Establishing a Bridge Between Supervisor’s Perceived Organizational Support and Salesperson’s Career Initiative

The proactive behavior of front-line salespeople plays a crucial role in generating positive organizational outcomes. As the managers who interact most frequently with front-line employees, front-line managers' perception of organizational support is pivotal in fostering the development of career initiative among these employees. Grounded in self-determination and social exchange theories, this study investigates whether the organizational support perceived by front-line managers influences employee initiative behavior. Meanwhile, core self-evaluation is introduced to explore how personality traits of sales personnel may influence their perception of the external environment and the formation of intrinsic motivation. This study utilized a questionnaire survey method to collect data from 50 front-line team leaders and their 299 corresponding employees across multiple cities in China, conducted over three rounds. Following the collection of the paired questionnaires, Mplus 8.0 was employed to perform reliability and validity analyses, correlation analysis, and hypothesis testing on the data. The final results revealed that supervisor's perceived organizational support positively influences a group-inclusive climate; a group-inclusive climate can foster felt obligation and salesperson career initiative. Supervisors' perceived organizational support enhances salesperson career initiative by making salespeople experience group-inclusive climate and develop felt obligation. Moreover, core self-evaluation significantly moderates the positive impact of the inclusive climate on these outcomes. By adopting the perspective of front-line supervisors, this research identifies an effective pathway from supervisor perception to employee behavior, elucidates the antecedents of front-line salespeople's initiative, and reassesses the critical role of front-line supervisors within organizations.