Graduation Year

2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

D.B.A.

Degree Granting Department

Marketing

Major Professor

Paul Spector, Ph.D.

Co-Major Professor

Sharon Segrest, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Robert Tarpey, DBA.

Committee Member

Dahlia Robinson, Ph.D.

Keywords

Moderating Effect, Gender Differences, Burnout, Customer Facing Employees, Co-worker satisfaction, Emotional Exhaustion

Abstract

The post COVID 19 sales environment for salespeople in pharmaceuticals has shifted to becoming hybridized within a continuum of face-to-face and virtual interactions, when engaging with health care professionals. This dissertation reports on a study investigating the relationship of virtual work with job satisfaction and burnout. There were two questions that were addressed in this study to understand the impact virtual work has had on overall job satisfaction and burnout. First, what is the relationship of virtuality to job satisfaction and burnout in the pharmaceutical sales environment? Second, which facets of job satisfaction and burnout are most strongly related to overall job satisfaction for sales employees in pharmaceuticals in a sales environment? Four hypotheses were proposed. H1: In a pharmaceutical sales environment gender moderates the relationship on overall job satisfaction with virtual work. H2: In a pharmaceutical sales environment, overall job satisfaction is positively correlated with satisfaction facets of salary, promotion, supervision, fringe benefits, co-workers, tasks, and communication. H3a: In a pharmaceutical sales environment, overall job satisfaction is negatively correlated with emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. H3b: In a pharmaceutical sales environment, overall job satisfaction is positively correlated with personal accomplishment. A survey that contained scales of job satisfaction, burnout and a measure to determine the percentage of time working virtually was distributed to job recruiters, pharmaceutical companies, and a Cloud Research online panel with a total recruitment of 199 pharmaceutical salespeople. To test H1 moderated multiple regression was used to analyze the moderation effect virtual work has on overall job satisfaction with job satisfaction facets, burnout, and gender. Multiple regression analyses and correlations were conducted with JASP software to test H2, H3a, and H3b. New knowledge was produced that revealed the impact the virtual environment had on overall job satisfaction with gender, co-worker satisfaction, and emotional exhaustion. The findings concluded gender moderated overall job satisfaction with virtual work supporting H1, indicating in a 100% virtual work environment job satisfaction is higher for women than men, and overall job satisfaction is higher for men than women in a face-to-face selling environment. Virtual work moderates overall job satisfaction with co-worker satisfaction, indicating overall job satisfaction increases at a lower rate in a 100% virtual environment compared to a face-to-face environment. Virtual work moderates overall job satisfaction with emotional exhaustion, indicating in a 100% virtual environment as emotional exhaustion increases, overall job satisfaction increases, compared to a face-to-face setting when emotional exhaustion increases, overall job satisfaction decreases. Multiple regression models found job satisfaction facets of promotion, supervision, fringe benefits, co-workers, and tasks are significant predictors of overall job satisfaction. Of these, satisfaction with fringe benefits is the strongest predictor of overall job satisfaction. Amongst burnout facets, emotional exhaustion was found to be a significant negative predictor of overall job satisfaction and depersonalization was found to be a significant positive predictor of overall job satisfaction. The findings also concluded that overall job satisfaction was found to be significantly positively correlated with all seven job facets, salary, promotion, supervision, fringe benefits, co-workers, tasks, and communication, thus supporting H2. The job facets with the highest correlations with overall job satisfaction were fringe benefits, promotion opportunities and tasks. The highest correlations between job satisfaction facets were between promotion opportunities with salary and communication. Overall job satisfaction was found to be significantly negatively correlated with emotional exhaustion but not with depersonalization partially supporting H2a. Depersonalization was found to be significantly positively correlated with emotional exhaustion. For H2b overall job satisfaction was not significantly positively correlated with personal accomplishment thus not supported, however, there is a significant positive correlation between personal accomplishment and the job facet satisfaction of completing job tasks. Virtual work has a significant, negative correlation between the job facet of satisfaction with co-workers, and virtual work has a positive correlation with burnout facets of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. Gender was also significantly negatively correlated with depersonalization.

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