The influence of national cultural values on the use of rewards alignment to improve sales collaboration

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how national cultural values affect sales collaboration directly and how it interacts with the firm's reward structure. The results are linked with firm performance. Design/methodology/approach – The conceptual framework is tested on a large sample of sales organizations across 26 countries. Due to the nested nature of the data, hierarchical linear modeling is used to test the hypothesized framework. Findings – Sales collaboration is positively related to firm performance, while individualism and masculinity are negatively related to sales collaboration. Rewards alignment leads to greater sales collaboration and is particularly important in highly individualistic and masculine societies. Practical implications – The study identifies rewards alignment as an actionable management tool to foster greater sales collaboration and, in turn, enhanced firm performance. The study suggests that this is particularly important in cultures associated with high individualism and masculinity. These two values can hinder sales collaboration within the firm, but firm practices (rewards alignment) can counter societal tendencies. Originality/value – The effects of cultural values have been neglected in prior research on sales collaboration and firm performance. The findings in this study suggest that culture is important and, at times, it can be beneficial for the organizational culture to counter the dominant national cultural values.