| dc.description.abstract | The purpose of this study is to provide insight to the organisation under study as to how the organisation compares to a set of selected high performance organisational culture characteristics and which of those characteristics need to be reinforced by management to establish or continue to support high performance in a sales-driven environment in South Africa.
The problem that this research aims to address is that the organisation under study does not know how the organisation compares to a set of selected high performance organisational culture characteristics and which of those characteristics need to be reinforced by management to establish or continue to support high performance in a sales-driven environment in South Africa.
The study adopted a positivist research philosophy and a quantitative research method with a cross-sectional time horizon to census survey 90 sales personnel in the population. A validated structured questionnaire on assessing a high performance culture was used and administered on-line yielding 63 voluntary responses at a 70% completion rate.
The research results demonstrate that high performance organisational culture characteristics are prevalent in the organisation being studied, to a lesser extent in certain dimensions and not at all for the reward system dimension. Characteristics relating to the dimensions of leadership, core capability (organisation, group/team and individual level), policies and procedures, and stakeholder satisfaction at the customer level manifested extremely positively, while characteristics related to vision and strategy, stakeholder satisfaction at the supplier, community and people level was evident to an average degree. The organisation performed poorly in those characteristics related to performance management and reward system.
The research findings further indicated that the organisation’s leadership is highly effective in establishing a high performance culture in the sales team, the organisation has to a large extent the requisite core capability at all three levels (organisation, group/team, and individual) to support a high performance culture, the organisation lacks an effective reward system and performance management system, and that customer stakeholder satisfaction features to an extremely large extent while supplier, community, and people stakeholder satisfaction features to a much lesser extent as part of the culture in the sales team. Finally, practical recommendations to management have been made to improve certain cultural characteristics and to reinforce positive areas that support a high performance culture in this sales-driven organisation.
The benefits of the research include visibility to the organisation as to how the organisation compares to a set of selected high performance organisational culture characteristics, insight into
organisational cultural factors that should be enhanced, prioritised, and/or addressed to sustain and elevate organisational sales performance. One of the main benefits of the study is to ultimately improve the performance level of sales personnel and thereby improve business profitability and sustainability, and create shared value. Other organisational benefits include reducing sales personnel turnover and retaining key sales personnel by creating an environment for these individuals to thrive in.
Limitation of the study is the relative small sample size for inferential statistics. Managerial implications of the study were mentioned, as well as recommendations for further studies. | en_US |
