Management Control in Sales Forces: A Case Study from the Labour Process of Life Insurance

Abstract

The paper examines the way in which the management of a large life insurance company controls its sales force. Whilst the paper seeks to contribute to an understanding of an under-researched occupational area - that of sales - it is concerned to do this within a theoretical framework derived from the critique and development of labour process theory. Thus the sales process itself is examined as the site of a complex series of practices mediated by managerial control mechanisms. Three issues are highlighted. Firstly, the paper shows how corporate strategy, shaped significantly by perceptions of vulnerability to takeover, is translated into a system of targets for individual sales people, closely monitored and `disciplined' by management. Secondly, the paper shows how these targets become internalised by the sales force and the way in which the individual sales representatives manage the pressure on their own identities. Thirdly, the paper examines how these processes are located in a wider set of social relationships mediated particularly by state activity. Thus the state through the Financial Services Act of 1986 is increasingly involved in defining `good practice' in this area and thus intervening indirectly in the labour process itself and the managerial controls which constitute it.