The Path to Sales Center Leadership: Key Differences Between Academic and Practitioner Leaders

Abstract

More universities are teaching sales to meet growing employer demand, thereby increasing the prominence of university sales centers. Sales center directors tend to be a PhD or a non-PhD faculty member. While there are advantages to both backgrounds, we know little about how sales center directors view their roles and what behaviors they enact to satisfy demands. The purpose of this research is to investigate the activities of sales center directors and gain deeper insights into their thought worlds. Leveraging job demands–resources theory and a work-based identity perspective, we posit that sales center directors with versus without a PhD will emphasize different job demands. Using a web survey to examine sales center director behaviors and in-depth interviews to explore their thought worlds, we find twice as many sales center directors with a PhD spend time on research activities than their non-PhD counterparts. Sales center directors with a PhD spend twice as much time on research activities than their non-PhD counterparts. Sales center directors without a PhD spend a quarter of their time coaching individual students while those with a PhD express strong desire to impact the sales profession, suggesting that their attention is broader than coaching students.