......coping resources in salespersons' emotional exhaustion" by Jeffrey E. Lewin and Jeffrey K. Sager discusses in the abstract, sales person blowout. Salesperson blowout is a continuing major concern in industrial marketing organizations (Lewin & Sager, 2009). The authors analyze the viability of specific coping strategies and their impact on work-related stressors and salesperson burnout. This topic has not seen much research or analysis and thus the authors set out to examine problem-focused as well as emotional-focused coping and the impact these two coping strategies have on role stress, specifically emotional exhaustion. Nevertheless, mixed results came from emotion-focused coping, creating additional research-based questions.The introduction starts with emphasis on the critical levels experienced by today's workforce in relation to job-related burnout. Those working in people-oriented professions like education, sales, and social services have an especially difficult time and costs businesses hundreds of billions each year from absenteeism, lessened productivity, and medical insurance. Although researchers have examined thoroughly this problem in both occupational and organizational literatures, ironically it is rarely explored in marketing literature. The authors note that professional selling is not only highly stressful, but leads to emotional burnout from savvy competitors and pressure to increase sales and revenue for their respective company. Therefore, the authors aimed to examine moderating effects of emotion-focused and problem-focused coping and see how it affects a salespersons' emotional exhaustion.

The background literature section begins with stress and burnout describing it as an affective response to a person's chronic stress levels. Extensive interpersonal contact may be responsible for burnout syndrome and the authors state the syndrome comprises three interrelated parts. These are: depersonalization, diminished personal accomplishments, and emotional exhaustion. The most important of the three, emotional exhaustion, has common symptoms that affect productivity such as increased absenteeism and ultimately, withdrawal...

Many find emotional exhaustion the core dimension to the burnout process (Lewin & Sager, 2009). This means burnout studies examined the emotional exhaustion construct.
The next section concerns role stress and burnout among salespeople. The authors state role stressors are researched lengthily in regards to the behavior of salespeople. From this research came interest in role ambiguity and role conflict. Those working as salespeople and telemarketing personnel may benefit from examination of those important antecedents.

Stress and coping is section 2.3 and discusses coping processes and identification of factors that lead to influence over behavioral and physical outcomes. These are: situational and personality characteristics as well as a person's disposition to any coping style. The authors focus on Lazarus and Folkman's examination of stress, coping, and associated outcomes (Lewin & Sager, 2009). Their work reveals that a person's reaction to stress encompasses two steps. These are coping and cognitive appraisal. The section concludes with coping strategies discussed by various researchers like Kraft, Claybomb, and Porter. They suggest problem-focused coping strategies may assist salespeople manage stress, leading to positive outcomes.

The next section is proposed model and hypotheses. This section is where they examine interrelationships which are demonstrated in figure 1. Figure 1 has the title "The influence of coping resources on salesperson's emotional exhaustion" and has role conflict and role ambiguity on one end, problem-focused and emotion-focused coping in the center, and emotional exhaustion on the other end. Figure 1 essentially means conflict and ambiguity (work-related role stressors) are thought to have direct effects on the emotional exhaustion of salespeople. Emotion and problem-focused coping will be expected to interact with these stressors either amplifying/diminishing emotional exhaustion. The next section is role conflict, role ambiguity, and emotional exhaustion and simply helps define role conflict in relation to conflicting requests and/or expectations, demands…