ELSEVIER The Job Impact of Values on Salespeople's Responses: A Cross-National Investigation Alan J. Dubinsky METROPOLITAN STATE UNIVERSITY Masaaki Kotabe UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS Chae Un Lim SOGANG UNIVERSITY William Wagner UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI Although prior research has considered the impact of individuals' values on employee job responses, few investigations have been directed toward assessing how values influence salespeople and none of the investigations has been cross-national. This article presents a values typology derived from social psychology and uses it to examine the impact of values on three critical job responses of sales personnel: job performance, organizational commitment, and motivation. The typology comprises seven value do- mains: enjoyment, security, achievement, self-direction, restrictive confor- mity, prosocial behavior, and maturity. Data were gathered from a survey of U.S. and Japanese field salespersons in the electronics industry. The seven value domains are hypothesized to be selectively related to the job responses under investigation. Moreover, the enjoyment, achievement, and self-direction domains are posited to have a stronger relationship with the job responses in the U.S. than in the Japanese sample. Security, restrictive conformity, and prosocial behavior domains are posited to have a stronger association with the job responses in the Japanese than in the U.S. sample. No difference between the two samples is hypothesized for the maturity~job response linkages. The findings, some of which were unexpected, indicate that values have some influence on the three job responses in the two samples. Few differences, though, werefound between U.S. andJapanesesalespeople. JBUSNRES 1997.39.195-208 © 1997 Elsevier Science Inc. T he cultural milieus in which U.S. and Japanese employ- ees find themselves are decidedly different. Indeed, these two nations are regarded as uniquely distinct on a cultural continuum (Hall, 1976). A distinguishing feature Address correspondence to Alan J. Dubinsky, Metropolitan State Univer- sity, College of Management, 730 Hennepin Avenue, Minneapolis, MN 55403-1897. E-maih dubinsky@msusl.msus.edu Journal of Business Research 39, 195-208 (1997) © 1997 Elsevier Science Inc. 655 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10010 of the culture of these two countries is their value system (Alston, 1989; Ouchi, 1981). Prior research has found that the value orientations of the United States and Japan are dissimilar (Ronen and Shenkar, 1985). Given this dissimilarity in values, an interesting and impor- tant question for sales managers is whether values have a differential effect on U.S. and Japanese sales personnel vis-/:- vis performance, organizational commitment, and motivation (three key job responses [Churchill, Ford, and Walker, 1993]). An answer to this question is virtually nonexistent, yet critical, because sales organizations have become and are likely to continue to become multi-cultural (e.g., Alston, 1989; West, 1989) as companies move into foreign markets. This multicul- tural phenomenon will require U.S. and Japanese sales manag- ers to be adaptive to their host country environments. Failure to be accommodative may well result in reduced managerial influence because of the inherent culture employees bring to their jobs (Adler, Doktor, and Redding, 1986). The present study explores the influence of values on sales- people's performance, organizational commitment, and re- ward valences (a component of motivation) using a sample of industrial salespeople from the United States and Japan. To our knowledge, no published research has yet explored relationships between values and salesperson job responses in a cross-national setting. Knowledge of how specific values relate to critical job responses would be useful for recruiting, training, motivating, and communicating with salespeople. For example, if certain values were found to have a favorable impact on salesperson performance, sales recruiters could seek to hire individuals possessing such values. Similarly, training and communication programs could be directed at demonstrating how various ISSN 0148-2963/97/$17.00 PII S0148-2963(96)00204-4