management commitment alignment on salespersons' adoption of sales force automation technologies: An empirical investigation

Marketing and information systems scholars have explored several factors that affect sales force automation (SEA) technology adoption In this study, we introduce a new antecedent to the SFA adoption model, management commitment alignment (MCA) We show that alignment between top management and immediate supervisors commitment to the SFA technology is an important factor in influencing SFA adoption Results show that while commitment from both leadership levels (perfect alignment) is the most conducive to SEA adoption. misaligned commitment conditions have differential effects on adoption Specifically, even when supervisors are committed to sales technology, lack of top management commitment can hurt SEA adoption Managerial implications of the findings and directions for future research are discussed (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved