Y. TSUZUKI ET AL.
Corr and Gray (1996) examined the relationship of attribu-
tional style and work performance among 130 senior male sales
agents in a leading UK insurance company. In their study, it
was attributional style for positive events (would be referred to
as “positive attributional style”, hereafter), rather than attribu-
tional style for negative events, which was related to sales per-
formance. Specifically, tendency to explain positive events with
internal, stable, and global causes predicted higher sales per-
formance.
Proudfoot, Corr, Guest, & Gray (2001) reported that positive
attributional style was more strongly related to job motivation,
intention to quit, learned resourcefulness and psychological
strain, than was the negative attributional style. Furnham,
Sadka, & Brewin (1992) found that positive attributional style
was related to job motivation and satisfaction, whereas negative
attributional style was related neither to job motivation nor to
satisfaction. Using job-rated outcomes as events, Silvester,
Patterson, & Ferguson (2003) reported that positive attribu-
tional style was a better predictor of performance ratings and
job satisfaction than was negative attributional style.
Xenikou (2005) administered the Occupational Attributional
Style Questionnaire (Furnham, Sadka, & Brewin, 1992) to em-
ployees of various organizations such as banks, hospitals, in-
surance companies, and examined the relation between attribu-
tional style and job motivation. It was found that not only the
two attributional styles, but their interaction also was a predic-
tor of job motivation. It was also suggested that length of ex-
perience at a given organization had an impact on the relation-
ship between attributional style and job motivation. Specifically,
only in the case of employees with more than four years of
experience at their organization, negative attributional style was
related to lower levels of job motivation. Xenikou suggested
that becoming a “veteran” employee in an organization was
likely to make people more vulnerable to the negative effect of
the pessimistic negative attributional style on job motivation.
In summary, results of past studies have been inconsistent in
whether attributional style for positive events or that for nega-
tive events is more critical in predicting sales performance.
Whereas Seligman & Schulman (1986) found a good (optimis-
tic) attributional style for “negative” events to be implicated in
successful insurance sales, other studies (e.g., Corr & Gray,
1996) suggested that a good (optimistic) attributional style for
“positive” events was most predictive of high sales perform-
ance. This inconsistency may suggest an existence of a mod-
erator variable, where in some situations having a good attribu-
tional style for positive events is critical and in others having a
good attributional style for negative events is critical.
The present study was aimed to explore the impact of an
agent’s length of sales experience on the relation between posi-
tive/negative attributional styles and work performance among
Japanese life insurance sales agents. It was hypothesized that an
agent’s length of sales experience would moderate the rela-
tionship between attributional style and sales performance.
Specifically, among novices with a relatively short experience
in insurance sales, negative attributional style would be more
strongly related to sales performance than positive attributional
style would. Among veterans with a relatively long experience
in insurance sales, positive attributional style would be more
strongly related to sales performance than negative attributional
style would. The reason for these hypotheses is as follows.
By contrast to Xenikou’s observation, in Japan’s life insur-
ance sales, being a new sales agent would be more vulnerable
to the impact of negative attributional style. Novice sales agents
are new in the field and do not have “regulars”, and thus are
destined to repeatedly encounter failure, rejection, and indif-
ference from prospective clients. Reflecting these situations, the
turnover rate among life insurance sales agents in an early pe-
riod of employment is very high in Japan. About 80% of the
life insurance sales agents hired in Japan quit within two years
of sales experience, and only less than 10% remain in 10 years.
Under these circumstances, new sales agents whose work life
tends to be full of rejection and failure are likely to be more
vulnerable to the impact of attributional style for negative
events. Thus, for novices to survive in life insurance sales,
having a pessimistic negative attributional style puts them at a
vast disadvantage in terms of their work performance. There-
fore, among novices, work performance would be related pre-
dominantly to negative, but not positive, attributional style.
Situations are different for Japan’s veteran sales agents.
Typically, veterans do not have to encounter as frequent fail-
ures and rejections as novices do. Veterans tend to have their
own regular customers. Those regulars refer their sales agents
to their friends and acquaintances. Therefore, veterans may
obtain new clients through introduction by their old customers.
This reduces their chances to feel hurt and rejected by prospec-
tive customers. In addition, veterans usually have a thorough
knowledge of insurance commodities they sell and can offer
commodities that meet their customers’ needs, thereby resulting
in higher sales performance in general. Attributional style for
positive events would influence the degree to which they savor
their success. Thus, positive attributional style, rather than
negative attributional style, would be more relevant to the con-
tinuation of their success as veterans. Therefore, among veter-
ans, their performance would be related predominantly to their
positive, but not negative, attributional style.
In summary, the present study examines an agent’s length of
experience as a moderator of the relation between sales per-
formance and positive/negative attributional styles. More spe-
cifically, it was hypothesized that positive and negative attribu-
tional styles would differentially affect sales performance de-
pending on an agent’s length of experience in insurance sales.
Method
Participants
Participants of this study consisted of 360 Japanese female
life insurance route sales agents of a nation-wide life insurance
company. Participants worked on a complex commission sys-
tem that was basically determined by their performance but is
complicated by changes in the rate of conversion based on the
number and value sold by the participants over the last three
months. Participants ranged in age from 22 to 78 years with a
mean of 47.2 years (SD = 11.09). The length of sales experi-
ence on their present jobs ranged from 1 to 40 years with a
mean of 8.6 years. About 80% of participants were married, the
remainder being unmarried or widowed.
Measures
Attributional style measure. Based on the Attributional Style
Questionnaire (ASQ; Peterson, Semmel, Von Baeyer, Abram-
son, Metalsky & Seligman, 1982), a Japanese version of at-
tributional style questionnaire was developed by the authors (A
written permission of Dr. Seligman was obtained). Majority of
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