Life Insurance Agents and Executives: A Test of Incongruent Perceptions

Abstract

The paper formulates and tests a methodology for evaluating the extent and nature of potential conflict between life insurance agents and home office personnel charged with the supervision or evaluation of agent performance. The dual survey of agents and executives not only identifies incongruent perceptions but also facilitates the management of conflict before it becomes dysfunctional. In addition to providing an insurer with surrogate measures of disaccordance, the paper suggests a method for evaluating the relationship between the degree of accordance and individual agent performance. This paper specifies and tests a method for determining those areas of the life insurance sales effort where there is significant disagreement between the perceptions of agents and company management. A lack of accordance between the two groups is suggested as one indicator of potential conflict. The identification of specific areas of disagreement may thus serve as an aid to company executives in the long term management of conflict. Contemporary researchers of distribution channels have emphasized the importance of conflict management to the productivity of marketing activities.' Distribution channels are often viewed as interfirm behavioral systems that are integrated to compete with rival products. Thus the emphasis has been on the management of interchannel conflict. Only limited work has been done in the area of intrachannel conflict. A notable David R. Klock, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Finance and Insurance in Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. He is co-author of Perspectives on Insurance (Prentice-Hall, 1974). T. W. Bonham, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Management in Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University where he also serves as Director of Graduate Programs in Business Administration. This paper was presented at the 1973 Annual Meeting of ARIA. The authors wish to thank Professors Edward Mazze and James Wilcox for their valuable suggestions and Mr. Daniel Cunningham for his assistance in data processing. 1For example, see Louis Stem, Brian Sternthal, and C. Samuel Cary, Managing in Distribution Channels: A Laboratory Study, Journal of Marketing Research, X (May, 1973), pp. 169-183; and Louis W. Stern and Ronald H. Conman, Conflict in Distribution Channels: An Exploration, in Louis Stern (ed.), Distribution Channels: Behavioral Dimensions (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1969), pp. 156-175.