An application of personal construct theory to a study of retail sales person effectiveness
The term effectiveness is used extensively to describe organisations, groups and individuals. The fact that some organisations, groups and individuals are measurably more effective than others is a basic assumption of economic, organisation and behavioural theory. However, despite this frequent use, there is very little agreement amongst the users, both academic and business, as to what exactly 'effectiveness' means. The dictionary definition of 'effective' is 'capable of producing the desired result', however, the definition used in practice appears to depend on the mindset or reference point of the researcher. Most researchers reference point is management and therefore the definition of effectiveness is management's. It is possible that the definitions held by the job holders themselves, and by customers with whom they deal, are different from that of management. There is even less agreement on how effectiveness of an organisation or individual should be measured, i.e. what criteria should be used to measure effectiveness. More specific to the current study is sales person effectiveness research. There has been a large amount of research on effectiveness of sales people but it has tended to focus on industrial salespeople rather than retail salespeople. The research that has focused on retail sales people has suffered from several problems. The first relates to the problems with research involving effectiveness generally. The researchers rarely explain what they mean by effectiveness or what criteria they use to measure effectiveness. Much of this research also suffers methodologically, from the epistemological problem of being either too subjective or too objective. This is a problem that has plagued research in the social sciences throughout the subject's history. The methodologies used to research behaviour have been problematic in that they either adopt the methodologies of the natural sciences.in an attempt to quantify the phenomenon under study, or they use assumptions and methodologies that are subjective and prone to researcher or experimental bias. George Kelly's Personal Construct Theory claims to bridge this epistemological divide. The methodology allows for the indepth study of individuals but without bias from the researcher. By using the Repertory Grid technique developed by Kelly for the measurement of personal constructs, the results can be quantified, thus also satisfying the objectivist requirements. It is for this reason that Personal Construct Theory and the Repertory Grid technique are used in the current research. This research aims to discover whether the groups involved in the retail arena (i.e. top managers, branch manageresses, sales people and customers) have similar views of what constitutes sales person effectiveness.
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