2.1. The direct influence of the use of technology and information systems by salespeople

Technology may provide upgrades in various areas of business and management Huarng et al., 2021, transforming sales operations forever, even being considered an essential aspect of a salesperson’s skills Høgevold et al., 2021. Customers are using technology more and more, so sales departments need to keep on top of it Sharma et al., 2020. Sales managers must deploy technology that enhances the interaction between the company and its customers Sharma et al., 2020, by adopting sales technology such as CRM software Kumar et al., 2020 and mobile CRM Rodriguez & Boyer, 2020 and/or social media Chaker et al., 2022. These tools are important for business operations since sales activities and presentations can be planned, as well as the recording of relevant customer or market information Høgevold et al., 2021.

Indeed, digital capabilities can deal with a large amount of information from the internal and external environment Gobble, 2018, involving multiple functional areas, particularly information systems Verhoef et al., 2021. WhatsApp, one of the most popular instant messaging apps today, is considered an informative platform that can help to strengthen the internal CRM system of companies Agrawal, 2021, providing content for an internal information system. Considering the technological perspective, information systems are an integrated set of tools that aim to collect, store and process data and provide information and knowledge for the decision-making process Boell & Cecez-Kecmanovic, 2015. Such systems are important because companies need to apply these techniques for data processing so that the data-mined content is understandable to users Silva et al., 2021. Because of this, the following research hypothesis has been proposed:

2.2. The direct influence of information systems on intrapreneurship

If information technology is managed well, it can have a positive effect on a company’s development of intrapreneurial culture Benitez-Amado et al., 2010; tangible, information system-based tools and processes can help leverage ideas into intrapreneurial projects and/or products Lan-Ying et al., 2021. It is crucial for employees to have access to information systems so that they feel suitably informed about the processes conducted by the company Saura et al., 2020. Hsieh and Wu (2019) have characterized digital information platforms as boosters of intrapreneurship, providing intrapreneurs with opportunities to create new start-up business units or companies.

Intrapreneurship is a process in which an employee or a group of employees within a company identifies, seeks, and encourages innovative opportunities and creates new structures, revitalising the company or introducing innovative products and processes Vargas-Halabí et al., 2017. Intrapreneurship is when an employee acts like an entrepreneur in a company Parker, 2011. Gawke et al. (2019) have argued that the conceptualization of intrapreneurship encompasses two concepts: venture behaviour and strategic renewal behaviour. According to the authors Gawke et al., 2019, employee venture behaviour is related to entrepreneurial activities by employees aimed at creating, adding or investing in resources in new businesses. Employee strategic renewal behaviour includes activities to capture opportunities and advantages aimed at radically or incrementally renewing the company's current products, services or processes. Therefore, intrapreneurial salespeople are avowedly creative, initiative-taking and action-oriented people, but, to be like that, they need to be constantly aware of what is happening in the company. Companies must implement practices that promote the flow and sharing of information and internal communication. Because of this, the following research hypotheses have been proposed:

2.3. The mediating role of the information system

Technology can help salespeople work more efficiently when they have relevant customer or market information Høgevold et al., 2021; digitization (the process of converting information into digital format) can facilitate internal and external company interactions and capture critical market and customer information Sharma et al., 2020. Thus, top management must implement strategies and information services so that its employees (including salespeople) are informed about the processes related to the company Saura et al., 2020. A digital platform may contain data and information that can help to generate and screen ideas as well as develop and test concepts. In other words, this type of platform nourishes intrapreneurship Hsieh & Wu 2019, represented by two sub-dimensions (strategic renewal and venture behaviour), which can be considered two indicators of employee intrapreneurship Gawke et al., 2019. Technology can help in the development, monitoring and implementation of information, leading to intrapreneurial results Lan-Ying et al., 2021.

In short, this study argues that the effects of the use of sales technology by salespeople on intrapreneurship are not direct. Consequently, the existence of an information system plays a mediating role between the use of sales technology by salespeople and intrapreneurship, leading to the formulation of the following hypotheses:

2.4. Moderator role of the business context

This study argues that the business context can be a differentiating factor. Although intrapreneurship has an individual dimension within a bottom-up process, the intrapreneur is not a single actor within the company; he/she acts as part of an organization where there is mutual influence Neessen et al., 2019. For instance, industries and manufacturers are normally involved in value chains and production systems. For industries that wish to remain competitive, continuous improvements and innovations in production processes have become imperative Atari & Prause, 2019. On the other hand, in a service company, the focus is tending towards relying less on innovation and more on the intrinsic behaviour of intrapreneurs, by way of proactiveness and risk-taking Lages et al., 2017. It is true that intrapreneurs are individuals willing to take risks, whether they be financial or reputational, putting their careers at stake if their initiatives fail, meaning that taking risks seems to be conditioned to contextual factors Huang et al. al., 2021. Therefore, between the industry and the services sector there seems to be a contextual difference to consider.

2.5. The research model

Figure 1 illustrates the developed research model, which suggests that information systems are influenced by the use of sales technology by salespeople. Intrapreneurship (represented by two dimensions: strategic renewal behaviour and venture behaviour) is influenced by the information system. Furthermore, the model reveals that the information system has a mediating role between a salesperson’s use of sales technology and the two dimensions of intrapreneurship. The model has been built based on a review of the literature, hypothetically represented, and in conditions to test their hypotheses using current data.

Figure 1Research model 

3.1. Data and sample

The target population of this research is Portuguese salespeople employed to sell goods or services. The data collection process has been performed using a survey. This study has randomly collected contacts from a database belonging to a prestigious Portuguese Salespeople’s Association. The database comprises up-to-date and comprehensive personal data on 1,245 salespeople who were contacted in May 2022 by email and were requested to answer the questionnaire in electronic format. In the end, 565 valid and complete responses were collected, with a response rate of 45.4%. The sample size is considered robust since it is >300 observations, overcoming the item/response ratio (1/10) as well Collier, 2020. The t-test has been employed to compare the mean difference between the first 300 and the last 265 respondents Armstrong & Overton, 1977 to check for non-response bias Armstrong & Overton, 1977. Empirical results have revealed no significant differences.

Table 1 presents the demographic information for the salespeople and the companies where they worked at the time of the survey.

3.2. Research tools and measurements

The survey has been divided into three parts, the first consisting of demographic information for the salespeople (i.e. gender, age, years of experience and education), the second comprising information about the company where they worked at the time of the survey (i.e. the type of company, size and export level) and the third measuring the research model constructs. Regarding the use of sales technology by salespeople, four items have been used, based on Høgevold et al. (2021). Concerning the information system, four items have been employed from Silva et al. (2021). The constructs that characterize intrapreneurship (strategic renewal behaviour and venture behaviour) have been measured with four items each, adapted from Gawke et al. (2019).

All the scales used in the study have already been validated in previous studies and all items have been measured employing a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = “Strongly Disagree” to 5 = “Strongly Agree”. The items are shown in Table A1 (appendix).

3.3. Data analysis

The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) Statistics Software (version 26) and its integrated AMOS software (version 22) have been used to perform Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) Collier, 2020. SEM is a multivariate statistical analysis technique suitable for examining structural models representing hypotheses for causal relations among several variables. SEM includes two phases: the exploratory factor analysis and the confirmatory factor analysis Collier, 2020.

To analyse the mediating effects of the “information system” construct, the bootstrapping method, a nonparametric resampling procedure, has been applied. Meanwhile, to analyse the moderating effect of the type of company (industrial vs. services), the multigroup analysis has been used Collier, 2020.

4.1. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA)

Although the study uses a construction measurement scale already validated in previous studies Gawke et al., 2019; Høgevold et al., 2021; Silva et al., 2021, an exploratory factor analysis has been applied to identify the theoretical structure. Table 2 reveals the mean and standard deviations of the responses to the items, as well as the skewness and kurtosis of the data, which measure how concentrated or dispersed it is. The values of skewness between ±2 and the kurtosis between ±7 denote appropriate values Watkins, 2021. Hence, the results obtained are adequate, revealing a tendentially normal distribution.

Table 2 also shows the findings for the Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) in section 4.1. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) and Bartlett tests of sphericity have been applied to analyse the suitability of the data. The KMO coefficient is > 0.70, and Bartlett's test is significant at the 0.001 level, indicating the item’s appropriateness Watkins, 2021. Factor loadings with varimax rotation have also been employed. The values obtained are associated with the previously defined theory, linking the items to the corresponding constructs, with factor loadings higher than the recommended value of 0.5. The total explained variance in all constructs exceeds the minimum value of 60% Watkins, 2021. Finally, Table 2 reveals that the Cronbach's alpha values of all constructs are > 0.7, and the full-scale Cronbach's alpha is > 0.9. Therefore, the EFA meets the requirement for the reliability coefficient of the measurement scales, presenting high internal consistency Collier, 2020; Watkins, 2021.

4.2. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA)

The next stage is the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), which has been performed to investigate the factorial structure of the model. The CFA focuses on the main indicators of convergent validity: composite reliability (CR) and average extracted variance (AVE). The values obtained meet the recommended requirements (CR >0.70; AVE >0.50). Thus, the results indicate that the measurement model has good convergent validity Collier, 2020, as shown in Table 2.

4.3. Structural model

The structural model with four constructs (Use of sales technology by salespeople; Information system; Strategic renewal behaviour; Venture behaviour) and hypothesized relationships has been evaluated. The various fit indices have been used to determine whether the model is acceptable or not. Hence, chi-square normalized by degrees of freedom ( ${\chi }^2$ /df) = 3.646 (between 1.0 and 5.0); p< 0.001; goodness-of-fit (GFI) = 0.939 ( $\ge$ 0.90); normed fit index (NFI) = 0.950 ( $\ge$ 0.90); incremental fit index (IFI) = 0.963 ( $\ge$ 0.90); Tucker–Lewis index (TLI) = 0.953 ( $\ge$ 0.90); confirmatory fit index (CFI) = 0.963( $\ge$ 0.90); root means square approximation (RMSA) = 0.068(<0.08). Thus, the indices obtained are appropriate Byrne, 2016; Collier, 2020, so the model is well fit to the data.

In the next step, a path analysis has been used to indicate the direct effect (hypothesized relationships) of an independent variable on a dependent one Byrne, 2016; Collier, 2020. The results reveal that the use of sales technology by salespeople has a positive and significant impact on a company's information system (β= 0.61; p<0.001), so H1 is supported. The results also show that a company's information system has a positive and significant impact on salespeople’s strategic renewal behaviour $\beta$ = 0.85; p<0.001) and on their venture behaviour ( $\beta$ = 0.72; p<0.001), therefore supporting H2 and H3, respectively.

The values of $R^2$ correspond to the coefficient of determination; in other words, the $R^2$ indicates the percentage of variance of the dependent variable explained by the antecedent variable of the model. All $R^2$ s have values >0.25, which is considered significant Collier, 2020. Figure 2 illustrates the structural model with parameter estimates.

Figure 2Structural model 

4.4. The information system mediating role test

To assess the mediating role of the information system, the significance of the mediation effects by bootstrap resampling has been analysed Collier, 2020. Estimates for the indirect effects of the use of technology by salespeople on their strategic renewal behaviour and their venture behaviour are framed by a 95% confidence interval (C.I.) with limits of ]0.514;0.772[ and ]0.516;0.792[, respectively. Therefore, H4 and H5 are statistically supported. Figure 2 shows the estimated parameters.

4.5. Examining the moderating role of the business context

This study argues that between industrial and services salespeople, a contextual difference should be considered. Thus, to examine the moderating role of the type of company (industrial vs. service sectors) where salespeople work, the multigroup analysis of the structural model has been employed Collier, 2020.

This analysis evaluates the invariance of the measurement model and the structural model between the two groups (salespeople from industrial companies and salespeople from service companies). The invariance of the measurement model has been assessed in both groups, first by comparing the unconstrained model, and then by comparing the model with structural coefficients Byrne, 2016; Collier, 2020. Therefore, assuming the unconstrained model ${\chi }_{\lambda }^2\left(9\right)=6.008$ ;p = 0.740) and the model measurement weights ( ${\chi }_{\beta }^2\left(3\right)=6.537$ ;p = 0.088), the results reveal that the model is invariant.

Regarding the mediating role of information systems between groups, there are no differences either. Therefore, the use of technology by industrial salespeople in terms of their strategic renewal behaviour and venture behaviour is framed by a 95% C.I. with limits of ]0.401;0.740[ and ]0.448;0.856[, respectively. The use of technology by service salespeople in the arena of their strategic renewal behaviour and venture behaviour is framed by a 95% C.I. with limits of ]0.533;0.947[ and ]0.491;0.889[, respectively. Therefore, H4 and H5 are statistically supported in both groups, although for service salespeople, the indirect effects appear to be stronger.

5.1. Implications for practice

This study offers several significant implications for salespeople. The findings show that the integration of sales technology and information systems is vital for fostering intrapreneurial behaviour in said professionals, which is beneficial to those who want to build upon their entrepreneurial/intrapreneurial knowledge. Thus, sales technology and information systems, like mobile phones and CRM Agrawal, 2021; Feng et al., 2020, can be used to capture data, manage information and work processes and connect with customers, partners or the market in general Giovannetti et al., 2021. Hence, for individuals to efficiently develop intrapreneurial skills, they need to obtain facts and knowledge that can facilitate the decision-making process, a situation where information systems can play a fundamental role Lan-Ying et al., 2021.

Indeed, the current context is increasingly marked by digital behaviour Shi et al., 2020 and shows an escalating need for salespeople to be connected at all times. This means that sales technology should be seen as an essential benefit for salespeople Mero et al., 2020; they must understand the importance of omnichannel customer service, integrating face-to-face contact with text messaging via SMS, chatbots, social media, email and instant messaging, among other digital tools, to provide a unified service experience. Also, using big data analytics tools, CRM or other sales analytics software can help manage prospecting and customer relationships, as well as effectively track, evaluate and improve sales performance. Sales technology is a powerful source of data for information systems that support decision-making and help identify opportunities and changing needs Hsieh & Wu, 2019. Thus, salespeople must actively engage with technology and information systems because the knowledge they gain from these digital tools is a key resource for their intrapreneurial behaviour; in turn, this can, for instance, encourage changes in an organization, improve products and services and allow innovative ideas and strategies to be created, as well as new business units to be implemented or new markets to be reached Gawke et al., 2019. Therefore, salespeople can assume a dual role within any company; firstly, as a source of external information (market, customers, competitions, etc.) supported by sales technology; secondly as an active player in intrapreneurial practices. These are generally internal solutions to meet customer needs or competitive advantages, regardless of the business environment, whether industrial or in the service sector.

This study also offers significant implications for companies. A manager should see a salesperson not only as an interface between the supplier and customer but also as a creator of solutions, value propositions and/or competitive advantages Böhm et al., 2020; Panagopoulos et al., 2017. Consequently, it is also up to managers to create an intrapreneurial culture where salespeople can play a fundamental role.

This study also suggests that managers should invest in sales technology, such as CRM, mobile data, big data, sales optimization software and information systems. Agrawal, 2021; Feng et al., 2020; Soltani et al., 2018; Verhoef et al., 2021. This is highly recommended because such technology facilitates the creation of solutions to problems and a quick and effective response to market issues. More and more customers are demanding a seamless blended experience; at the same time, companies, whether in the industry or services sector, should provide conditions for salespeople to assume an omnichannel position for greater flexibility, visibility and connectivity across channels. Thus, sales technology can be used to leverage customer relationships, improve data collection and, consequently, employers’ intrapreneurial practices.

Finally, this study also has implications for companies that supply sales technology. Since it can play an essential role in salespeople’s intrapreneurial activities, these suppliers are not just able to find a niche in the market to promote available technology but can also explore and develop innovative technology oriented towards intrapreneurship.

5.2. Limitations and future research

Despite the various theoretical and managerial implications, this study does have some limitations, although they could offer opportunities for future investigations. Firstly, the study covers only Portuguese salespeople, and the sample is somewhat biased towards men, which limits its generalization. Therefore, studies considering other locations and more gender balance are suggested.

Secondly, the study only embraces sales technology as an antecedent of information systems and consequent intrapreneurial behaviour. However, other variables could be studied in the future related to the management of human resources (recruitment and selection, integration, performance evaluation, training and development) and/or in the arena of organization (capacity for innovation, research and organizational culture), for example.

Thirdly, this study does not explore moderating variables, so future studies could develop a more in-depth analysis of factors like education, age and generational differences and remuneration.

Fourthly, this study has been limited to the analysis of antecedent variables of intrapreneurial behaviour, so future studies could also consider its outcomes, like the impact of intrapreneurship on the performance of salespeople and/or companies.

Fifthly, regarding the business context, this paper has only examined the differences between industrial and service companies but has not analysed the specific characteristics of the sector which could have an influence on intrapreneurial behaviour, depending on the complexity of the product or service offered. Future studies could consider these specific characteristics because complex products or services may encourage salespeople to develop creative solutions for customers based on venture behaviour. In contrast, simple products or services, because of restricted alternatives, might make low venture behaviour create a “Take it or leave it” system.

Finally, for future studies, it would also be recommended to consider the next step of the digital revolution, namely, artificial intelligence, and how it may influence intrapreneurial behaviour.