The lone wolf phenomenon: The impact of commitment and performance on turnover intention in sales

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among Lone Wolf, types of commitment, sales performance, and turnover intention. Dixon, Gassenheimer, and Barr defined Lone Wolf as a psychological state in which one prefers to work alone when making decisions and setting/accomplishing priorities and goals (p. 205). The types of commitment used in this research were organizational commitment, job involvement, and career commitment. Sales performance was defined in terms of actual performance to the key sales metric identified by the organizations in the present study.; A sample of 206 sales employees was used to determine whether the Lone Wolf was related to organizational commitment and job involvement. In addition, the relationships of Lone Wolf and sales performance to types of commitment and turnover intention were analyzed. The purpose of these analyses was to determine whether sales style or level of performance impacts level or type of commitment and in turn impacts overall intention to stay or leave an organization. Correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis were used to determine whether the predictor variables could effectively explain the turnover intentions of sales employees.; Lone Wolf was negatively related to organizational commitment and positively related to job involvement, sales performance, and rainmaker items. The results suggest that organizational commitment partially mediates the relationship between Lone Wolf and turnover intention. High sales performers were examined on an exploratory basis and it was found that high sales performers demonstrated a preference to work alone when making decisions and setting/accomplishing priorities and goals (Lone Wolf). This supports the link discovered between academic literature on Lone Wolf and popular literature on high-performing sales employees, also called rainmakers.